Joel Kletke (3:08)

Yeah, I think I'll go right back to the beginning. I had a grade four teacher who encouraged my writing in school, and that just lit a fire. And from then on, I just couldn't get enough. I took every English class or philosophy class because to me, if I could write, I could get an A. But I never saw a career in it, oddly enough. And so went to university, did a business degree, originally majored in hr, which I would have been fired from every organization that I would have gotten into had that happened. But still love to write, graduate with a degree in entrepreneurship, of all things, and wound up at an agency doing SEO. And so while I was there originally, I was more focused on link building and that kind of thing. But over time, it became obvious, like, hey, Penguin panda, content writing kind of important and kind of important to get right. And so I started getting opportunities to write, and that lit that spark all over again. I realized, like, hey, there's a lot of demand and a big market. And so went out on my own in 2013. Within a couple years, I'd pivoted into focusing on conversion copywriting. I'd heard about Joanna Wieb, kind of a fellow Canadian, the queen bee of that field, and fell in love with the idea of something that could be measured. Not just writing creatively, but writing toward an outcome and competing to see if your take on something outperforms someone else's. And it was through that that I got the opportunity to work for WP Engine. And so I was working with WP Engine on a project and it went well. It was wrapping up and someone who sat on their hey, I advise this little company called Pingboard. They need a customer story. Is that something you do? And for me, it was kind of a hell yeah moment because this person was well connected. I liked them. And it was so, like, yeah, for you? Sure, yeah, I'll figure it out. So I took on the project of a customer share. I hadn't done one prior. I knew about the value of social proof, and it helped put getting customer reviews and that kind of Thing, but never like the full blown story. And so that was my very first customer story project, and it was a baptism by fire and a half. I learned a lot of things really, really quickly. Number one, these things are really hard to do. There are so many interconnected disciplines you have to be able to coordinate. You've got to be able to interview, you've got to be able to tell a compelling story. And then thankfully I had that conversion training. So you have to be able to actually anchor it in an outcome and get it to do something for you. And then there's all of these stakeholders. There's your client, there's the customer, there's the customer's boss. So that was the first learn is like, listen, this is hard. These are hard assets. But the next thing is, okay, most of these suck. Like, I was looking around for inspiration. Most of the stories that I came across were thin and they were generic and they were boring. And I felt like it doesn't have to be that way. Like, surely we, we can tell a story that is exciting and interesting and honest. And so I started thinking, okay, well, they're hard to do and not very many of them are good, but everybody needs them. That was the third realization. Like, every single business can benefit from this. And so I thought, okay, well if they're hard, but they're valuable and most of them are bad, surely somebody's connected the dots and thought, hey, I could specialize in this. I could build something that focused on this. And that was kind of the other piece of it was I'd try to run content teams in the past with mixed success. My first lesson in building a team was, you know, painful. I made a lot of bad assumptions that wound up punching me in the face. But for a second go, I thought, you know, what? For as hard as these are, there is a step by step process I feel like you could follow every time. And I think you could really scale this. So surely somebody has like, said, I'm going to specialize in this, I'm going to scale this. And when I looked around, it was like the OG Casey Hibbard. And that was it. It was a blue ocean, as glistening blue as blue oceans get. And so I thought, why not me? And so I did that first project. I instantly, I went with the first name for the company I thought of. Case Study buddy was the first and only consideration. I started kind of just quietly going out to peers that I'd, you know, that I'd known. And clients I'd served in the past said hey, I'm trying to put this together. I'm going to give it to you for a song. All I really want is to run into every mistake you can make doing this. And no one's going to work harder than me to make sure you get a story worth telling. And that's how I got the first customers in and quickly brought in a partner to help sort of scale things. Because I was doing this off the side of my desk. I had all my other work still going on. And within a few years we had a team and some pretty impressive clients. And we're continuing to learn and grow and make these better. So it all started with saying yes to, you know, a new, maybe uncomfortable project and then just a realization that, like, yeah, at the time, anyways, this, this is a really, really blue ocean space. And why not me?

Michael Stelzner (8:06)

So bring us up to the present. Like, what are you doing now?

