- What I want is, "They helped me go from here to there.
They helped me do this in half the time.
They got me this result in my business."
And there's a way, using your questions,
to get them to make those commitments.
(heavy rock music)
Hey there, how you doing?
Dan Martell here.
Serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm going to share with you
exactly how to create a powerful and compelling
customer case study.
And be sure to stay to the end,
'cause I'm gonna tell you how to download
my specific framework for
not only asking the questions,
but presenting the case studies on your website.
Most people are doing that wrong.
It's going to be awesome.
If you have any concerns of how to ask for the testimonial,
how to create it, all that stuff,
we're going to answer it in this episode,
but let's get into it.
So I have a philosophy when it comes to
marketing in general,
but really, just any time you want to tell people
how great your product is or service is.
And this philosophy called show, don't tell.
I don't know about you, but when it comes to marketing,
a lot of people struggle with like,
"I don't want to come off as braggy,
and I don't want to be show-offy.
And I don't, you know, I don't want to be that guy."
But the truth is is that if people don't know
the kind of results you've gotten for your existing clients
or kind of the work you do,
then they won't know how to honestly assess you
versus your competitor.
And the truth is is if your competitor's out there
and they're making these claims
and they're delivering, you know,
they're creating all these case studies and you're not,
then you're going to be at a disadvantage.
So what I want to share with you is my framework
that I've extracted from back in the day
when I was building my company, Spheric,
and I refused to do any case studies
because I prided myself on my customers' privacy,
to slowly moving into documenting through blog posts
the clients we're working with.
Back then we were working with Proctor and Gamble,
Dole Foods, Johnson and Johnson.
But I still was a little hesitant.
Then I built a company Flowtown, and really in Clarity,
this other company that I built
that was all about taking the experts
and putting them front and centre for everybody else to see,
and then letting my clients tell the story
of how we've impacted their lives,
to today, I have a company called SaaS Academy,
which is the number one SaaS coaching company in the world.
So if you're in the software business, that's what we do.
And in that business, when it comes to case studies,
I literally have hundreds.
And we're talking like clients that we've helped grow
to over a hundred million of revenue,
raise over 400 million in funding.
Like, really big, massive results
that if I just said it, it wouldn't come off as the same
as kind of like as valuable.
Whereas using the customer case study framework
I'm going to teach you,
then all of a sudden it's them saying it.
And there's a very powerful way to do it
to create emotion behind it,
so it's not just facts and data points
and characteristics of their experience,
it's really the results of people just like them
are going to be looking to achieve,
and that's why they're going to choose to work with you.
But let's get into it.
Number one, more like them.
So the first strategy you need to understand
is who you decide to tap on the shoulder and say,
"Hey, I'd love to tell your story.
Would you mind doing a case study?"
Or, "Would you mind getting on a call
and just sharing your story?
And we could record it and then produce something online,
'cause I'm really impressed with what you've done."
Now, choosing that, and I'm going to give you the strategy.
Number one is you want to pick people
that are your best customers.
And the reason why is what you put out
is what you're going to attract.
So if you want to attract other clients
that are great to work with,
that you can create a lot of value for,
that get incredible results working with you
or your product, then your best bet
is to approach those clients, to ask them first.
Because if you go and you just take everybody's case study,
then when I, as a potential new customer,
and I look at like, who you've worked with,
I might see big companies, small companies,
dentists, lawyers, and I'm like,
"Eh, they don't really seem like
they're the right fit for me."
Whereas if you say, "Well, I only want to work with
companies that are between two and five million in revenue
that are in this industry."
And those are your case studies,
you will attract more of those clients.
It sounds simple.
Most people do not follow this rule.
And then they have this kind of like schizophrenic approach
to their case studies on their website,
and it makes it really hard to attract other people
that are your best customers.
So more like them.
Who are your best customers?
Ask those people for the case studies,
because you will attract more like them.
Number two, focus on results.
So I mean, if you've ever asked somebody
to like write a testimonial, write a blurb,
or you've like, done a case study.
And I've done so many.
Hosting events, I always do them at the events.
