3 Major Case Study Approval Roadblocks… (and how to get past each)
When it comes to case studies,?credibility?is the name of the game. It's a critical ingredient, the main objective, and the key benefit of every case study project.
But if you want the brand credibility that comes from showcasing how you helped a well-known customer achieve success, you must obtain that customer's permission to use their famous name.
So, it’s essential you have a plan for securing that permission.
Your plan should cover the pursuit of the permissions you need to start the project—agreement on name usage, permission to interview employees, etc. (what I call?the pre-approval process)—as well as the process for obtaining?final customer approval?for publication after the success story has been written.
Sometimes, though, even after you've carefully laid all the necessary groundwork, things can still go wrong. That’s why I’d like to look at three common roadblocks to customer case study approval and the steps you can take to surmount each one.
Roadblock #1:?Your Customer Changes
Businesses change all the time. They change suddenly. The changes can be minor: people shift roles or leave the firm; departments reorganize. Or the changes can be great, as when companies are acquired, merge or go public.
Whether small or large, a change to your customer’s organization can affect your chances of gaining approval for your freshly-written case study.
Many different events could delay or derail the approval process. Your customer champion might leave the company. An approval authority might transfer to another department. A merger or acquisition could mean a restructuring of the legal department or postponement of any task deemed non-essential to immediate business needs.
Fortunately, there’s?a simple four-step procedure for dealing with customer changes?during a case study project. Here are the four steps:
Step 1:?Find out who your new contacts are.
Get help from your account rep or whoever else is closest to the customer. Determine exactly what change has occurred and who your new contacts and approval authorities are.
Step 2:?Bring those new contacts up to speed.
Set up a call or online meeting with your new contacts. Explain the project, what has occurred so far, and the upcoming steps in the process.
Step 3:?Discover your new contacts’ concerns.
Are they familiar with your solution? Have individuals quoted in the case study left the company? Has the customer’s approval process changed? Do these new contacts have issues with the content or planned use of the case study? Seek to fully understand these concerns, because you’ll need that knowledge for the final step.
Step 4:?Address your customer’s concerns in a way that meets your marketing objectives.
Some concerns are relatively easy to address. For example, if a quoted individual has left the company, ask to have their quotes attributed to another employee in the same role or a similar one. In many cases, addressing the concerns of new customer contacts is just a matter of updating your existing draft and re-circulating it for final approval.
The biggest challenge you’re likely to face is the case where your new contacts are unfamiliar with your solution and their company has stopped using it. If the customer has lost corporate memory of the improvements your solution brought about, you may have to abandon the project.
If, on the other hand, the customer is still using your product or service, give your new contacts some time to become better acquainted with it. Ask your account rep to build a relationship with these new contacts. In six months or so, go back to them about reviving the project.
Roadblock #2:?Case Study Oblivion
Every so often when a case study goes to the customer for final approval, a strange thing happens.
You’ve done everything right. You obtained pre-approval. You experienced good cooperation during development. Interviews were completed. Pictures were taken. You got your polished draft laid out, illustrated, reviewed internally, and sent to the customer.
Everything has gone fine. You may even have seen progress through your customer’s approval chain.
Suddenly, your case study stagnates. Then it disappears! It's as if your whole customer story got sucked into a black hole.
Updates from your customer champion grind to a halt. The story is stuck in legal or on some executive’s desk. Your champion can’t seem to move it forward. After a while, your champion stops answering your calls and emails.
What do you do?
Here are?three tricks for rescuing your case study from oblivion:
Trick #1:?Call in the cavalry.
Enlist the help of the person in your organization who has the best long-term relationship with the customer. Often, this will be your account manager or channel partner who sold the customer your solution. If your solution requires extensive customization, it may be your technical project manager.
Update this colleague on where the story stands. Ask him to talk to his contact about the story. Tell him to emphasize the win-win nature of the project and the benefits the customer will gain from the story’s publication. Through your colleague, gather more insight into what’s holding up approval, and come up with a plan for getting the project back on track.
Trick #2:?Take the burden off your customer.
