Bad news: your B2B success stories are boring your prospects to death.
Anyone working in a B2B role has seen more success stories than they can remember. Most B2B content creators have churned out dozens of them. Many seem to think they're the magic bullet of content marketing: Just tell people how your product or service makes everything hunky-dory for some customer, and watch the orders pour in!
If only it really were so easy.
Anatomy of (Most) B2B Success Stories
Prospects can be influenced by effective success stories. Sadly, most B2B success stories (or case studies, or customer profiles, or whatever you call 'em) are just plain dull.
They follow a rote formula: Introduce the business. Explain a challenge the business encountered, but avoid too much ugly detail. Include a quote or two from someone involved, if they're willing to go on record. Then introduce your miracle solution and the difference it made. Throw in some big numbers whenever possible. Finally, make a prominent call to action so your prospects know what to do next!
The problem with such stories is twofold. First, it's a very familiar story. We know how it'll turn out before we even begin. Second, people are just not moved by other people's triumphs. Moving stories emphasize struggles and setbacks. That's why they put "happily ever after" at the end of fairy tales, not the beginning.
That's the problem with customer stories that emphasize the end result. "Company X Solved Their Problems!"
Where's the drama in that? Where's the story? Nowhere. In telling our B2B success stories, we sadly tend to leave the story out of it completely.
The Secret All Compelling B2B Success Stories Share
Success stories that work put the "story" before the "success." The best and most compelling stories aren't about superheroes who easily overcome every obstacle. Instead, the ones that stick involve risk, struggle, setbacks, and danger. Some involve seemingly insurmountable failures. Others feature villains: a new or revitalized competitor, a sudden change in the market or supply chain, or inefficiency.
Ultimately, the secret ingredient in all successful B2B case studies is people. Many B2B customer stories instead focus on the business organization. Courts may treat corporations as a "person," but that won't work in a story.
Making the company the star just dehumanizes the story. That makes it harder for (presumably) human readers to relate. Instead, put a real person in the picture: "When Jim Jones went to work at Company X, he never imagined this problem..." Real people with real names immediately evoke empathy.
The more specifically you can illustrate how real people struggled with real difficulties (just like your customers), the better. How did Company X's Jim Jones feel when he first encountered the problem? Was he under intense pressure to fix it? What different solutions did he try? How did his employers react as the problem lingered? Where did he discover your company's solution? Was he skeptical about it? How long did it take to see results? And what's a day at work like for Jim now versus then?
The answers to those questions deliver details that people can relate to, because they reflect a real person's real experience. In contrast, the problems of a corporation are faceless and impersonal.
If you can't name specific individuals, your story can still focus squarely on people: "When the warehouse team at Company X arrived that morning, they discovered a big problem..." That's not quite as compelling as attaching a real name and voice to the story, but it beats talking about Company X as if it was a real person.
Successful B2B Customer Stories Are Always about People
Whatever you're writing about, whatever industry you're in, put people in the foreground when it comes to B2B customer stories. You may get some internal pressure to focus on the technical specs of your products, or the uniquely innovative wonderfulness of the genius solution your firm provides, but too much of that will suck the life out of your story.
Remember, the purpose of your B2B customer story is NOT to inform prospects about the ins and outs of what you sell. That comes later. The purpose of the B2B customer story is to get your prospect to identify with people in similar positions, who faced similar problems and overcame them.
When prospects feel that similarity, you have prepared them to really pay attention to details about your product.