Joel Kletke (8:09)

So Case Study Buddy grew and grew under its own steam until just before the pandemic, it had to become our full time focus. There was no denying it anymore. We wanted to find out what we had. And we were serving some of the biggest brands in B2B that there are. And it shocked me. Every time we get an inbound lead, it's like we're onto something. So Jen and I built an incredible team. That incredible team helped us scale it to the point that we sold it in 2023, March of 2023. Since then, I took some downtime, some time to reflect and think about what comes next. And one of the things I took away from that is what I really loved about that experience was the chance to come into a company and solve a problem. How do we make these work? How do we block and tackle? How do we actually go from wanting stories to making them inevitable and not just getting them, but driving real business outcomes with them? That's the piece of things I like the best. And so I've done some consulting on that. I've done some coaching and training now that I've been punched in the face enough times. I've done some coaching and training on how to build a team and build a creative services venture with people who are at the very outset of thinking about scaling, scaling up. And that's been my, my focus for the past little bit, getting back to my roots a little bit too, and doing a tiny bit of conversion copywriting work as well. So it's been a whirlwind, but it was a hell of a ride with Case Study Buddy. I'm super proud of everything we and the team accomplished. And I took so much away strategically from, from that experience. When you see how, you know, over 300 companies come at this and what works and what doesn't, that is a very deep education. It's a pretty privileged spot to sit in.

Michael Stelzner (9:51)

Love it. Okay, so there are plenty of marketers and entrepreneurs listening to us right now. And maybe they need to understand when this is done, well, what's the upside? What does this make possible? And maybe even why should they consider doing this? Because I know many are not doing this.

Joel Kletke (10:09)

Yeah. I think really there is no other asset that I can think of that has as much utility that can be deployed across the entire buyer's journey and can make such an impact as customer stories. And in a market where people are increasingly skeptical, in a market where people are always going to trust what their peers have to say more than your marketing message, and in an economy where tons and tons of people are being asked to do more with less, customer stories are the perfect fit. Because if you can conduct one solid interview, you can build an entire campaign's worth of content. Content that helps you with lead gen, content that helps you with onboarding, content that helps you with upselling, content that helps you with retention. One great customer story can be turned into a whole ecosystem of content. The other thing is competitively, in really cutthroat spaces, your competitors, they can steal your branding, they can steal your messaging, they can poach your people. But the successes you've driven for clients, those are yours to lose. And so it's kind of a bit of an arms race right now. In a lot of spaces, you know, the company with the most proof wins. The company who can point to their ability to predictably drive an outcome their audience cares about, it's a huge advantage. So really a ton of upside and a ton of utility that I don't think people necessarily expect because they bring the bias of, oh, these are end of journey assets or something. We drop on someone when they're already close to buying anyhow. And that's just not true.

Michael Stelzner (11:48)

I love it. Okay, so what do we need to be thinking about before we begin actually building customer success stories?

Joel Kletke (11:56)

