Dan Martell - February 07, 2022


How To Create Case Studies for Your Business


Episode Stats

Length

14 minutes

Words per Minute

197.45047

Word Count

2,850

Sentence Count

141


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.080 What I want is they helped me go from here to there.
00:00:03.240 They helped me do this in half the time.
00:00:05.600 They got me this result in my business.
00:00:08.000 And there's a way using your questions
00:00:10.160 to get them to make those commitments.
00:00:24.760 Hey there, how you doing?
00:00:25.600 Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor,
00:00:27.280 and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:28.440 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
00:00:30.280 exactly how to create a powerful
00:00:33.020 and compelling customer case study.
00:00:35.800 And be sure to stay at the end
00:00:36.840 because I'm gonna tell you how to download
00:00:37.960 my specific framework for not only asking the questions,
00:00:42.300 but presenting the case studies on your website.
00:00:45.040 Most people are doing that wrong.
00:00:46.860 It's gonna be awesome if you have any concerns
00:00:49.440 of how to ask for the testimonial, how to create it,
00:00:52.380 all that stuff, we're gonna answer it in this episode,
00:00:54.620 but let's get into it.
00:00:55.800 So I have a philosophy when it comes to marketing in general,
00:00:59.300 but really just anytime you wanna tell people
00:01:01.680 how great your product is or services,
00:01:03.560 and this philosophy called show, don't tell.
00:01:06.720 I don't know about you, but when it comes to marketing,
00:01:08.860 a lot of people struggle with like,
00:01:10.240 I don't wanna come off as braggy
00:01:11.780 and I don't wanna be show-offy
00:01:13.320 and I don't wanna be that guy.
00:01:16.640 But the truth is, is that if people don't know
00:01:18.760 the kind of results you've gotten
00:01:20.400 for your existing clients or kind of the work you do,
00:01:23.040 then they won't know how to honestly assess you
00:01:25.720 versus your competitor.
00:01:26.840 And the truth is, is if your competitor's out there
00:01:28.820 and they're making these claims and they're delivering,
00:01:32.260 they're creating all these case studies and you're not,
00:01:34.900 then you're gonna be at a disadvantage.
00:01:36.360 So what I wanna share with you is my framework
00:01:39.960 that I've extracted from back in the day
00:01:42.040 when I was building my company Spheric
00:01:43.440 and I refused to do any case studies
00:01:45.780 because I prided myself on my customer's privacy
00:01:48.480 to slowly moving into documenting through blog posts,
00:01:52.680 the clients we're working with back then
00:01:54.220 working with Procter & Gamble,
00:01:55.460 Dole Foods, Johnson & Johnson,
00:01:56.760 but I still was a little hesitant.
00:01:58.380 Then I built a company, Flowtown,
00:02:00.900 and really in clarity, this other company I built
00:02:04.100 that was all about taking the experts
00:02:07.100 and putting them front and center
00:02:09.020 for everybody else to see,
00:02:10.260 and then letting my clients tell the story
00:02:13.340 of how we've impacted their lives.
00:02:15.420 To today, I have a company called SaaS Academy,
00:02:18.140 which is the number one SaaS coaching company in the world.
00:02:21.880 So if you're in the software business,
00:02:23.660 That's what we do.
00:02:24.660 And in that business, when it comes to case studies,
00:02:26.920 I literally have hundreds.
00:02:28.560 And we're talking like clients that we've helped grow
00:02:31.020 to over a hundred million in revenue,
00:02:32.760 raise over 400 million in funding,
00:02:34.940 like really big, massive results that if I just said it,
00:02:39.420 it wouldn't come off as the same,
00:02:40.840 as kind of like as valuable.
00:02:43.040 Whereas using the customer case study framework
00:02:45.740 I'm gonna teach you,
00:02:46.740 then all of a sudden it's them saying it.
00:02:48.840 And there's a very powerful way to do it,
00:02:51.480 to create a motion behind it.
00:02:52.920 So it's not just facts and data points
00:02:55.900 and characteristics of their experience.
00:02:57.700 It's really the results that other people just like them
00:03:00.660 are gonna be looking to achieve.
00:03:01.940 And that's why they're gonna choose to work with you.
00:03:04.040 But let's get into it.
00:03:05.200 Number one, more like them.
00:03:07.420 So the first strategy you need to understand
00:03:09.200 is who you decide to tap on the shoulder and say,
00:03:12.260 hey, I'd love to tell your story.
00:03:15.180 Would you mind doing a case study?
00:03:16.620 Or would you mind getting on a call
00:03:18.300 and just sharing your story and we could record it
00:03:19.980 and then produce something online?
00:03:21.760 because I'm really impressed with what you've done.
00:03:23.840 Now, choosing that, and I'm gonna give you the strategy,
00:03:26.780 number one is you wanna pick people
