Recessions are great for case studies. Here's why:

Whether you buy the narrative that we're headed into a recession (or you've just been paying attention to the ridiculous number of layoffs happening in tech over the past few months), one thing is abundantly clear:

Right now, companies are trying to do more with less.

• To navigate through choppy waters, companies want to acquire as many clients as they can, create assets that can be heavily repurposed across channels (more bang for buck) and build a moat so that they're ahead when things even out.
• To stay afloat, clients want to save money and avoid unnecessary disruption. Having to switch platforms or change providers can be as expensive as maintaining a contract they already have.

It's the perfect storm of factors to create opportunities for customer success stories.

Here's what I mean:

As a company, the more (quality) success stories you can publish, the better. Every win you can share is another anecdote in your arsenal to attract leads, counter objections, and sell.

Every case study you publish is one more piece of proof that can be deployed across multiple channels:

• Ads, outreach emails, and on social for lead gen
• Onboarding sequences, post-sales follow-up, newsletters, and on your site for lead nurturing
• Follow-ups, communities, etc. for upselling and retention

In short: these things are worth real money to you if you can put them to work and drive ROI from them.

In a recession, your goal ought to be to bring on as many new (qualified) accounts as you can capably service to bolster revenues and continue to grow while retaining all of the (best fit) clients you can, even if that means playing ball a little bit.

Having success stories helps you do that by giving you content that fuels other campaigns, keeps you top of mind, proves your value to the market, counters objections, and more.

Now is also a great time to be connecting with customers, because their attitudes and openness to involvement may have changed.

For customers, a recession presents economic uncertainty; they're in a headspace of cutting costs. Expenditures are one level of cost; disruption (e.g. having to replace a key piece of software or hunt for a new vendor) are another. It's expensive to go through change.

Willingness to take part in a customer success story will be at an all time high if there are (reasonable) incentives that allow them some level of cost savings and/or the ability to carry on business as usual.

Are you seeing where the two come together?

Now is a great time to be reaching out proactively to renewing accounts and seeing if there's an opportunity to get them on the record.

And while there are some careful considerations to be made around offering incentives (like disclosures), it's a good time to have those at the ready to offer or present as a bargaining chip.

You get assets you need to continue growing and retain your clients through the storm.

Your clients get a bit of relief and some positive coverage.

Win/win.

Recessions also create new, meaningful stories to be told.

Not only are clients more likely to have an eye on their ROI and KPIs (y'know... the things you'd ideally like them to be able to share in a success story), but being there for your clients through the ups and downs of an economic downturn makes for some really great reading.

If you play your cards right, you may come out the other side of this with some new glowing reviews or narratives you can point to to demonstrate the way you show up and go to bat for your customers.

Food for thought?