I think really the first thing is you have to come to terms with and accept the fact that this is hard. And it's always going to be a challenge anytime that you are bringing your customers in, any time that you have this many stakeholders that you need to get things passed. Yes, of course some of these are going to fly through. Yes, of course we're going to talk today about a lot of ways that you can make it easier on yourself and, and all of that. But understand that just because they're difficult doesn't mean they're not worth doing. Just because they take a process and time and energy like any other content asset, doesn't mean that you should shy away from them or block your own shots by saying, or our customers will never go on the record or any of that. I think the other thing that you should wrap your head around, a big mindset shift. No matter how big your company is, whether you're a company of one or you have a full team and lots of different departments, I think it comes down to accepting that customer stories are a team sport. You can't just drop this on marketing's head and hope for the best. This is something that everyone in the company has a role to play. From how we set expectations to how we actually deliver, to how we make the ask, to how we capture the story, to how we promote it. This is something where in bigger companies, marketing is going to be relying on sales, is going to be relying on leadership to set the tone and say, this is what we're going to do. So it's not something you just do in isolation. And I guess the other thing I'd say is it's not one and done. It's not like, well, we got the story, so now we're finished. Your customers aren't all uniform. I'd imagine they each come with, there's lots of overlap, but they all come with pains that they want to solve expectations they want to meet outcomes they want to drive. And so when you look at the intersection of what those pains are, those desired outcomes are the questions they have, the concerns they have. You can never really have enough customer stories because every customer, not just your biggest ones, can speak to some objection, some concern, some goal that, that somebody has. So I think really wrapping your head around the fact that they're difficult to do, but they're worth it and they're a team sport, those are the things that I think you want to kind of really grok. And the other piece of it is they deserve a strategy. So you don't just want to rush in and who can we get on the record? And let's just go for the big names you want to think carefully about. What are your goals? What are the KPIs you need to move? Who do you need to influence to move them? Those are the people you should be telling stories about. What do the people that you need to influence need to Hear that should be the content of those stories that should guide the questions that you ask. It's not about farting out a survey into the world. It's not about just getting anyone on a call and saying, what do you like about us? Can you give me some great accolades that we can tack on the website? You can craft intentional strategies around the KPIs you want to move and the people you want to influence, the goals that you have. And when you understand those things, that's how you start to see actual roi. Beyond just, oh, we got a story and chucked it up on the site and left it there. You know, you want to know who you're speaking to, where you're reaching them, how you plan to promote these so that you know the stories you're going to tell and how you're going to tell them. Yeah.

Michael Stelzner (15:15)

And talk to me about the different types of stories we can tell, because when we were prepping for this, you had a couple of different frameworks in which people can think about how they could tell different kinds of stories.

Joel Kletke (15:25)

Yeah, absolutely. I think the common misconception is that every story is the same. It's problem, solution, results. And another really big mistake is kitchen sinking it, where it's like, hey, let's talk about every good thing we've ever done for this customer. And that's kind of like taking the spice rack and putting every single spice into the same dish. It's, you know, more is not better. It's going to create a dish that's palatable to no one. So there's some examples of different types of stories that can serve really unique purposes. So, for example, there's switcher stories. If you're going toe to toe with a competitor and you've got clients who switch from them to you, you want to capture that story you want to tell. Why did they make that switch? What prompted it? What made you the right decision? Because there are inevitably others thinking about that. The next type of story that I love to see is the disambiguator story. Let's say you're moving into a new market or you're trying to appeal to a new role, telling stories that translate the value that other people see in other industries or other spaces in a way that makes sense for this new market. I'll give you a practical example. There was a company that, prior to Covid, they made industrial air filtration systems for, like, fiberglass manufacturing, pulling particles out of the air, ultra health compliant, and all of that. Covid hits all of a Sudden, a huge new market emerges. Gyms want these things. They're really, really interested, but they don't speak the same language as the industrial manufacturing clients. Disambiguator stories can take someone that is already in the market, that you want to serve, that you've happened to land already, and translating the story across so it makes sense for them. Other stories are things like onboarding or implementation stories. So often we wait until the whole relationship has kind of run its course to tell a story. But remember again, for a lot of companies just getting implemented, just getting your solution in place, that can be a hurdle to get across. And so reading a story about other successful implementations, other successful installations, other successful onboarding, just that can be a compelling story in and on of itself. The other piece of it could be things like upgrader stories. So people who made the decision to upgrade to a higher tier or move to a premium level of service, why did they make that call? How have their results been? Because again, you can be using these stories to sell to existing customers, you can be using their story to get more people in a premium tier. I mean, at the end of the day, we all want more revenue. There's lots of ways to drive it. So zooming out again, when you look at the goals you have and you look at the people you want to reach, there's lots of ways to tailor a story to work with what they're looking for, the questions and objections that they have.

