Strategic1. Interesting story

2. Interviewer knowledge

3. Story clarity

4. Quantifiable results customer is

comfortable talking about

5. Substance vs. Aesthetics

6. Thought-provoking insights

Functional7. Preproduction

8. Editing

9. Supporting footage

10. Story activation

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Every customer story is different, but the best ones have the same underlying ”magic.” By balancing your focus and energy on the 10 strategic and functional elements, the stories you tell will truly change the way yourprospects respond to the value you offer. They are:

The interviewee’s position within their company should relate directly to the primary audience you wish to reach. Interview your client’s CEO if that is the role you wish to reach next.

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10 Elements of a Great Customer Story

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2 In the delivery of the story, passion and personality are just as important as the story itself when the goal is motivating a potential customer to take action.

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1. INTERESTING STORYv

Your stories need to hold the audience’s interest, but what’s interesting to you may not be for those buying your solutions. It’s what they see that is important. Depending on the goal of your story, you may need to adjust accordingly, but for most intents and purposes, you really have to empathize with your audience. Here’s a trick: look at “interesting” from five different perspectives:

1) What’s interesting to you and your brand?

2) What’s interesting to your prospect?

3) What’s interesting to your prospect’s customers?

4) What’s interesting to independent analysts researching your offering and that of your nearest direct competitor?

5) What do these perspectives have in common? What are the most significant findings? Can these perspectives help you craft an interesting story?

INTERVIEWER KNOWLEDGE

3 Location-based interviews tend to be more compelling, asinterviewees are typically more relaxed in a familiar environment.

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2The catch has a lot to do with the quality of the fisherman. By that same token, interviewers play a critical role in creating your best stories. They know how to create the best possible conditions to extract the optimal narrative. And it’s not just about the story. It’s just as much about the storyteller. A great interviewer knows the story intimately and knows how to bring it to the surface.

He or she knows how to shape the narrative, how to comfort the storytellers, and how to listen and bring out the best. A good interviewer knows how to balance objectivity with the benefits of your offering in an environment of authenticity, and does so with experience. If the story isn’t coming to the surface, good interviewers know how to find it through the voice and character of the storyteller.

3.STORY

CLARITYClarity is one of the things that makes your storysuccessful. The hardest thing is to make a unique insight understandable, relevant and persuasive.

Clarity is what makes your story successful. Here is a valuable exercise: with existing stories in mind, ask yourself the following questions about their clarity:

1) Can you distill the story down into 10 words?

2) Can you find the sharable insight?

3) If you swap your name out with a competitor’s, does the story still make perfect sense? If so, you need to modify.

4) Does the story compel people to think clearly about how you solve problems?

5) Are your stories focusing on the customer more than your offering?

6) Does your story draw a line between what is and what can be?

7) Does the story build? Does it motivate listeners to want more?

8) Is there any doubt that your customer benefited from your involvement?

4 At the current rate of growth, video will overtake written content in terms of use within most buying processes.

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• Your best stories will have insights that resonate with a specific audience – and will, at the same time, connect to a wider set of prospects.

• They should be able to be told verbally and create a strong positive reaction.

• Each story should be told by people who are legitimately interested in that story’s origin and outcome. Their interest in the story being told provides the strength required to make it work.

• Your stories should be told from a personal point of view.

• Your stories should have some distance from your brand.

In the medium of video, it’s best to draw out the story through its main points: the inspiring points that viewers can relate to.

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Proof. Your customer stories should be centered around evidence and validation. Is there clear, irrefutable evidence that your solution helpedyour customer solve a problem worth solving? And to what degree? Capturing that “essence” authentically is a silver bullet.

Think about the stories you want to tell and how you want them to be heard. You want the stories you tell to tactfully and powerfully compel people to take a step closer to considering your offering. You want your prospects to hear the story and feel an increased confidence in yoursolutions. Having one customer share their experience with your prospects does this. Sharing concrete results makes that story stronger.

In order to get your customer to state that, because of your offering, they had a 45% increase in overall revenue over a 12 month period, or something to that effect, you have to make sure they are comfortable saying so. They have to own that statement.

The key to this is your customer’s ability to own their result. Sometimes the outcomes are softer and less quantifiable. Stating they had a happier company culture as a result is easy to say because it’s not quantifiable. Leaving this up to audience interpretation devalues the story's intent.

QUANTIFIABLE RESULTS A CUSTOMER IS COMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT4.

6 You want to get viewers to see themselves in the same situation, empathize with their hardships, be inspired by their journey and moved to action.

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There are two sides to quality. We’ve developed this simple “story algebra” to balance cinematography and shot composition with story substance and clarity:

People who create customer reference assets (stories)struggle with this balance everyday. They wonder howmuch (very finite) energy they should devote to writing orshaping a story vs. how much they should spend on theaesthetics and in post production.

While mileage may vary, there is always a good balance tobe struck between the aesthetic and the story’s substance.

You know you are balancing the equation when youroutcomes are successful and you’re staying on budget.

5. Substance vs. Aesthetics

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1. INTERESTING STORYv

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A thought-provoking and relevant insight is one of the best ways to validate your offering. Without insight, your customer’s story is just marketing. With insight, you will create meaning.

Think about it this way: Your prospect has seen your customer reference video on your website. They are interested but not yet ready to buy from you. What are the things you want your prospects to take away if they aren’t immediately persuaded to buy your offering? Answer: You want them to come away from the story with a strong, memorable feeling that your company “gets” them. You want to diminish doubt and skepticism that your company understands customers, is adaptive and competent. And you want all this essence to come from your customer’s story.

