8. Case Studies and Recommendations

Social proof is the most powerful sales message you can create. When the peers of those you are seeking to influence endorse you and your offering it helps to create more certainty. Certainty that the decision they are making is the right one and you are the vendor of choice.

Case studies bring story into the sales process. A well crafted case study takes the reader on a journey. A journey where they associate with the client in the tale and relate to the challenges they faced.

A case study is not the transactional take of how you were given a job, did a search and filled it.

Case studies follow the following model:

• SITUATION

What was going on and what were the pressures and requirements?

• CHALLENGE

What made this an important mission for the client and what were the implications of failure?

• SOLUTION

What did you recommend as a path to follow and how did you ensure you both kept to it?

• RESULT

What was the immediate and long term result of the partnership?

This can be committed in writing and put on your website to then link to in email communication. You can also print them and keep them in your sales toolkit and verbalise them as anecdotes in your discovery calls with prospects.

Recommendations come from the key players in the case study – decision makers, hiring managers and the placed candidates. These should reference the experience and the journey. The impact it had on them and their perceptions of your business. Not like the typical eulogies we read on Linkedin.