Let me cut to the chase: the number one way marketing can help sales win is by interviewing clients and creating insightful case studies. 

In Elite Sales Strategies, Anthony Iannarino coaches reps on how to achieve the one-up position by bringing insights into the sales conversation that add value.

I am a firm believer that buyers don’t buy your products and services, they buy the outcomes your products and services enable. (In Revenue Growth Engine we take a deep dive into outcomes and how to create an outcomes inventory. Read more about How To Market and Sell What Your Buyers Are Actually Buying.)

How do you determine what outcomes buyers value? You ask.

Salespeople should be continually talking with their clients. Iannorino explains, “Every interaction with a stakeholder provides you with an opportunity to be tutored by experts in a specific industry.”

Marketing should also be talking regularly with clients. This can be done in the form of case study interviews.

Having done hundreds of case study interviews over the years I’ve discovered that clients are open to talking with marketing in ways that they might not talk with sales. As much as salespeople work to build relationships of trust with their clients, oftentimes clients are guarded in what they say to salespeople. These same clients may talk openly with marketing.

What is an Insightful Case Study?

An Insightful Case Study goes beyond the benefits of the product or service to explore the business outcomes that were enabled. 

The Insightful Case Study begins with the context of the business goals and challenges the client faced. Ideally, this connects with broader challenges faced in the client’s industry and the economy at large.

Next, the Insightful Case Study explores how the product and service is helping the client achieve their outcomes.

Finally, the Insightful Case Study shows how the outcomes were achieved. 

Benefits To Sales

Insightful case studies benefit sales in three ways:

1. Identify Relevant Insights

While most sales people use bland adjectives like productivity, scalability, or efficiency to describe their offer, sales professionals armed with Insightful Case Studies can bring specific insights into conversations with prospects and clients.

2. Bring Clarity

Stories make complex concepts easier to understand. When sales professionals can share stories from Insightful Case Studies they help make abstract concepts more concrete.

3. Bring Credibility

Salespeople and marketing teams make all kinds of claims. With trust at an all-time low (Check out the 2021 Trust-Building Challenge) sales professionals can add credibility to claims by referencing real-world examples from the client base.

Benefits To Marketing

All of the ingredients to successful marketing are found in talking with current clients. Every piece of marketing content becomes more powerful when marketing prioritizes Insightful Case Studies. These conversations give marketing the specific insights and exact words to use in web content, blog articles, lead magnets, social posts, and sales collateral. 

Get Started Today!

So, what are you waiting for? Set a goal (an aggressive goal, dare I say a quota) to complete a certain number of Insightful Case Studies each month. As you do this, share the insights with sales. Then use what you’ve learned to improve all of your marketing content.

Originally published on Darrell Amy's LinkedIn.