00:03:28.680 that are your best customers.
00:03:30.760 And the reason why is what you put out
00:03:34.120 is what you're gonna attract.
00:03:35.580 So if you want to attract other clients
00:03:38.560 that are great to work with,
00:03:41.320 that you can create a lot of value for,
00:03:42.960 that get incredible results working with you
00:03:45.020 or your product, then your best bet
00:03:47.080 is to approach those clients to ask them first.
00:03:50.300 because if you go and you just take everybody's case study,
00:03:53.620 then when I, as a potential new customer,
00:03:55.800 I look at like who you've worked with,
00:03:57.600 I might see big companies, small companies,
00:03:59.900 dentists, lawyers, and I'm like, eh,
00:04:02.320 they don't really seem like they're the right fit for me.
00:04:04.760 Whereas if you say, well, I only wanna work with companies
00:04:07.640 who are between two and five million in revenue
00:04:09.460 that are in this industry, and those are your case studies,
00:04:12.300 you will attract more of those clients.
00:04:14.620 It sounds simple, most people do not follow this rule.
00:04:18.760 And then they have this kind of like schizophrenic approach
00:04:22.200 to their case studies on their website.
00:04:23.780 And it makes it really hard to attract other people
00:04:26.260 that are your best customers.
00:04:27.500 So more like them.
00:04:29.100 Who are your best customers?
00:04:30.540 Ask those people for the case studies
00:04:32.380 because you will attract more like them.
00:04:34.300 Number two, focus on results.
00:04:36.140 So, I mean, if you've ever asked somebody
00:04:38.440 to like write a testimonial, write a blurb,
00:04:40.780 or you've like done a case study.
00:04:42.760 And I've done so many hosting events.
00:04:44.640 I always do them at the events.
00:04:45.880 And oftentimes there's no direction.
00:04:48.220 You're gonna get people that say, I really liked Dan
00:04:51.200 and working with him and his team is really great.
00:04:54.140 And they were very good to follow up or whatever it is.
00:05:00.060 It's all this like kind of characteristic aspect
00:05:02.820 of their interactions or it's like the details
00:05:05.840 of like what you offered them, okay?
00:05:08.480 Those are not things that are gonna move somebody
00:05:11.980 that's new, that's consuming this to decide to work with you.
00:05:16.040 What will drive somebody to go from skeptic
00:05:19.000 and full of objections and full of skepticism
00:05:24.540 is going to be results, numbers.
00:05:27.740 Where were they in their life
00:05:29.300 before they started working with you?
00:05:30.860 And what has the impact been?
00:05:33.660 And I know some of you guys are timid, okay?
00:05:36.240 Maybe you've got a technical background like myself
00:05:38.980 and you're worried you don't wanna come off
00:05:41.780 asking your clients for too much.
00:05:43.400 And you're like, what if they didn't get results?
00:05:45.980 I mean, there's ways to frame the outcomes
00:05:48.240 and the impact you've had on their business
00:05:50.120 so that they can talk to percent increases in total volume
00:05:54.140 or whatever it is for you,
00:05:55.640 but you need to focus on the numbers.
00:05:57.980 Do not focus on just the characteristics
00:06:00.080 because that will not produce a really powerful case study.
00:06:05.520 You'll just get a bunch of people saying,
00:06:07.680 I call these like, you know, fluffy testimonials.
00:06:10.760 It's like, I like them.
00:06:11.720 They're really nice.
00:06:12.800 I encourage you to work with them.
00:06:14.420 Yeah, that's not gonna fly.
00:06:15.860 What I want is they helped me go from here to there.
00:06:18.880 They helped me do this in half the time.
00:06:21.320 They got me this result in my business, okay?
00:06:24.100 And there's a way using your questions
00:06:26.300 to get them to make those commitments.
00:06:28.060 But if you're not getting results
00:06:29.680 as your case study collection process,
00:06:32.500 then you're just creating a bunch of information and noise.
00:06:35.500 It's not gonna get you the results that you're looking for.
00:06:37.480 Number three is seed the agreement, okay?
00:06:40.320 So here's the way I do it.
00:06:41.960 And you guys feel free to borrow this.
00:06:43.720 I call it R&D, rob and duplicate.
00:06:45.920 So you can R&D it for yourself
00:06:47.880 is when I start working with a new client,
00:06:50.300 I put it in the contract.
00:06:52.320 I put it in the agreement.
00:06:53.940 If I do these things, you agree to this,
00:06:57.520 which is to share your story of the results
00:07:01.060 that you've achieved working using our system
00:07:02.920 or whatever it is so that we can use that in our marketing
00:07:05.980 because we'd much rather be spending our time
00:07:08.280 working with you, getting your results
00:07:09.760 than doing a bunch of marketing.
00:07:11.060 And the best way to market for us
00:07:12.180 is to just tell our client's story, right?