Michael Stelzner (18:03)

Okay, so what I heard you say so far was four different kinds of stories. The switcher story, which is in the competitive industry, they've decided to switch, like for example, from AT&T to Verizon Cellular or something like that, right? And they can talk about that in a way that is better than just you having a table that says here's the pros and cons. Right? Like that's a powerful story to tell. The disambiguator story seems a little bit more nebulous to me. Help me understand how that would apply to a non super techie space. But we'll come back to that. That was the second kind. Then we've got the onboarding or implementation story, right? Here's the story of how smooth the process was, right. To move to this company. That's like a zoom in on a certain part of the process story, right? And I would imagine you could also have a delivery story if it was a very complicated thing, right? And it's all really zooming in on one part of the process and then the upgrader story. I love because the upgrader story is like, hey, you've got this new premium product, like, for example, Asana. We use Asana, and they got AI version that's more expensive. Right. So it could be interviewing someone who's had a lot of success using this and how it streamlined their production, whatever they do inside of the project management thing. But talk to me a little bit more about the disambiguator story, because that's the one that seems the most confusing to me.

Joel Kletke (19:17)

Yeah. And it's not right for every client. But let's say that you're in a situation where you've got a successful service, you've got a successful offering, you've got a successful product, but you need to take it to a new market. And that new market doesn't necessarily speak the same language as the other. They don't necessarily prioritize the same things. That's where you can use a story to disambiguate what your value is to them. You can tell a story instead of, you know, a fiberglass manufacturing story. We were talking all about, you know, we deployed it in these gigantic warehouses and we were able to filter out this gigantic level of fiberglass dust. And because of that, they were able to meet compliance. Like, for a gym, they don't give a rip about compliance. What they care about is they're giving peace of mind to customers. They want to be able to brag on the fact that this makes their gym safe to be in throughout the pandemic, things like that. So if there's a new market with new priorities or new language or a new way of talking about what they need, you can use a disambiguator story to basically tell that story to convey your value to them in a way they understand.

Michael Stelzner (20:17)

But you're not necessarily telling about a story of a new customer in a new industry. It sounds like you're using the story of an existing customer. Like, in this case, this is the same technology that's used to make really complex, I don't know, chips, you know, so that there's no errors on it. Right. And that very same technology can now be utilized in a gym. And if it's okay for, like, a big company like Texas Instruments that spends billions of dollars on clean rooms for chips, then how much better is it going to be for your gym? Is that kind of what we're talking about? Because that doesn't seem like a story as much as it seems like a what's the story? Do you understand? That's the part where I'm a little confused.

Joel Kletke (20:52)

Yeah. So if you've already had some success selling into that new market, it's just making sure that you tell that story up front, disambiguating for the rest of that market. If you haven't, then it's taking an existing story and again translating it into like you were describing. So here's how this would work for you. And then beyond that, there's types of stories we haven't even talked about. There's buying board stories where you bring in multiple perspectives to speak to multiple different audiences at once. There are skeptic stories where the whole focus of the story is you had a really skeptical buyer and you talk about how you countered the questions, the objections, the things that they have. So the point isn't that all of these should be used by every company, but when you think about what your goals are, you can realize that, okay, while lots of stories are going to have problem solution results in common, they don't all have to have the same crux or the same angle. One more practical example I'll share for the audience and this one's really worth going and checking out because it's fantastic if you have any kind of service that the client can surprise you with, the use case or how they implement it, or it's very flexible. Mutiny hq, they have these fantastic playbooks and they're playbooks because yes, they are customer stories, but they read like a recipe, a here's how to go and do it yourself. So it talks about how they went, how they implemented, how they solved the problem, and rather than, you know, your product as like the solution at the very forefront, it's the ingenuity of the client teaching a prospect with the same problem how to go and use your tool to solve that problem. So those I really enjoy because they start out with here's what you'll need, here's what you'll learn. So it's a different way of taking again a story and turning it into something ultra pragmatic.

Michael Stelzner (22:37)

And Mutiny HQ is a company, I'm assuming, is that correct?

Joel Kletke (22:40)

Yes. Mutiny hq, the company just goes by Mutiny, but their site is, I believe, mutiny hq.com Very cool.

