A Gem from Noah Fleming – The Stewardship Award
Last week my daughter was given The Stewardship Award at her school for her love of the environment. When I asked her why she thought she was getting the award, she surprised me by not just telling me how she loved animals and the outdoors but proceeded to give me very specific examples of the small, yet actionable things she’s done to improve the environment. For a 7-year-old, this included things like picking up garbage around the neighborhood or making sure she put things in the right recycling bins. She even told me that she was careful to rescue the worms on the driveway before I backed the car out of the garage after a rainy night. Even better, it wasn’t just about saving the worms, she also told me why it was important. She explained that worms helped the grass and plants grow by providing nutrients. Even though I’m a tad biased, I was thoroughly impressed. Especially since sometimes, when I’m working with companies or talking to prospects I’ll ask them something like:
Tell me about three times you’ve created significant value for your clients in the past six months. Or; Tell me a specific problem/opportunity a client was dealing with, how you identified it, what you did, and what the result was.
I often get very vague, generalized answers, lacking any excitement or emotion. If you have a hard time thinking of three examples off the top of your head, then you NEED to read this week’s tidbit, and you need to complete this week’s challenge. Here’s the thing. You should be able to keep telling me success stories of adding value to your client’s lives until I get bored, or until I tell you to stop. And those examples should be meaningful and rich full of value.
A B2B client told me a story about how they helped develop a new piece of equipment for one of their clients, but when I spoke to their client about it, they didn’t see it as just a new piece of equipment. Instead, they explained how the new equipment had delivered tremendous value including less downtime, fewer problems on the manufacturing line, and loads of reduced stress for the workers involved.
Are you confident your people could tell these stories at least as well, or better than how your own clients would tell them?
More importantly, could they rattle off stories and examples that were relevant and specific? To do this, one of the things I often help my clients to is to develop and create a corporately shared book of case studies.
The idea is to be continually filling it with success stories, testimonials from your clients, and learning points that you can bring to new clients to help them save time, effort, energy, and money by using your products, services, and expertise. This tool can be used a training and onboard manual for new hires, but it will also serve as a development tool for even your most seasoned people. It will also equip your people with tools to do things like cross-sell more effectively or to be more value-driven & consultative in their discussions with prospects and existing clients.
My business coach, Alan Weiss, taught me early one that the easiest way to create a case study is to have your people share relevant examples in three simple areas. They are situation/intervention/results.
Here’s an example:
The Situation: A industrial cleaning supplier was having trouble with their machines breaking down. It ended up costing them a lot of time and money, and grief for their customers. They had trouble finding people to fix the machines promptly.
The Intervention: We were able to suggest a customized preventative maintenance package that could help the client. The plan was affordable, completely tailored to their needs, and made a ton of sense to them. It also included an option for immediate (i.e. within the hour) repair crews in the unlikely event that the equipment did go down.
The Result: Since working with us, the client has seen dramatic decreases in downtime. They’re happier, and the stress levels in the machine shop are at an all-time low. Their clients are happier, and they couldn’t be more thrilled! They’ve just signed a long-term extension to the program.
Your Challenge For This Week:
Have everyone from sales to service to customer experience create and submit 2-3 case studies and submit them to you by the end of the week. Use the example I provided above and tell everyone to pull from their collective experiences to define a specific customer problem, how they worked to solve the problem, and what the result was. See what you get back, and see what might make sense to distribute to everyone else or make part of your corporately shared book of case studies.
After all – if you can’t tell me how you’ve helped somebody else, why would I engage you to help me?
