Success stories

What a success story is

A success story is a one-page account of what it was like for one client to work with you, written warmly and read in about a minute. It says who they are, what was going on, what was done and what is true now, and it carries a quote or two in their own words. It has no results table and it promises no figure.

It is not a sales case study. A case study is built around approved numbers and reads like evidence, which is exactly what some buyers want and exactly what some clients will not supply. A success story is built around a person and reads like a recommendation passed on by someone who was there.

It is also not the customer story page on your website, which is written for a stranger arriving with nobody to frame it and has to carry all the context itself. A success story assumes a salesperson is already in the conversation, which is why it can be this short.

When a success story is the right call

The clearest case, and much the most common, is the client who refuses attribution of figures. They are happy, they will be named, they will say kind things on the record, and they will not let a number appear beside their name. Write a case study anyway and you get one with a hole where the proof should be. A success story has no hole, because it never promised to fill one.

The second case is the client who dislikes the format. Some people read a draft with subheadings and a results box and feel they have been turned into an advertisement. The same person will approve two warm paragraphs the afternoon you send them.

The third is time. This needs a twenty-minute conversation rather than a full interview and a legal review, so a firm with nothing on file can have three inside a fortnight.

You do not need one if the client will hand over numbers and sign them off. Take the numbers and buy the case study, because a buyer late in a considered sale will ask for them. You also do not need one if the client will give you a sentence but not a conversation. That is work on the quote itself, and it costs less.

What goes in it

Four parts, in this order, and nothing else. The discipline is what keeps it to a page.

• Who they are, in one sentence. The trade, the size, the place. Enough for a reader to decide whether this client resembles them.
• What was going on. The situation that made them call, described the way they described it, including the part they were embarrassed about if they will keep it in.
• What was done. Plainly and briefly. Dates and quantities where they are not sensitive, because a specific detail carries a story that an adjective cannot.
• What is true now. The change, stated in words a sceptic could check with the client: what stopped happening, what the staff no longer do. Never a figure the client has not approved, and never one invented to fill the space.

Quotes run through the piece rather than sitting in a box at the end, and the client approves the exact wording before anyone sees it.

What you get

The story. Three hundred to four hundred and fifty words on one page, as an editable document and a PDF set to your template, or plain if you have none. Written to be attached to an email without a covering explanation.

The three-sentence version. The same story compressed for a slide, a proposal appendix, or a note to a buyer who has just asked whether you have done this before.

The approval. The client's written sign-off on the exact text, dated and kept with the file, so nobody two years from now is guessing what was agreed.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Saskatoon firm that installs and maintains fire alarm systems wants proof it can hold a multi-site contract. Its best reference is a rural school division with eleven schools, and the division will not release a dollar figure or a downtime number of any kind.

The conversation with the facilities manager runs twenty-two minutes. She describes inheriting a system where nobody could say which panels had been serviced, a term that began with two schools failing an inspection item, and the binder the firm produced in its first month listing every device in every building. The story is 390 words and ends on what is true now: she knows before an inspector arrives what the answer will be, and she has stopped keeping her own spreadsheet. The division's lawyer approves it in two days, because there is no number in it to argue about. The firm attaches it to the next three bids.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Which client, what the story is, and whether a case study would serve you better. No charge, and I will say so if it would.
2. A fixed price in writing. One story or a set, with the number agreed before anything starts.
3. The introduction. You ask the client. They get a short paragraph from me saying what the conversation covers and what they will approve.
4. The conversation. Twenty minutes, recorded if they are comfortable with it. Where a client has no time at all, I work from your notes and send the draft straight to them.
5. The draft. Two to three working days after the call. You check the facts, then it goes to the client.
6. Approval and delivery. Their changes are made without argument, then the page, the short version and the signed approval.

Seven to ten working days per story is usual, and most of that is waiting on the client. A set of three or four runs in parallel and takes about the same.

What it costs

Success stories are not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so each is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. They cost less than a case study, because the conversation is shorter and nothing has to be verified with a finance department. What moves the number is how many there are, whether I speak to the client or work from your notes, and whether sign-off is a reply or a legal review. The figure is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Most firms put them to work in three places: one on the sheet that gets forwarded to the budget holder, one or two summarised in the slides used in meetings, and, where a client later agrees to release figures, the same material rebuilt as the fuller document with numbers in it rather than started again. If nobody is lined up to talk to, a set of recorded conversations supplies the next batch. None of that is assumed. A success story is a complete piece of work, and one is a sensible thing to buy on its own.