00:07:14.920 And that's like, literally, that's one of our parts.
00:07:17.200 We have six core components of our growth flywheel.
00:07:20.240 And one of them is share our client's results.
00:07:23.000 That's why if you go on any of our social media
00:07:25.080 from Instagram to Facebook, to our newsletter,
00:07:28.220 to everywhere, from conversations with our scale specialists,
00:07:32.980 even within the program that we ask
00:07:37.440 and we collect the wins, we collect the case studies,
00:07:40.180 because to me, I wanna inspire.
00:07:43.000 I want to let a client that I start working with
00:07:46.940 know that, hey, there is a place in the future
00:07:49.140 where you're not only gonna succeed,
00:07:50.980 but we're gonna get to an opportunity
00:07:52.500 where you're gonna share that story
00:07:54.120 for other people to be inspired by.
00:07:56.520 And that's just part of the agreement.
00:07:58.020 So what's cool about it is that
00:07:59.100 if you let a new customer know
00:08:00.600 that you're gonna be collecting a case study in the future,
00:08:04.260 there's two things that happen.
00:08:05.300 One, they feel like, oh, this person's really confident
00:08:08.000 about the service they're about to deliver
00:08:09.400 or the product that they've created.
00:08:11.340 And number two is there's gonna be this like,
00:08:14.120 this effort to move forward to build something
00:08:17.640 and to get big results so they have a big story to share
00:08:21.100 because they know that's part of the agreement.
00:08:23.400 So it's kind of like an awesome like,
00:08:25.400 oh, this person is confident,
00:08:26.720 so that's great for your customer.
00:08:28.100 You know, you're confident delivering the service.
00:08:30.600 And then the other one is that they go out of their way
00:08:33.500 to put more time, energy behind the effort
00:08:36.580 they're giving you in your product,
00:08:38.420 in your service so that you have the best case study
00:08:41.320 for them to share with you.
00:08:43.400 And I think that's a really cool way.
00:08:44.740 So I call that seeding the agreement
00:08:45.940 in the early conversations
00:08:47.240 when you're signing the contract
00:08:48.300 or in your sales conversation, let them know,
00:08:50.660 hey, we're gonna do these things.
00:08:52.020 And when we do those things,
00:08:52.920 we're gonna ask you for this.
00:08:55.200 We're just saying we're asking.
00:08:56.420 And if you agree to that, you're okay to be asked.
00:08:58.340 You can say no.
00:08:59.460 Most people don't, but you can say no.
00:09:01.940 Then we've seeded it
00:09:03.280 and we've planted that opportunity for the future ask.
00:09:06.440 Number four, create an assembly line.
00:09:08.940 So the best way to create case studies
00:09:13.280 is not to do it ad hoc,
00:09:14.700 not do it like every once in a while,
00:09:16.520 you wait for a customer to say something nice
00:09:18.440 and then you say like, hey, do you mind if, you know,
00:09:20.740 we get on a Zoom call and we record it
00:09:22.760 or whatever, whatever, okay?
00:09:23.980 The best way to do it is to constantly build a process
00:09:27.220 to collect and produce and publish those case studies.
00:09:31.240 Let me tell you a story about my friend, Danny Inney.
00:09:33.280 Danny Inney's an online person.
00:09:35.520 He's, you know, he teaches people a lot of different stuff,
00:09:37.760 you know, online courses, et cetera.
00:09:39.260 And essentially they have a process
00:09:41.120 where they prompt their customers to share wins.
00:09:44.260 Now, when they get those customer wins shared with them,
00:09:47.540 they then go for the ask, right?
00:09:49.880 Cause they see it at the beginning, like I taught you.
00:09:51.960 And then from that ask, they have a whole SOP,
00:09:55.360 a standard operating procedure with videographers
00:09:58.800 in all the cities to hire them to go to the office
00:10:02.980 of that client or wherever they live
00:10:05.300 and to shoot a video testimonial.
00:10:07.840 Now, I know that might sound really expensive
00:10:10.300 and you couldn't afford to do this,
00:10:11.800 but take the, what they do out of the equation.
00:10:14.860 Just think of the assembly line.
00:10:16.480 So they literally sat down and said,
00:10:18.400 here's the process from A to Z for prompting, collecting,
00:10:23.300 you know, getting agreement from your client
00:10:25.240 all the way to then publishing it on this page, right?
00:10:28.440 And because of that, on a weekly basis,
00:10:30.480 they're publishing new testimonials
00:10:32.620 and they always put them at the top.
00:10:34.080 That way they're always new.
00:10:35.680 And as the sales and marketing team
00:10:38.100 are going about their work,
00:10:39.620 they can always reference back to that page.
00:10:41.280 And there's always new, fresh case studies
00:10:43.900 for potential prospects and buyers to look at,
00:10:46.420 to decide if it's the right fit for them.
00:10:48.900 And that's true for each one of their programs,