Michael Stelzner (22:46)

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Joel Kletke (24:26)

Yeah, I think this is the question that most people start and stop at. They get so stuck here because like, how do we get people on board? And then they fret about it and I don't want to inconvenience anyone and do we have to pay them? And so it's, this part is really, really easy to overthink. And if you're worried about it, just know multibillion dollar companies are worried about this. Mom and pop shops are worried about this. So how do we make it practical? I think the first tip, and I'll just kind of drop this before I give you something super pragmatic, an actual way to make the ask. But the first thing I'll say is your success when you make the ask happens way before you do. If you're not in the habit of talking about outcomes with customers or checking in to see how they're going or, you know, if you don't make talking about outcomes normal, then it doesn't matter when you ask, it's going to feel strange and unusual to them.

Michael Stelzner (25:18)

So what I'm hearing you say is if you have a great relationship already with the customer, it's going to make this easier. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Joel Kletke (25:23)

Absolutely not. Only if you have a great relationship but if you've already made it obvious to them that you are invested in whether or not they're succeeding, which sounds so obvious, but it's not, most companies kind of struggle at this. So if you've already got a great relationship and you're already talking about results with customers, hey, you're ahead of the game. Be encouraged. But okay, let's assume that we want to make the ask. We've identified the right customer with the right story and we want to approach them. There's a framework that we landed on that changes for us everything in terms of positive response rates. Because for most people when they make the ask, they say way too much. They send an email this long or they chatter for 15 minutes, would you do this and get in their own way? What I want to share with you today is the six sentence ask. And it's exactly what it sounds like. In just six sentences, you can frame up an ask that's going to get way more buy in than any long tome. So the first thing you want to cover in your six sentence ask is why them and not why them group why them individually? Why are you asking them for this? What is it about their relationship? Is there a trigger? Have they recently come up for renewal? Have they recently experienced a really big win? Have they recently launched something really successful? You want to point that out. And the goal is to make them feel seen, appreciated and special. So it's as simple as mentioning, I'm reaching out to you because we're so excited to see X thing has happened. The next piece of it is why now? Which is similar. But you want to give them a reason for the ask so that there's some sort of sense of momentum here. We're working on our customer story library and we'd be honored if we'd be able to share your success with customers. You know, why are you asking them now? Give them a reason. Any reason is better than no reason. The third thing, and if you ignore everything else I've said so far, this is the one to really hone in on what is the story. Because if you just make a blanket ask, will you be in a customer success story? Will you be in a case study? It's very easy to say no. And when they say no, it's really hard to understand why you've given yourself no intel. The other thing is, I think two things I want to say. Don't say the words case study because case study sounds terrifying, it sounds clinical. It sounds like you're going to get wheeled out on a Gurney and dissected like a medical case study. Use the words customer, story, or better yet, just say, can we feature you? The wording matters, but when you tell them what the specifics of the story you want to cover are, it gives them something to agree with or object to and it changes the conversation you have. If you say to them, we're really hoping that we can speak to X, Y and Z or X, Y and Z are specific things you've done together or specific parts of the relationship, specific campaigns you've run. If that applies to you, or better yet, specific metrics. We want to talk about this, that and the other thing. Now they've got something that they can agree with or object to. And the other thing to keep in mind, especially depending on who your clients are, is the person you ask isn't necessarily the person who can approve. So they are going to have to turn around and say, I've been asked to be featured. But this is what they're hoping to talk about. And if they have a PR team or a skeptical boss, it gives those people something. Go. Okay. Actually, yeah, we're fine with that. That doesn't expose anything, you know, too secretive or too sensitive. The next part. So why then? Why now? What's the story? The next piece you want to give them in a single sentence is what's involved. And this is as simple as saying all that's involved is a 30 minute interview and a chance for you to review the draft before anything goes live. Then the next sentence is why bother? So what's in it for them? And this can look a lot of different ways depending on what matters to your client. You don't have to offer a financial incentive, you don't have to offer any kind of, you know, like payout. But this could be. We're planning to share it with our 10,000 followers. This could be, we're happy to link to it from the site. If they care about things like SEO, this can be, we're going to be shopping this story around to media outlets. Whatever it is that strokes their ego or pads their budget or makes them look good, you want to give them a reason to believe and to engage. And then the final sentence is, what's next? If they're bought in, if they're excited, give them in no uncertain terms how to respond to you. Just say, please let me know if this is something you'd be open minded to and you'll notice. Like that's a bit of weird phrasing saying you're open minded to, but Everybody wants to be open minded. So even again, phrasing the question in that way can improve the responses that you get. So why them? Why now? What's the story? What's involved? Why bother? What's next? Six sentences. Don't over complicate it.

