Once you know the story you want to tell, you need the customer who’s going to help you tell it.
Hopefully, a few customers instantly come to mind.
But if not, I’ll give you a simple way to identify which customers to reach out to and how to reach out to them.
Defining your case study candidate selection criteria
Your story idea should include a use case(s), a quantifiable result(s), and a specific feature or product capability.
In other words, it should define (at least): what your customer did, how they did it, and what the result was.
This is all the information you need to identify a customer to tell that story.
Then the work begins: figuring out which customers meet the use case, result, and feature criteria, and are willing to be involved.
Finding customer story candidates
If it’s not immediately apparent who meets your criteria, you need to assess whether candidates will tell the story you want them to.
The two simplest ways to do this without bugging your customer are to interview the customer’s main point of contact or audit internal data like your CRM, call transcripts, support tickets, etc.
If that fails, here are two other, slightly more invasive options:
- Request a testimonial on the feature or use case of your product that you want to highlight in your story. If the testimonial is positive and relevant, that’s a green light to inquire further.
- Survey candidates or ask them during a regular check-in about the results they’re seeing from the feature or use case of your product that you want to highlight. If the feedback is positive, you’ve got a candidate.
Track all your potential story candidates
To keep track of the customers you plan to reach out to, grab a copy of my Customer Story Sheet and add them to the tab called “Customer List” in your Customer Story Sheet.
Feel free to customize the information you add there but make sure to include characteristics like the:
- The rationale for choosing them
- Results they’ve achieved (if available)
- Uses cases relevant to their situation (if known)
- Industry
- Company size
Doing this will help track, define, and refine the criteria you use for identifying future case study candidates so you and your team can get aligned on what makes a good candidate.
After you’ve found a candidate who can tell your story, it’s time to find out if they’re willing. And fortunately for you, I have a prompt that’ll help you put together a customized interview request with 80% less work.
How to ask for a case study interview
The key is to make it as easy as possible for your customer to determine why they should participate and what’s required of them.
To do this: Establish context → Explain the commitment → Provide an incentive → Define the next step.
Here are the questions your email should answer:
1. What is your goal for sharing this customer’s story?
This could include things like: showcasing our customers’ successes, highlighting an interesting use case, or learning from our customers and educating others.
Sharing this information helps your customer get a sense of what you want to talk about without overloading them.
2. Why is this customer a good fit? How does their story fit in with your goals?
This should be specific (and true) to the interviewee. Perhaps they achieved some notable level of success or they use your product in an innovative way. Mention that and show them how it’s relevant to why you’re doing these stories.
3. What are the specific elements of this customer’s story that you want to capture?
Give them a preview of what you want to talk about but don’t overload them with details.
4. What is required of the customer to participate?
At a high-level, explain what’s involved in the process. Avoid overloading with detail. You can explain more logistics in a follow-up email or call once the prospect agrees to take the first step.
5. How will participating benefit the customer?
A few ideas:
- Networking: We’ll be sharing your success in sales conversations with people facing similar challenges.
- Self-Promotion: Your success will be featured on our social media channels and in our email newsletters.
- Help Others: This is a chance for you to share your insights to help others facing similar challenges.
Side note: You’ll also want to make it clear that participating won’t hurt the customer. As in, you won’t share any information they don’t want you to. You can do this by making it clear they’ll have a chance to review and approve.
6. What’s next?
The final line of your email should be something like, “Are you interested in exploring this further? Let me know, and I can provide more details.”
Try this prompt to do 80% of the email outreach writing for you
I created an AI prompt that handles 80% of the writing for creating interview requests like this. If you’d like a copy of the prompt, you can find a link to it here.
P.S. To make this prompt even more effective, it helps to feed ChatGPT (or whatever LLM you’re using) a list of questions that you plan to ask your customer.
Check out this post if you need help creating your list of questions and preparing for the case study interview.