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There are only (3) three ways to influence people!
- You tell them how good you are
- Other people say how good you are
- You prove how good you are by showing results
The third way is the most effective.
In this article, you will learn how to tell great customer success stories that demonstrate the positive results people have gotten from your product or service.
First, let’s handle an objection you might have: “If I share customer success stories, I might sound like I am bragging.”
Yes, you will if you do it the wrong way. Here you will get the template to do it right so that people will listen and even take notes as you share with them your stories.
Customer Success template:
Before: The Pain > During: The Process > After: The gain
1- Before: The Pain
Tell the customer story before they interacted with you, your product or service. Focus on the pain the customer had before working with you.
2- During: The process
Share the story of a journey your customer has had with your product or service. What did you do for your customer? How did you handle the process? Focus on conveying systems. Avoid telling everything you did for them – just focus on the important parts. Describing the process, the customer goes through is very valuable to new customers. It’s the part most people neglect to include. If you don’t include this part, your story will sound like bragging and will rub people the wrong way.
3- After: The Gain
What did the customer gain by working with you? How did your product and service transform their life? Focus on tangible results the customer obtained.
Ok, let’s put it all together: Here is how you use the template:
1-First, Identify a client you worked with
A customer is anyone you serve. A customer could be the buyer of your company’s product or service. Or it can be a donor if you are a nonprofit, or it can be an internal customer from a different department.
Example of a client of mine: Michele Bennett, A new CFO at X-factor technology (made up name for privacy)
2. Write down their pain points
People buy solutions. To get a solution you must first identify the pain people are trying to avoid by using your solution. So what is the pain the client you picked was trying to relieve by seeking your service or product?
Example: Michele has extreme public speaking fear. She navigated her career avoiding presentations whenever she could. Now, she can’t avoid presentations anymore. She has to present to other C-Level executives, to reporters, and to financial analysts on a weekly basis. She could lose her job if she does not keep her anxiety under control.
3. Write down the process you guided them through (be brief)
People will not buy something they can’t imagine themselves using. It’s your job as a storyteller to make them imagine the process or the journey you are going to take them on. So describe briefly how you helped the customer. Be concise, to the point, and simple. If they don’t understand the process, then they can’t imagine it and therefore will not buy into it.
Example: The first thing I did for Michele was an assessment to see what was causing her public speaking fear. Public speaking fear can be due to three things: Conditioning (an irrational response), beliefs (like I am not good enough, I am a bad presenter, etc…), or bad past experiences around public speaking. Once we identify the cause, we can work on it. It turned out that Michele’s problem was a combination of conditioning and bad past experiences. By doing some hypnosis work and some reconditioning exercises, we managed to reduce her anxiety from level 8 out of 10 to level 5 in just 3 sessions.
4. Write down the gains they got because of the process
To have a customer success story, your customers have to succeed. With this in mind, tie back to the pain points you started with and showcased results that demonstrate the resolution of those pain points.
Example: Michele had her first video session with a Wall Street Journal analyst a month after our sessions and did phenomenally. She said that she felt some anxiety but nothing close to the career-crippling anxiety she experienced before. Now we still have some work to do, but this is an excellent start.
Once you finish with this process, you got yourself a compelling customer success story!
What is your customer success story: Share it in the comments below to get feedback and who knows maybe you will get some good leads.