Always remember: your case study is a lower priority for your customer than it is for you. If your customer champion says she’s swamped with other duties or can’t manage to spur action in other departments, try to help her out.
Offer to take the point on shepherding the story through the remaining approval wickets. Ask who the remaining approval authorities are. Volunteer to contact them directly. If she accepts, get on it right away.
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Don’t be surprised, though, if your offer is declined. Your customer may feel the responsibility should remain with her since the story reflects upon her department. But simply having the conversation may motivate her to take things to a higher level. It will also allow you to offer advice on how to get the review process moving again.
Trick #3:?Send your thank-you gift early.
If you can’t get through to your customer with the first two techniques mentioned, there’s one more thing you might want to try if the story is truly important for your firm.
Send your thank-you gift in advance.
That’s right, send a small gift to your customer contact?in anticipation?of your story’s final approval. (See Step 6 of?last month’s article?if you need gift ideas). With the gift, include a note saying how much your company looks forward to completing the case study and the joint promotional opportunities it will provide.
Casey Hibbard, author of?Stories that Sell, says she’s seen this trick work more than once. She calls it the “killing ‘em with kindness” approach.1?Your customer still may not approve your story, but at least they’ll know you truly appreciate their business.
Roadblock #3:?Your customer says, “No.”
On rare occasions, seeing your case study in print will cause customers to change their minds. The sudden realization that their newly-acquired business advantage is being put on display for all the world to see raises fears... or at least, second thoughts. In reaction, they deny you permission to use their story.
If that happens and you can't manage to persuade the customer to approve the case study as planned, consider these two alternatives to public use: (1) the limited-use story, and (2) the unnamed story.
The limited-use story
“Limited-use” approval?places restrictions on where, when, and how your company and your affiliates may use a case study. Some customers may not want their story to appear on your website or in email campaigns, trade journals, or social media, for example, but they may permit you to distribute it at trade shows and in sales calls.
Other customers may allow broader use but for a limited time. For example, you might get permission to use the story on your website and in social media and email campaigns for six months if you agree to discontinue public use at the end of that period.
Still others may require that their story be restricted to internal use. They might authorize you to use their story in sales training and sales calls, so long you don't publish or distribute it in any manner. Some companies manage this restriction by allowing sales reps to access and read such internal-use stories online while preventing them from being printed or emailed.
The unnamed story
The “unnamed” story?often gets a bad rap. That’s because case studies that don’t name a specific customer don’t carry the same weight, credibility-wise, as those that do. Nobody wants to publish a case study on a “global tech giant” when their customer is really Microsoft, IBM or Apple.
Still, unnamed stories can go farther than you might think.?They can be quite valuable for educating prospects and validating your offering, so long as they provide insight into how your solution helps customers, along with the information prospects need to make a buying decision.
In fact, many companies have had enormous success with unnamed case studies.
Some firms create unnamed stories out of necessity. Their solution may provide a significant business advantage their customers don’t want competitors to know about. Or, their customers may be other technology firms. Many tech companies don’t want others to know about a time they needed help from?another?tech firm to transform their business. Unnamed stories allow such firms to demonstrate customer success while preserving the customer's anonymity.
Unnamed case studies offer other advantages over those that name names. They allow firms to:
Besides, if your customer won’t grant permission for full or limited use of their story, you can’t legally use their name. An unnamed story may be your only option.
Takeaway Points
The three biggest potential roadblocks to customer approval of case studies are:
If your?customer’s organization changes?during case study development or approval, take the following?four steps to recover the project:
When your?case study falls into approval oblivion?(gets stuck at some point in the approval process) try these techniques:
If your?customer won't grant approval?of your planned story, consider these two alternatives to a full, public-use story:
Next Steps
Need help publishing a case study and getting it through all its approval wickets? CopyEngineer can assist with customer pre-approval and post-production sign-off, as well as customer interviews and writing. Email CopyEngineer at?[email protected].
Finally, if you’d like to get?Technical Response?delivered to your email inbox—and receive?two free reports on creating better white papers—click here.
References
1??Hibbard, Casey,?Stories that Sell: Turn Satisfied Customers into your Most Powerful Sales and Marketing Asset, AIM Publishers, 2009.