Michael Stelzner (30:09)

Give me a hypothetical. Let's just make up a fake one. Like, act like, I don't know, just something just. Even if it's a real one that you've done or you know, just. Just so people can hear this in practice. Like what it might sound like.

Joel Kletke (30:20)

Sure. Let's say I run an SEO agency. Just for sake of argument, it might look something like this. I might say, hey Jake, I'm so excited to see last month's numbers come in. We're absolutely crushing it on the visibility and the goals we set at the beginning of the year. I wanted to ask you if you'd be comfortable being featured in a customer success story, because we're building our customer success story library and I think you'd be a great fit. I'd love to be able to talk about the campaign that we ran around targeting competitor keywords and I'd love to be able to share that we saw this percent lift in traffic and this percent lift in conversions. All that's involved is a 30 minute interview and a chance to review the draft before it goes live. We plan to share this with our 10,000 followers on social media and we're also going to be shopping it around to some outlets or whatever. And then if you're willing, if you're open minded to be featured, please hit me back with an email. I'm happy to discuss in more detail.

Michael Stelzner (31:15)

Wow, I love it. That example really helped a lot of people. Thank you for that, Joel. Okay, so let's say we get a yes. Now we actually have to capture the darn story. This is the hard part, right? So give us some guidance on this.

Joel Kletke (31:29)

So this is definitely a situation where you cannot really over prepare. You have to go into this with the mindset of don't freak yourself out, but you need to get all the information that you can for the story in as tight a window as possible while honoring your clients kind of time and attention. And so the first thing is you want to go unprepared and so you know the story because you've already outlined to them what you're hoping to cover. You want to craft your question set around that. I recommend honestly having no more than 10 planned questions to cover the entirety of the story and some of the questions that can Be really successful, really helpful. Avoid closed ended questions, yes or no. That will get you nowhere. But you want to ask a question like what was going on in your business when you decided to work with a company like ours? And then one of the key things with follow ups, it's a surprising thing to learn, but you'd be surprised how much gold you can get when you ask, how did that feel? Or what made that so important to get right? What made that so scary? What made that so valuable?

Michael Stelzner (32:34)

Or what was at stake? Right, Totally.

Joel Kletke (32:36)

What made it so important to get right? The goal of the interview is not to read your questions off a sheet. You want to transform your interviewee into a storyteller. That's your only job. Your only job is to be there, facilitate, listen and respond. You're transferring them into a storyteller and by asking questions like how did that feel? What made that so important to get right? What would have happened if you wouldn't have got that right? You're getting them to tell stories. But the other type of question that's really effective is, can you give me an example of that?

Michael Stelzner (33:10)

Yeah, I did that earlier with you, right?

Joel Kletke (33:12)

Yeah, yeah. Can you remind me of a time when this happened or can you give me an example of what that looked like in practice? Those are storytelling questions because they get people out of rehearsing or sharing the rehearsed lines that they've maybe come with and now they're just getting into their experience, they're pointing to examples. So you want to prep, plan your questions, make sure you incorporate some of those follow up questions, some of those how did it feel? Types of questions.

Michael Stelzner (33:41)

Real quick before you go on, do you recommend sending the questions to them in advance so they can think it through or do you recommend not doing that? What's your thoughts on that?

Joel Kletke (33:49)

I recommend sending them the metrics you want them to speak to in advance. Absolutely. Because the worst thing, especially if you're filming video, is for them to get on a call and not know and then you have no, almost no chance of patching that in. So I do recommend you give them some homework ahead of time. If the client is particularly nervous, you might send them some of the questions and say these are the types of things we plan to ask you. I lean out on sending the entire question set unless you absolutely have to. Unless they say legal is asking to review the questions or whatever.

