The Sales Tool Your Prospects Can't Resist

Customer testimonials can be an extremely high-impact way to influence prospects.

Customer success stories are among the most popular sales tools in use in The Valley today. For good reason. "The currency of human contact is stories," said sales trainer Patricia Fripp at one of her recent seminars. "People can resist a sales presentation, but they can't resist a story, especially when your sales example includes characters with problems or situations they can relate to."

Customer success stories that give "the best of the best" examples of what you do from your customer's point of view:

• Help you build confidence in your services
• Provide a neutral, third-party perspective
• Connect with your prospects
• Make you and your organization more likeable.

What's in It for the Customer?
To persuade customers to allow you to use their stories in your sales materials, you need to understand the benefits they gain from helping you. The main reason customers agree to participate in testimonials is that they benefit from a free piece of collateral by a professional writer. They can use the piece to enhance their own visibility, both to their own senior management and outside the company.

Strong Content
Most customer testimonials contain variations on the following content:

• The business problem that customers faced that caused them to consider your solution
• The system they had in place previously and why it wasn't working The reason the customer chose your company's solution
• A description of the solution
• A description of the implementation process
• Qualitative results from using the solution such as better customer service, a more streamlined fulfillment process, or faster time to market
• Quantitative results, including ROI, improved productivity, increased sales, and reduced costs.

Tips
When producing a customer story, you'll often speak to the technical person who specified and implemented the solution. That person often wants to talk about the features of the new system. But in many cases, business executives or line managers drive the purchase of new technology. So successful testimonials must address business concerns.

For example, in a recent customer story that Goldberg Communications wrote, our technical contact said that the three reasons his company purchased our client's product were to:

1. Update the mainframe system.
2. Move to a modern client/server architecture.
3. Achieve Year 2000 compliance.

Quantifiable results from customers are the most difficult to obtain, yet most rewarding additions to customer stories. Business buyers understand business results. Saying that a customer was able to reduce costs by 50 percent by using your product will speak to these business buyers in a language that is easy to understand and difficult to refute.

Presenting to Busy Readers
Of course, the only people who will read your customer success story word for word will be prospects who are fairly far along in the buying cycle. To get your messages across to other busy prospects, include a box briefly summarizing the highlights of your customer's story - in particular, the customer's business problem, the solution you provided, and the qualitative and quantitative results the customer achieved.

Customer testimonials are among your most credible and effective sales tools. To make the most of this invaluable resource, make sure that your stories stress business challenges and results. Then summarize your story so busy readers will get the main messages at a glance.