September 27, 2022
There are plenty of stories you could share with your customers.
You could have a story about how you ended up in your role (aka Origin Story), what values you stand for (aka Value Story) or how your company came up with that new product (Company Story).
These are all great, but if I had to choose one story that I’d tell for the rest of my life, which one would it be?
It would be the Customer Success Story.
A Customer Success Story is a story about a specific customer that you’ve helped overcome a certain problem. Ideally that story should be about a specific person and should cover the following points:
In this article, you’ll learn three ways to source these customer success stories: 1) Reviewing your past experience, 2) Interviewing your customers and 3) Interviewing you coworkers.
Let’s go!
The easiest way to identify customer success stories is to reflect on your own experience – either from your current role or previous roles.
If you’ve been in sales for a few years you, probably, have a few relevant experiences.
Take a look in your CRM (or comparable), review all the deals you’ve closed, and go line-by-line, asking yourself
What you’re looking for is situations that stand out. Situations where you did something that sets you apart from others, positively surprised your client or helped your client achieve outstanding results.
These situations are the ones that will make the best stories.
For a few of you it may be easy to just review your past experience.
For others, this could be a bit harder.
Why?
Because, you may not have a systematic after-the-sale communication in place.
When I started my business, I didn’t have any after-the-sale system in place. I rarely followed-up with my clients after delivering my service.
I had this mindset, ‘Service delivered. Let’s go and find more clients.’
I didn’t really check how they implemented what they had learned and what results they achieved working with us. Without knowing that, it was impossible to craft powerful customer stories.
The moment I realized that I was missing key information, I dropped my clients a quick note.
I just asked them, ‘Hi X, are you free to hop on a 15-minute call over the next 2 weeks? I’d love to chat with and understand how you’ve used stories in your day-to-day. And no worries, if you haven’t. That’s also valuable feedback :).’
While I worried initially to be ignored, I was surprised to see every single one of them getting back to me. Within 2 weeks, I had 12 new customer success stories that I could use going forward.
So, what questions should you ask in these calls?
You can ask questions along the lines of…
Go ahead and do the same.
Just give some of your very satisfied clients a call.
If your offering helped them in any way, they’ll be more than happy to talk to you.
Struggling with the previous two exercises?
Maybe you just started your new role or you don’t have too many successes to show yet?
Don’t worry, we gotcha.
Below, you’ll learn how to source stories from your coworkers.
“Wait, a second! I can tell a story that is not mine?”
Absolutely.
Sure, it’s easier to tell the story if it’s your own, but if you struggle to come up with your own stories, you tell you coworkers’ customer success stories. No problem.
So, how can you get your coworkers to tell you their stories?
Let me walk you through the steps.
1. Select people you’d like to interview
First, identify who you’d like to interview. That can be any seller that has been with your company for a few years, that has sold the products you’re selling, and that seems decently cooperative. Anyone that cares about your company and about other people, will be more than happy to help you. If you’re working at a start-up, you can also interview one of the founders.
2. Ask them for an interview
Once you’ve identified who you’d like to talk to, just drop them a quick note.
Don’t overthink it. It should be enough to say, “Do you have 30 minutes to talk about your experience? I’d like to gather a few examples of you’ve helped some of our clients. No prep needed.”
I’m sure that every single person that you reach out to will be happy to talk to you.
At the end people love talking about their experience and feel proud that you’ve chosen them.
3. Give them context
Once they’ve agreed to talk to you and you meet with them, give them some context. Tell them a bit about yourself, what stories you’re looking for and where you’d like to use their stories.
4. Ask them about their experience
After giving some context, it’s time to move into the actual interview.
Let’s start off with what you should avoid. The questions you should avoid at any cost are, “So, do you have a great story that I could use?” or “Tell me your story.”
Why?
Well it puts immense pressure on your interviewee. Most people don’t think of their experiences as stories.
So if you ask them for their story, they will likely feel overwhelmed. It’s too vague, too broad.
Here are some better questions to ask your coworker:
5. Wrap it up: Once you’ve gotten a few cool story ideas, it’s time to wrap up the interview. You can thank them for their time and, lastly, ask them for their permission to use the stories in your conversations. As part of that, it’s good to check if can use actual client names or if you should tell the story without disclosing any names.
That’s it. These are three ways to identify captivating customer success stories.
When you look for customer success stories, you want to look for any situations that stood out. Situations where you did something that set you apart from others, where you positively surprised your client.
Give it a try.
Do you want more guidance on how to master the art of storytelling? Check out our storytelling masterclass in which you’ll learn how to find, craft, and deliver powerful stories.
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