Michael Stelzner (34:23)

Oh wait, do or do not do nothing.

Joel Kletke (34:25)

I don't recommend sending them everything in.

Michael Stelzner (34:27)

Their entirely, but a couple samples might be helpful is what you're saying, Right.

Joel Kletke (34:30)

Yeah, a few might be helpful, especially if it's something that you know, it. It should take a little bit of critical thinking about. But what happens when you send all of the questions in advance is if you have a nervous Nelly who's worried about saying the perfect thing, they can overhearse, and then you're stuck trying to get them to sound less wooden, less fake, less. So help them feel prepared and comfortable. Don't withhold them and say, no, we're not going to say anything. But, yeah, I wouldn't drop every question on their head.

Michael Stelzner (35:01)

Yeah. And, you know, in the case of consultants or the case of a coach, this is where you probably know things about the client that they've forgotten. And I would imagine that's where preparing comes in advance. Like, remember the time when. You know what I mean? Like, tell me that story. Is that the kind of stuff that would be helpful to prepare?

Joel Kletke (35:18)

Absolutely. Because we live and breathe our business every day and we falsely assume that our clients do, too. And we falsely assume, oh, they've got metrics, top of mind. And surely they're always thinking about this journey we've been on together. And the reality is, like, things change and time goes on, and you might be one of 50 different things they think about in an hour, never mind a few years or whatever the timeline to the story is, which should be as short as possible. But yeah, it's about making sure that we've already done them the benefit of in our ask, kind of highlighting what we want to focus in on the story. And if we're going to give them any questions in advance of the call, it's so that they can bring specifics that they might need to look up or they might need to have their memory jogged on. But other than that, we don't want to give them a script. We're not scripting this. We're not putting words in their mouth. You want to leave some opportunity for serendipity. You want to leave some room for things to feel really organic and for them to even surprise you with the responses that they give. We could talk for a whole hour about how to make people comfortable on a call, but that prep in advance, just the right amount, helps them feel like, hey, I'm not going to come on and look like an idiot. And I guess that's the other thing is, as you conduct the call, your tone should always be encouraging. Great response. Thank you. That was really helpful. You know, little things like that help them feel like they're doing a good job and you'll see again their guard comes down. If they feel like they're killing it, you know, they'll continue to do so.

Michael Stelzner (36:50)

So let's go through some of the typical questions. What we discussed so far is what was going on in your business when this happened. And then can you give me an example of what that looked like in practice? Are there other questions that we should ask them other than the obvious little follow up questions to get them to open up a little bit? That should be kind of like core structural questions that we would ask and in most interviews, yeah, I think one.

Joel Kletke (37:14)

That'S a question that we loved because it's so informative, not only for the story, but just as business intel in general is a question like when you were evaluating whether or not to work with us, what was on your must have list or your like, what was your non negotiables. And that can give you a lot of insight into how they thought about the decision and why they ultimately made the decision. And sometimes we'll literally follow that question up with what made you confident that we would be as good or better than, you know, the solution you were using before? What was it that turned the tide for you? What was it that made you confident that this was going to be the right decision? When it comes to talking about the actual use of the product or experience of working together, that's where you want to really lean into questions that don't just give you the what, what you did together, but also the why. In their experience of it, you might carry a lot of the why. If you're a service provider, you may know why you did some things more than they did, but asking them questions like did anything surprise you about working with us? Or what jumped out? What was notably different from the time we started working together, from the time you started using that product to others that you'd used in the past. Again, can you give me an example of how that came to bear or what that looked like for you when it comes to results? And when we're talking about the impact, it's really easy to just focus on the metrics and to ask questions like and what sort of impact did you see? Or what sort of uplift did you see? Or what that might be? But where that falls short is a metric is fine, but the impact of that ROI is, is much more compelling. And so again, some of the questions we love, there are things like what did that make possible for you? Or what can you do now or do better than you could before? Or how did that change things for you? How did that change things for your boss? How did that change things for your business? You can ask that question in layers and get layers of impact back. And one of the examples that I like to share around this is we were working with a company in a not very sexy space that basically helped automate payroll. And we were talking to the person whose job this was. And so we had a nice metric. It was like something like, okay, they're 90% more efficient. But the clincher, the quote that brought the whole story home was this woman saying, I no longer have to run across 300 offices on five different floors hand delivering paychecks. Because why that land is because there were lots of front end people running across 300 offices on five floors handing out paychecks. It made that 90% efficiency stat real.