00:10:51.040 they have this SOP set up.
00:10:52.880 And I just think that is the way you wanna think about it.
00:10:55.760 It's how we do it at our company.
00:10:56.880 We have all these different,
00:10:58.420 what we call the escalation ladder of ways
00:11:01.000 that we can ask our customers from simple things
00:11:03.640 like a testimony all the way to a really high-end micro doc video case study. But we've got
00:11:10.680 different places where these case studies are published on a weekly basis. So they're always
00:11:15.260 replenishing. They're always staying fresh. And they're really allowing us to create a better
00:11:19.760 service to then have bigger impact for our clients to capture that in a case study to then tell that
00:11:24.560 and it just keeps getting better and better and better. And that's why we call it the flywheel
00:11:27.560 because it keeps growing as you invest in it.
00:11:31.100 Number five is put it on tape.
00:11:33.560 So some of you guys might wanna have it in an email.
00:11:35.920 It's an email, you screenshot it.
00:11:37.780 Maybe it's in your Facebook group, you screenshot it.
00:11:40.520 Those are all really low friction,
00:11:42.900 really easy things to do to capture these
00:11:44.900 customer case studies.
00:11:46.420 But to me, that's not really a case study.
00:11:48.100 If you wanna get the best, schedule a call on Zoom
00:11:51.420 and ask your clients specific questions
00:11:53.840 that get them to share the results,
00:11:55.820 gets them to share the context,
00:11:57.240 gets them to share their story of where were they
00:12:01.020 before they started working with you
00:12:02.460 and what were their concerns
00:12:04.860 and how did your process overcome that
00:12:08.460 or product help them resolve those concerns
00:12:10.480 and then what were the results,
00:12:12.420 the impact that they've received
00:12:14.780 using your product or service.
00:12:15.960 And I think that is the opportunity
00:12:18.400 to capture that on video, put it on tape,
00:12:21.060 use Zoom at the minimum.
00:12:22.500 If you can do it in person, always recommended
00:12:25.040 and then edit it in a way that it's short, tight,
00:12:27.940 and focused on getting an emotional connection
00:12:31.340 from the potential buyer,
00:12:32.520 seeing this case study of somebody just like them
00:12:35.800 getting a result from your product or service.
00:12:38.080 And that is the way to do it.
00:12:41.040 And I just think, you know, doing the video,
00:12:43.520 even if you feel super uncomfortable, and I get it,
00:12:45.840 it's like, oh, I can't even ask,
00:12:48.340 let alone like, now I gotta ask them the questions.
00:12:50.500 The good part is I'm gonna tell you exactly the questions
00:12:53.060 in a second to be asking them.
00:12:54.640 But my recommendation is you do it on video.
00:12:58.860 Then from the video, you can transcribe it into a blog post.
00:13:01.280 You can use it for an email newsletter.
00:13:02.840 You can use it for social media clips.
00:13:04.740 But most importantly, you can edit it down
00:13:06.800 into this tight, you know, 90-second micro-doc
00:13:09.860 of a customer case study
00:13:11.240 that's really gonna get people over the hump,
00:13:13.460 deal with their objections, and get them to buy.
00:13:15.380 So quick recap, five strategies
00:13:17.100 to produce highly compelling customer case studies.
00:13:19.840 One, more like them.
00:13:21.220 Pick your best customers.
00:13:22.520 Two, focus on results.
00:13:24.400 Three, seed the agreement.
00:13:26.420 Number four, create an assembly line.
00:13:28.760 And five, put it on tape.
00:13:32.060 Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
00:13:33.860 I wanna share with you an exclusive resource.
00:13:35.620 You can click the link below to download it.
00:13:37.840 It is the Customer Case Study Creator.
00:13:40.080 Not only do I have the strategy
00:13:43.020 for how to identify and collect
00:13:45.000 and kind of manage the recruiting process
00:13:47.000 for your case studies,
00:13:47.800 I even have the blueprint for how to take the video
00:13:51.780 and put the copy around the video on your website
00:13:54.560 the right way so that you don't mess it up
00:13:56.540 because a lot of people don't do it right.
00:13:58.760 And then I also have the exact questions.
00:14:01.120 There's four steps to producing
00:14:03.080 an emotionally compelling customer case studies
00:14:05.780 with the questions and the scripts
00:14:07.680 for extracting the results and the impact
00:14:10.620 and the emotion that you're gonna need
00:14:11.920 to produce something amazing.
00:14:14.100 So if you liked this video,
00:14:15.400 be sure to subscribe to my channel,
00:14:17.180 click the like button and leave a comment.
00:14:18.980 Let me know what was the biggest takeaway for you
00:14:21.200 And as for usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life
00:14:24.160 and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.