We believe your stories should deliver unique and meaningful insight into “why you?” And with that, the story should heighten the customer’s confidence in your ability to address their unique challenge. In the example on the right, we illustrate a complex story with a hierarchyof insights.

The overall insight above is using bigger data as a crime-fighting tool. The subject isabout fighting the mayor’s crime problem.The object is newer and more agile views into bigger data. The supporting role was played by Technology X Company. It’s more about the insight and less about the company.

THOUGHT PROVOKING INSIGHT6

Example for Technology X Company:“I knew the only way I was going to beable to solve the mayor’s problem was tooutsmart our city’s crime with newer andmore agile views into bigger data.Technology X Company had the platformand ideas that could help me reducecrime by 20% in 9 months, and theyworked through my unique situation withme.”

7Preproduction makes everything smoother. Done right, it ensures you're getting the right people, locations, shots, and ultimately, story.

Having time to research — to talk with subject experts, clients, salesreps, business partners, and thecustomer — improves the story's quality and relevance. Good planning is never evident in a well-told story; unfortunately, bad planning is.

Through effective preproduction you are able to scout and select the best location, interview and select the most appropriate contacts, and set up the right conditions to capture quality supporting footage (B-roll.) These may seem like “nice-to-haves” but are always the difference between a good story and a successful story.

8 Think about where within the buying process your viewers are: (Influencer early on, purchaser later on?) How does this affect the stories you want to create?

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PREPRODUCTIONPREPRODUCTION

8.E

The speaker/customer is providing their story as a reference for you, their story contains the benefits provided by your products or services, so it should be about their story and not the story (messaging, product name drops) you want them to tell.

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A good story is told three times. Once in the preparation, once in the shoot and then again in the edit suite.

You can interview for hours, find a powerful story packed full of insights and validation... and have it fall flat because of a poor edit. Imbalance between story substance and post-production can mean the difference between a very successful reference and a waste of time, energy and money.

Good editing is about drawing out the personality of the customer in a way that feels natural, authentic and integrated. This is a delicate sensibility,and not a one-size-fits-all. The director needs to communicate to the editor how to best portray the client’s brand.

The most common editing mistakes that prohibit the success of good stories are:

1) Edit is too tightly packed—interviewees seem like they’re speed-talking.

2) There are too many details drowning out the insights.

3) There is no sense of gravity that ties the importance of the story to the audience.

4) The keystone resolution to the problem isn’t clear.

5) You settle on too much company (you), and too little customer (them).

8.EDITING

We call supporting footage “B-roll.” B-roll helps illustrate the customer’s personality and brand, then ties it to the larger story. It provides the backdrop, helps carry the weight of context (of the solution and the speaker), and can help set the tone of your entire story.

It’s difficult to plan sometimes, but knowing in advance where you can film good environment, tone and setting shots will pay off in huge dividends. Your editors will certainly agree.

Directing the photographer/cameraman and associated team to capture B-roll appropriate to the customer brand leads to a much more interesting and cohesive story. Always grab as much as you can.

Many companies have excellent B-roll all ready to go. Don’t forget to consider the work that those before you may have done.

Videos are accessed most by INFLUENCERS early in the purchasing process – and they are most often found off the corporate website. Videos are accessed more by DECISION-MAKERS later in the process – and they are most often viewed on the corporate website. Take this into consideration in how you package and proliferate your references.

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SUPPORTING FOOTAGE

Escaping the noise with your customer references takes both quality CONTENT and CONTEXT. This will help you create a signal that your target audience can separate from the noise.

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Activation is what happens to the story once it’s completed and “out there.” Activation is how you amp up your assets to work harder for you.

While “put it on YouTube” isn’t a strategy or a mea-sure of success, it’s a smart tactic for many reasons. One in particular is the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) value you derive. YouTube, Vimeo and other video posting sites are indexed for search better than the video embedded on your site. Posting your video on those sites with strategically chosen tags and description, will make your story more “findable”. Another activation strategy is to break up the full customer reference story into smaller or individual soundbites that can be used in blog posts, banner ads, on video posting sites, and other search-engine fr iendly places around the web. You wil l beamplifying the message, pollinating links back to your website where your customers may spend time. In addition, your smaller snippets can also be well leveraged by sales reps in meetings and events, etc.

Also, when you have a platform view of your story assets, you’ll gain an advantage by seeing the additional pieces of your story broken up into smaller, more digestible parts. This will help you see how great assets can be repurposed or applied to other sales and marketing efforts. (Don’t forget to look on the cutting room floor.)

Your videos can also have a life beyond the web. Get them on the desktops of your sales team through the use of a desktop widget, mobile application, feature them in an email campaign and use them at trade shows and other events.

In all cases, they’re compelling pieces that direct people to you.

STORYACTIVATION

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John LaneVice President of Strategy and Creativejohn@centerline.nettwitter: johnvlane

Erin CraftAccount Executiveerin@centerline.nettwitter: erincraft

Every company is different and so is every story. Once you have a system that allows your team to perfect eachelement of a great story (plan, shoot, produce, activate and warehouse), the sky is the limit for the types of sales and outreach your company can perform.

To us, storytelling for sales and marketing and employee engagement is about setting exciting new benchmarks around quality, creativity, results and access. For 15 years we have been using ideas, technology and hard work to create a storytelling platform for one of the world’s largest and oldest companies. This has given us the opportunity to blast through the obstacles and help people use better assets to work smarter with less energy.

Centerline Digital is a group of Raleigh, NC-based producers, writers, web/mobile/social creatives, animators and editors. The stories we help our clients tell have to yield results, so we call ourselves accountable storytellers.

If you would like to learn more about the subject of this eBook, ask questions or learn more about our capabilities and experience, please contact us at 919.821.2921 or at the email addresses below.

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