Comments on: Simple Stories for Complex Products (A Recipe)

By: TheFundingGuru

TheFundingGuru — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:43:08 +0000

RT @cindyalvarez: Startup Gal & Enterprise Guy talk about crafting simple narratives for complex solutions. blog post: http://bit.ly/7pMjYk

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

By: Cindy

Cindy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:47:58 +0000

Paul: You’re absolutely right that people overstate these success stories.

I think there are 2 things that build credibility:

Detail. Saying “Company X achieved 40% customer service savings” makes me suspicious; saying “Company X was able to automate certain response types, use a knowledge base to ramp up new employees, and respond quickly to negative comments via Twitter, altogether they estimate they’re saving around 40% on customer service” is HARD to fake.

The good and the bad. When success stories are “all success”, I’m also suspicious. Including some detail about implementation time, growing pains, internal resistance to change, etc. is also hard to fake and makes it sound more realistic.

By: Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:45:51 +0000

Cindy,
We absolutely could build anonymized stories to use more at the front end of the marketing cycle and on our website for both inbound/outbound programs. My concern has always been in the value/validity of those stories. When I read them I often wonder if the company ‘really’ did that or if their customer ‘really’ achieved that result because it is so easy to say in an unsubstantiated manner. Maybe I am the only cynical person around .

How do you say and market generic info that has punch, believability and value to a prospective customer?

By: Cindy

Cindy — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:08:49 +0000

Paul: Can you use your reference customers’ stories BEFORE putting them on the phone?

Understandably you don’t want to waste their time on a lead that hasn’t gotten far down the sales process. But if you can ‘tell their story’ (even if you have to somewhat anonymize it, like “a top 10 US consumer bank”), can you make that part of your initial pitch?

My team created click-through “tell the story” demos at Yodlee and they were an extremely effective way to communicate our offerings. Pictures allow you to share more complexity than bullet-point slides, which tend to make everyone’s eyes glaze over…

By: Paul Marshall

Paul Marshall — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:55:48 +0000

As an enterprise software company I can completely relate to this conversation. Customer References have really been our only response to this situation. We are fortunate to have many successful customers who will take calls from propspects and even host site visits. The problem is that these activities are very late in a sales cycle as opposed to earlier in a marketing campaign. I would love to be able to simplify the message and make it easy for people to understand and to believe in right from the start WITHOUT misleading them as to what is really involved.

Not exactly on target but I absolutely love the ‘Down with Big ERP’ campaign that Infor is running right now. It is brilliant and simple.

I am looking for a bit of a silver bullet on the front end of our marketing program where I believe one probably doesn’t exist.

PS New reader Cindy and I love the blog and following you on Twitter…keep up the great work!