And oftentimes there's no direction.
You're going to get people that say,
"I really like Dan,
and working with him and his team is really great.
And they were very good to follow up."
Or whatever it is, it's all this like
kind of characteristic aspect of their interactions,
or it's like the details of like
what you offered them, okay?
Those are not things that are gonna move somebody
that's new, that's consuming this,
to decide to work with you.
What will drive somebody to go from sceptic
and full of objections and full of, you know, scepticism
is going to be results, numbers.
Where were they in their life
before they started working with you?
And what has the impact been?
And I know some of you guys are timid, okay?
Maybe you've got a technical background like myself
and you like, your words, you don't want to come off,
you know, asking your clients for too much.
And you're like, what if they didn't get results?
I mean, there's ways to frame the outcomes
and the impact you've had on their business
so that they can talk to percent increases
in total volume or whatever it is for you.
But you need to focus on the numbers.
Do not focus on just the characteristics,
because that will not produce a really powerful case study.
You'll just get a bunch of people saying,
I call these like, you know, fluffy testimonials.
It's like, "I like them.
They're really nice.
I encourage you to work with them."
That's not gonna fly.
What I want is, "They helped me go from here to there.
They helped me do this in half the time.
They got me this result in my business."
Okay?
And there's a way, using your questions,
to get them to make those commitments.
But if you're not getting results
as your case study collection process,
then you're just creating a bunch of information and noise
that's not going to get you the results
that you're looking for.
Number three is seed the agreement.
Okay?
So here's the way I do it.
And you guys feel free to borrow this,
I call it R and D, rob and duplicate,
so you can R and D it for yourself,
is when I start working with a new client,
I put it in the contract.
I put it in the agreement.
If I do these things, you agree to this,
which is to share your story
of the results that you've achieved working
using our system or whatever it is,
so that we can use that in our marketing,
because we'd much rather be spending our time
working with you, getting your results
than doing a bunch of marketing,
and the best way to market for us
is to just tell our client's story, right?
And that's like, literally, that's one of our parts.
We have six core components of our growth flywheel,
and one of them is share our clients' results.
That's why if you go on any of our social media,
from Instagram to Facebook,
to our newsletter, to everywhere.
From conversations with our skill specialists,
even within the programme that we ask and we collect the wins,
we collect the case studies because to me,
I want to inspire.
I want to let a client that I start working with
know that, "Hey, there is a place in the future
where you're not only going to succeed,
but we're going to get to an opportunity
where you're going to share that story
for other people to be inspired by."
And that's just part of the agreement.
So what's cool about is that if you let a new customer know
that you're going to be collecting a case study
in the future, there's two things that happen.
One, they feel like, "Oh, this person's really confident
about the service they're about to deliver,
or the product that they've created."
And number two is there's going to be this,
like, this effort to move forward,
to build something and to get big results
so they have a big story to share,
because they know that's part of the agreement.
So it's kind of like an awesome, like,
"Oh, this person is confident."
So that's great for your customer.
You know, you're confident in delivering the service.
And then the other one is that they go out of their way
to put more time and energy behind the effort
they're giving you in your product, in your service,
so that you have the best case study
for them to share with you.
And I think that's a really cool way.
So I call that seeding the agreement.
In the early conversations, when you're signing the contract
or in your sales conversation, let them know,
"Hey, we're going to do these things.
And when we do those things,
we're going to ask you for this."
We just say we're asking.
And if you agree to that, you're okay to be asked.
You can say no.
Most people don't, but you can say no.
Then we've seeded it,
and we've planted that opportunity for the future ask.
Number four, create an assembly line.
So the best way to create case studies
is not to do it ad hoc,
not do it like every once in a while.
You wait for a customer to say something nice,
and then you say like, "Hey, do you mind if, you know,
we get on a Zoom call and we record it?"
Or whatever, whatever, okay?
The best way to do it is to constantly build a process,
to collect and produce and publish those case studies.
Let me tell you a story about my friend, Danny Iny.
Danny Iny's an online person.
He's, you know, he teaches people a lot of different stuff,
you know, online courses, et cetera.
