Many people overlook the power of capturing key success stories after signing a new client. Many salespeople are happy with the win, celebrate, and quickly move on to the next. This short post provides some thoughts, tips, and tricks on how to build and position a best-in-class success story program.
Typically a success story should be easy for the salesperson to complete (short), written in story format (hence the word story), memorable, and easy for the reader to understand, adopt, and leverage in the field to help sell. Success stories are a great vehicle to highlight bright spots in your business, train new and existing employees, identify what’s working, and recognize individual contributors for exceptional best practices. Done right they can also be a great vehicle for raising morale. The WIFM (what’s in it for me) to the salesperson is simply in their opportunity to give back by helping their peers to be better. Another key benefit is in their ability to strengthen their personal brand within the organization. When the success stories are written typically the sales leaders send to the team and cc others including key executives. When the salespeople see that key executives are being cced it raises the importance and urgency in their mind which typically equals a higher quality product. The key executives reinforce the importance with a quick recognition email to the individual. Success stories should never be positioned as a task but a great opportunity!
Great win/loss analysis questionnaire questions include:
- Please provide a short company description (Hoovers)
- Where/how did the sales process begin?
- What business problem was the client trying to solve?
- What challenges and objections did you face in the process and how did you overcome those challenges?
- What resources, internal or external, did you leverage to prove differentiate business value?
- Who did you beat and why did they select you over the others? (client quote if possible)
- What key golden nuggets or success factors would you like your peers to know about your win?
I hope you enjoyed the post. Sometimes it’s the simple things that make all the difference. Happy selling!
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