Before-and-after narratives

What a before-and-after narrative is

A before-and-after narrative is a short account of one client in exactly three parts: the state they were in, the state they are in now, and what moved them from one to the other. Ninety to a hundred and fifty words. No headings inside it, no results box, no preamble about how delighted everyone was.

The structure is strict on purpose. Three parts can be held in the head, said aloud without notes, dropped into a proposal or set on a slide. A longer format cannot do any of that, which is why most businesses own good proof they never use.

It is not a case study, which documents one engagement in full with approved figures and a written sign-off, and it is not a success story, which is warmer, longer and written to be read rather than repeated. A before-and-after narrative is the compressed form. Businesses that have a case study often want ten of these as well, because the case study cannot go on a slide.

When you need one

You need a set when your proof exists but nobody can lay hands on it. The owner tells four good stories in a meeting and none of them are written down, so the salesperson who was not in that meeting tells none of them.

You need them when the same argument has to appear in several places at once. A deck, a proposal, a leave-behind and the pages that describe what you sell all want the same story at different lengths, and rewriting it four times is how four different versions end up in circulation.

You do not need this if you have one client, one story and a buyer who wants the whole thing with numbers attached. Buy the case study. You also do not need it if what you actually have is a warm quote and no engagement to describe; that is work on the quote itself, and it costs far less than a set of narratives.

The three parts

Every narrative in the set has the same three parts in the same order, and the order is not negotiable.

• The state they were in. Concrete and unflattering, with the detail that makes it real: the spreadsheet three people maintained separately, the inspection failed twice, the four weeks it took to answer a quote. Not “they faced challenges”.
• The state they are in now. The same things as they stand today. The test is that the client would read it and agree without qualification. An approved figure goes here; where none is approved, the change is described in checkable words instead.
• What moved them. The part everybody leaves out, and the part that makes the narrative persuasive rather than a boast. What was done, what decision it required, and what it cost them in effort. A reader believes the after only as far as the middle is plausible.

Nothing else goes in. No adjectives about the relationship, no closing line about a partnership, no mention of the industry award. The discipline is the product.

What you get

The set. Six to ten narratives, one per client, in a single editable file, each under the client's name or a description where they are not to be named. Ordered so a salesperson can find the one that matches the buyer in front of them.

A one-line version of each. The whole narrative compressed to a sentence, for a slide, a subject line or the moment somebody is asked at a trade show what the business does.

The source note. Where each fact came from, who confirmed it and on what date, plus a plain statement of which narratives may name the client and which may not. A narrative naming a client who has not agreed to it does not leave my desk.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Calgary firm that provides outsourced IT support to dental and veterinary practices has one case study, four years old, and a founder who tells the same three stories in every meeting. It wants proof it can hand to two new salespeople.

Nine clients are reviewed and seven produce a usable narrative. One runs like this. Before: a four-site practice where each site had a server in a cupboard, backups were a monthly task nobody owned, and a failed drive had cost a day of appointments. Now: one system, backups verified every morning, and the office manager has not thought about a server in two years. What moved them: the practice manager agreed to a two-weekend migration in the quietest month, and accepted a short list of software that could not come across. That last clause is the one the founder always left out, and it is the one that makes new buyers relax, because it says the move had a cost and was still worth it. The seven go on slide four of the deck as three lines each, and into the proposal template in full.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which clients, what you can say about each, and where the narratives are going to be used. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of narratives agreed before anything starts.
3. The material. You send what exists: project notes, invoices, old emails, an hour of your own recollection on a recorded call. Where a client should be spoken to directly, I say so and quote that separately.
4. The drafts. Within five to eight working days. You read them for accuracy and mark anything you would not be comfortable being asked about.
5. Client confirmation. Any narrative that names a client, or quotes them, goes to that client for written agreement. Nothing named is delivered without it.
6. Delivery. The set, the one-line versions and the source note, in one file.

Two weeks is typical for a set of six to ten, longer where clients have to be asked for permission.

What it costs

These are not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so a set is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. What moves the number is how many there are, whether the facts exist in writing or have to be drawn out of you, and whether clients must be approached for naming rights. Per story it costs far less than a case study, which is the point: this is the format for covering many clients quickly.

What happens next

A set of narratives usually goes straight into the material that was waiting for it: the slides used in meetings and the proposal you stop rewriting each time. Where one client stands out, the same facts justify the full document with approved numbers. And a firm that keeps finding it has nothing on file for recent work tends to book conversations with its customers once or twice a year, which keeps the set growing. None of that is assumed. The set is a complete piece of work and is useful on the day it arrives.