And essentially they have a process
where they prompt their customers to share wins.
Now, when they get those customer wins shared with them,
they then go for the ask, right,
'cause they seed at the beginning, like I taught you.
And then from that ask, they have a whole SOP,
a standard operating procedure,
with videographers in all the cities
to hire them to go to the office of that client
or wherever they live and to shoot a video testimonial.
Now, I know that might sound really expensive
and you couldn't afford to do this,
but take what they do out of the equation.
Just think of the assembly line.
So they literally sat down and said,
here's the process from A to Z
for prompting, collecting, you know,
getting agreement from your client,
all the way to then publishing it on this page.
Right?
And because of that on a weekly basis,
they're publishing new testimonials.
And they always put them at the top.
That way they're always new.
And as the sales and marketing team are, you know,
going about their work,
they can always reference back to that page,
and there's always new, fresh case studies
for potential prospects and buyers to look at
to decide if it's the right fit for them.
And that's true for each one of their programmes.
They have this SOP set up.
And I just think that is the way you want to think about.
It's how we do it at our company.
We have all these different,
what we call the escalation ladder,
of ways that we can ask our customers,
from simple things like a testimony,
all the way to a really high end micro doc video case study.
But we've got different places where
these case studies are published on a weekly basis,
so they're always replenishing,
they're always staying fresh,
and they're really allowing us to create a better service
to then have bigger impact for our clients
to capture that in a case study, to then tell that,
and it just keeps getting better and better and better.
And that's why we call it the flywheel,
because it keeps growing as you invest in it.
Number five is put it on tape.
So some of you guys might want to have it in an email.
It's an email, you screenshot it.
Maybe it's in your Facebook group, you screenshot it.
Those are all really low friction,
really easy things to do to capture these, you know,
customer case studies.
But to me, that's not really a case study.
If you want to get the best,
schedule a call on Zoom and ask your client
specific questions that get them to share the results,
gets them to share the context,
gets them to share their story
of where were they before they started working with you
and what were their concerns?
And how did your, you know, process overcome that,
or product help them resolve those concerns?
And then what were the results,
you know, the impact that they've received,
you know, using your product or service?
And I think that is the opportunity
to capture that on video, put it on tape.
Use Zoom at the minimum.
If you can do it in person, always recommended.
And then edit it in a way that it's short, tight,
and focused on getting an emotional connection
from the potential buyer,
seeing this case study of somebody just like them
getting a result from your product or service.
And that is the way to do it.
And, and I just think, you know, doing the video,
even if you feel super uncomfortable.
And I get it, it's like, "Oh, I can't even ask,
let alone, like, now I've got to ask them the questions."
The good part is I'm going to tell you
exactly the questions in a second to be asking them.
But my recommendation is you do it on video.
Then from the video, you can transcribe it into a blog post.
You can use it for an email newsletter.
You can use it for social media clips.
But most importantly, you can edit it down
into this tight, you know, 90-second micro doc
of a customer case study
that's really going to get people over the hump,
deal with their objections, and get them to buy.
So quick recap, five strategies to produce
highly compelling customer case studies.
One, more like them.
Pick your best customers.
Two, focus on results.
Three, seed the agreement.
Number four, create an assembly line.
And five, put it on tape.
Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I want to share with you an exclusive resource.
You can click the link below to download it.
It is the customer case study creator.
Not only do I have the strategy
for how to identify and collect
and kind of manage the recruiting process
for your case studies,
I even have the blueprint for how to take the video
and put the copy around the video on your website
the right way, so that you don't mess it up,
because a lot of people don't do it right.
And then I also have the exact questions.
There's four steps to producing
an emotionally compelling customer case studies
with the questions and the scripts
for extracting the results
in the impact and the emotion that you're going to need
to produce something amazing.
So if you liked this video,
be sure to subscribe to my channel.
Click the like button and leave a comment.
Let me know what was the biggest takeaway for you?
And as per usual, I want to challenge you,
live a bigger life and a bigger business,
and I'll see you next Monday.
(heavy rock music)