Putting Customer Success Stories on your website seems like a no-brainer. Testimonials are some of the most powerful pieces of sales literature you can create. Whether you need to educate customers about your products’ features and benefits, or more importantly convince them your product(s) can do what you claim, nothing is more powerful than a Success Story. They offer instant credibility. Arming your sales force with a series of Success Stories, however, is not quite so simple. Here’s a brief outline of how to initiate, conduct, and conclude a Success Story program.

Launching a Success Story program requires setting a goal. For instance, "Our goal is to create four success stories written about each of these three products, with customers selected so that we can highlight features A, B, and C, with at least two stories about customers in Industry D." Budget must be allocated to make it happen and the right people identified. It's important to find an interviewer/writer with a suitable background for your industry. You don't want to try and explain semiconductor lithography tools to someone with an degree in sociology. Neither do your customers.

Executing a Success Story program requires coordination between Sales, Marketing, and Marcom. Sales must generate sufficient candidates&emdash;the names of satisfied customers, particularly ones they have already been using as reference accounts. Typically, this requires the VP or Director of Sales to issue an edict: Every salesman WILL submit the name and phone number of at least two satisfied customers in their region. Without the support and backing of top sales management, a Success Story program will never get off the ground.

Marketing must qualify these "leads," typically by calling them directly. Are they as satisfied as the sales people claim they are? Are they willing to be profiled? Will their management, or PR people "sign off" on a Success Story? If you can’t get approval to "publish" the Success Story, there’s no point in writing it. If marketing wants to highlight a particular feature or product benefit with a Success Story, they need to identify a suitable candidate for that story. Success Stories may also be targeted toward particular industries; i.e. aerospace, medical, consumer electronics, PC’s, etc. Hand a prospect a story about someone in his own industry using your product successfully and you’ve closed a sale.

Even when working with a freelance writer or someone from your PR agency, someone within marketing must "own" the Success Story program and see it to completion. Too many people are involved for an outsider to coordinate all the details and relay all the communication. Without an "owner," Success Story programs will typically generate one or two good stories and then stall out. Or stories will get written, but never published. Don’t expect a standing ovation at the national sales meeting for a dozen well-written success stories languishing on your hard drive.

Next, the interviewer/ writer must contact the candidate. It helps tremendously if the skid has been greased; i.e. the candidate's local salesperson calls them and lets them know to expect the call. The person interviewing the Success Story candidate can’t come into the interview "cold" and expect to get a good story. They must have researched the firm, their business, and be able to start somewhere above "ground zero" with the interviewee. A visit to the interviewee’s website can be enormously helpful as will a call to the sales engineer or factory person who has the most contact with this customer. The interviewer/writer must also know enough about the product, and its applications, to speak intelligently with the customer. A writer without a technical background can be "problematic." "Coming up to speed" will take even a knowledgeable writer a couple of stories. After that, Success Story production can move forward rapidly.

Next is writing the first story. Will the candidate’s name be used, or just their title? Is there anything proprietary about their use of the product that can’t be mentioned? What is their end product or service? Can savings or benefits from their using the product be documented? Once a draft is produced, the candidate must review it, revisions be applied, and ultimately their manager or PR person’s approval sought. Next comes page layout, or HTML-ization. A photo of the customer or their end product is always helpful. The layout must match the style of other sales literature in use, or other material on the website.

How do you conclude a Success Story program? By completing the number of stories originally set as a goal, and putting them on the website or making them available as sales collateral? By framing copies of the finished Success Stories and sending them to the interviewees, along with a $100 gift certificate? The answer is you never do. New products require new stories. Updates to older products also require new stories, to highlight the new features and benefits. Stories can go "stale" when customers change jobs, go out of business, or when products are revamped. While the rate of Success Story production will slow down, a firm will need new Success Stories as long as they are growing and Successful!

Wade H. Nelson is a freelance writer who specializes in writing Success Stories for hi-tech companies. He can be reached at wadenelson@frontier.net