How to write case studies the sales team can use in a meeting

Your salesperson is in a meeting and the buyer asks, "Has anyone like us done this?" A case study the salesperson can use answers in a minute, out loud, with no paper. It has three parts: the customer's problem, what you did, and what changed. It also rests on a permission and a set of facts the customer has checked. So write it from a twenty-minute interview, not from memory, and keep it to one page.

Why do case studies stay in the folder?

They were written for the website, in the supplier's voice, with a headline about "transforming" something. A salesperson cannot read that aloud and a purchase manager does not believe it. So the page sits unused, and the seller tells the story from memory with the numbers wrong.

Hand the page to a seller and ask them to tell it back in a minute without looking. If they cannot, rewrite the page until they can. The posts on writing a case study a buyer believes and asking a customer for one cover the website version. This one is about the page the sales team carries.

What do you ask in the interview?

Twenty minutes, in this order, with the phone recording only if the customer agrees.

1. What was happening before we started? (ask for the moment it hurt)
2. What had you tried?
3. What did we do first, and then?
4. What can you do now that you could not before?
5. Is there a figure from your own records? Which?
6. May we use your name, town and figures? Who else must agree?

Question five is the one that protects you. If the customer has no figure, you write what a person can now do, and you never fill the gap with an estimate of your own.

What must be settled before anything is written?

Permission and facts come first, because a case study with a disputed number is worse than none. Note which of the name, logo, town and figures the customer allowed, and who agreed. A WhatsApp message from the right person is a start. The customer should read the draft and reply, since silence is not approval. Put the approval date on the master copy. If the customer is sold or changes hands you may need to withdraw it.

Keep one line per case in a register next to the pages, so a seller knows which ones they may show and to whom: case, name allowed, figures allowed, approved by, date, buyer type.

How do you write the page?

Three short parts. Resist a fourth.

The problem, in the customer's words. One or two sentences, ideally a quote from the interview.

The work, in plain steps. What you actually did, in order, naming documents and people. Leave out whatever any supplier would say.

What changed. One or two facts the customer confirmed, such as a count, a date or a process that now exists.

Here is the same paragraph before and after.

Before: Our client faced challenges in managing storage needs and we
        delivered a transformative solution.
After:  "The old tank turned green by April and the society kept
        calling me." We replaced it with a covered tank and a lid
        that locks, and the committee now cleans it twice a year.

The second version can be said aloud. Close the page with one line naming the type of customer and the town, so the reader can judge likeness.

One case for every buyer, or one for each?

Imagine a maker of fibre-reinforced plastic water tanks in Kottayam. This case is invented to show the process. Its one case study was about a large resort, in glowing language, and its salespeople used it with housing society secretaries, who shrugged. It was not their world.

The owner interviews a society secretary for twenty minutes. The problem, in the secretary's words, is algae in the old tank each summer and a stream of complaints from residents. The work, as four steps, includes one that matters: a visit to measure the roof access before the tank is ordered. The secretary reads the draft and corrects a detail about the inlet pipe, and asks that the society's name be dropped, so the page says "a housing society in Kottayam town". There is no figure for the complaints, so the page carries none, and one seller grumbles that a page without a number is weaker. The first buyer to hear it, a society treasurer, asked for a quote for a 5,000-litre tank the same week (invented), so the grumble did not last.

The seller can say it in a minute and ends with a question, "Is that something your committee hears about too?", then waits for the answer instead of filling the silence. The earlier case still exists, but it now goes only to hotel and resort buyers. That is the rule the register enforces: each case goes to the buyer it resembles.

One caution on figures. Never present a customer's result as what a new buyer will get. Say "for this society" or "in their records", so the case reads as one customer's account and not as a promise from you.

When should you not write one?

Skip it when the work is unfinished and the result is a hope. Skip it when the good result came from a one-off event you cannot repeat. Skip it for any customer still unhappy about something, even if that customer said yes. If your trade is regulated, such as health or finance, keep the wording general and check with your own adviser or the regulator before publishing outcomes.

Which case do you write first?

Count your common buyer types and choose the one where you lose most deals. Write one case for that type before touching the others, starting with the customer who likes you best. Ask them for twenty minutes.

The register needs a review date. Look at it twice a year and ask of each case: is the customer still a customer, is the figure still true, and does the buyer type still match who you sell to? A case that fails any of the three comes off the seller's page until it is rechecked. If you want help with the interview and the one-page format, customer case studies is the work, part of how you sell. When you have booked the interview, tell us what you need.