How to get your clients to add credibility to your business
I always explain to early-stage entrepreneurs that the first sale is the hardest. After that, the process becomes much easier.
When you are just starting out, you are an unknown quantity with no track record. You have to extract the first sale from a sometimes sceptical customer, using your enthusiasm, persistence, and charm. Essentially, you are asking your first customer to give you a chance, sometimes at a reduced rate as an incentive.
But you should always charge something. The temptation is to offer your services for free, but this is never a real incentive for a serious customer. If you provide a service for free there is no perceived value, and such projects often are delayed or ignored. You should provide your service at a reasonable price with a built-in measurable outcome, such as increased sales or reduced cost, and then review this number after delivery is complete.
If your client is delighted with the outcome, you can then ask them for a case study to help you get further clients. Generally, larger organisations like to help entrepreneurs and it is also good brand-building for them to be seen to be helping smaller companies. You have achieved that most valued deal-making element of business, the win: win.
There is a simple format for case studies. First, you write the case study from your perspective, featuring our Beermat Elevator Pitch: Pain, Premise and Proof. What Pain or problem did you solve for the customer? Was it something they were unable to do for themselves or just did not have the internal resources available?
Then, what was the Premise of the solution that you provided, the detail of what you delivered. There is a temptation to put as much detail into this section as possible. You should avoid putting in too much content here. It may not be of interest to a non-technical reader, and it may alert and encourage your competitors to copy you.
Finally, it should all be about the Proof, the measurable outcomes. These are usually financial, but sometimes they are in terms of time saved for the client, which is easily shown to have real monetary value.
Next, you ask the customer for their perspective on the successful project, which may be slightly different. This may be something you just take for granted, for example the fact that you always responded quickly to any communications.
You might consider this a basic element of successful project work, but clearly, they had other suppliers in the past who were not so diligent, so do add this to the case study. Or there might be tangible outcomes after project completion, of which you were unaware.
Your final task is to ask the magic question: Why? Why did they select you? Why are they happy with the outcomes? Why are they happy to be a reference customer for you?
“Why?” is an excellent question, one I always use when interviewing businesspeople at conferences. Of course, the audience will be fascinated by the details of how they achieved business success. Asking the question why they took certain actions opens up the human side of their character, both their original motivation, and their feelings about how things turned out.
I once asked Richard Branson on stage why he moved from running Virgin Records to launching Virgin Atlantic. His quick response was that it seemed a good idea at the time, but he soon revealed his emotional driver, which was to make air travel more fun and accessible to regular people.
PRNEWS.IO, the parent company of Startup Mafia, has many customer case studies. In the old days you or your PR agency would pitch story ideas to printed media outlets and hope they passed the filter of an often sceptical and overworked editorial team.
With the advent of social media and now Artificial Intelligence, the process is now much more targeted and efficient. You present PRNEWS.IO with your content and target audience, and they recommend the best place to put your sponsored content, currently 105,659 publications in 175 countries in 77 languages with 37 categories.
PRNEWS.IO’s approach is to first look at your brand visibility in the AI search engines. It is common nowadays for researchers to go there first to find out about potential suppliers, so it is essential that your company’s brand, as well as the profiles of key executives, are both readily accessible and factually correct.
Then, PRNEWS.IO looks at traditional search engines, to ensure high-authority back-links and mentions in all the trusted outlets worldwide. Finally, they help you build trust and authority on reputable news sites and ensure you control the brand narrative with positive and authoritative content.
You can find examples of PRNEWS.IO case studies here: https://prnews.io/get/cases/
Once you have a concise and effective case study promoted in the right on-line media, this should stimulate market demand and encourage prospects to find out more, and your sales process can begin.
You must always remember to thank your clients for their case study, for essentially giving you credibility in the first place. Never forget the clients who helped build your credibility.
About the Author
Mike Southon
Mike Southon is Chief Editor of Startup Mafia, busy tuning Estonians into Unicorns and helping promote them worldwide.
More details and his other articles can be found here: https://startupmafia.eu/author/mikesouth
