Case studies (or success stories) are a powerful tool for marketing your small business. If you provide intangible services, case studies help you communicate, in more concrete terms, how you help your customers. Case studies can also give prospective customers a sense of confidence in your ability to help them solve their problems since you’ve helped others like them before.
If case studies are such powerful tools, why don’t more small business owners use them? One of the obstacles that I’ve noticed is that case studies seem to stall when they are treated like a writing project. Most small business owners aren’t particularly fond of writing and as busy as they are, the idea of spending an afternoon writing case studies isn’t very appealing.
Creating case studies doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out process. Chances are, you are already doing all of the hard work during your sales process. By taking a little extra time up front to record your notes in a slightly different format, you can produce case studies on a regular basis without a lot of extra effort.
First of all, a case study does not have to be a large document; 1 or 2 pages is typically enough to get your message across. Here is a common format you can use for your case studies:
The Situation – a description of the business, where they are, what is going on in their industry, and their goals.
The Problem – the specific challenges you are helping them to solve and/or the aspirations you are helping them achieve.
Your Solution – the combination of products and services you are proposing to help them resolve the problem stated above.
The Result – what life looks like after working with you.
As you can see, this format looks very similar to a proposal. Even if you don’t create formal proposals, you having these conversations, right? You define the problem, propose one or more alternate solutions, and specify the results the customer can expect to enjoy once your solution has been implemented.
The main difference between the proposal and the case study is that life goes on in between. Other problems arise, additional opportunities appear, we may need to adjust our solution, and the end results may be better (or worse) than originally expected.
But if you take the time to create a first draft of your case study at proposal time (or at least organize your notes) you can transform the process of creating case studies from a daunting writing project into a brief review and update session.
Other Benefits
Waiting until a project is complete to create case studies may be robbing you of opportunities to leverage this powerful communication tool. Here are a few ways you can leverage case studies in your business when you start working on them early in your sales process.
Using the case study format can be a powerful way to present your proposal. It provides a concise way of demonstrating to the prospect that you understand their situation, that you are on the same page, and you are going to help them accomplish their goals.
You can use your draft case study to brief other team members assigned to the project who were not part of the proposal process.
Having your notes organized in the case study format makes it easier to outsource or delegate the writing of actual case study.
Last, but not least, the case study can serve as the outline or agenda for your results review meeting – a powerful tool for maintaining customer satisfaction, identifying opportunities for additional business (cross selling, up selling, etc.) and obtaining testimonials and referrals.