Michael Stelzner (40:00)

Okay, so let's say you're interviewing someone and they're not super articulate. What's your thoughts about? And I've used this technique with a lot of my guests. What I hear you say is that. And then I shut up. I don't say anything. I don't say, is that correct or is that not? And usually what I'll find is afterwards they'll say yes and. Or they'll say something more like, do you have any tips on how to take the inarticulate person to kind of, you know, restate it in a way that's quotable moment.

Joel Kletke (40:29)

Yeah, I think, you know, yours is a great tip. Here's what I'm hearing you say, because they're going to naturally want to either respond to correct that or they'll want to fill the space. Silence can be even just a tool in the toolkit, like you alluded to.

Michael Stelzner (40:42)

Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah.

Joel Kletke (40:44)

Because again, like, nobody wants to sit in awkward silence and so they'll, they'll start talking to fill the space. I think one that seems obvious but people miss is that everybody loves a mulligan. And so it's okay to bring a question back in a slightly different way because chances are they've been thinking about it a little bit differently. That's also where some of these adjacent questions, like, can you tell me more about what that looked like? Or can you tell me more about what that meant for you?

Michael Stelzner (41:10)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me more is the big deal actually, isn't it?

Joel Kletke (41:14)

Yeah.

Michael Stelzner (41:15)

Because it gets them sometimes to dig underneath the level. Right. Or even like, what was the thing behind that? Right. Like, what was the motivation behind that? Or I don't know. I mean, the thing before the thing, I mean, there's. There's so many little tricks that you can use to kind of like just get them to go a little bit deeper. Right. Or what did you say to your boss? Or what did your boss say to you afterwards? I don't know. I'm just like, you start coming up with these little things and you start to get their mind to go in a different direction. And your job is the sculptor, right? You're like trying to get something out of this.

Joel Kletke (41:42)

Yeah. I mean, and in the same breath, something to avoid that a lot of people do as a reflex is they'll say something like, would you say that? And then they'll fill that gap. And what's happening there is like, okay, not only is that a yes or no question, but it puts your guest or your interviewee a little bit off kilter with like, would I say that? And they start to feel like you're putting words in their mouth. So, yeah, tell me more about that. Or, you know, again, like, what did that look like? What did that mean? Those are the kinds of things that can really bridge it.

Michael Stelzner (42:15)

Okay, we've got all this data captured. We've asked for permission presumably to record it. I mean, like, right, because you definitely want to get their words exactly right. I would imagine you can say, hey, I want to make sure I get everything completely right. So I'm going to record this. Are you cool with that? I would imagine sometimes you have to ask for permission afterwards to use the video if you end up editing it. But talk to me a little bit about just a couple tips on crafting the story from the raw data that you've achieved and then we can talk about how you get approvals.

Joel Kletke (42:39)

So when it comes to crafting the story, and we've already alluded to some of these points, but I think it's really, really important. The first thing is you've already begun with the end in mind because of the process we've been talking, but you've already decided you've already put a plan in place for the KPIs that should move the people that should influence so right to that plan. Don't abandon it now that you've got, you know, the story in place. But when it comes to actually crafting the story, I think the first thing is not just begin with the end in mind, but as you sit down to create, begin with distribution in mind too. I normally, in our team at Case Study Buddy, would always start with the most substantial asset because it's always easier to put the long form written piece together or the two and a half minute video, two minute video together, and then cut it down than it is to have to go in the opposite direction. The other advantage is if you can get that core longer piece in place and get approval for that. Everything you cut down after that point should, in theory be approved as well. And you can save yourself and your clients some time and energy and effort by doing that. But when it comes to crafting the narrative, I think every movie has kind of a beginning, a middle and end, a climax, a resolution. And yes, most customer stories are still going to have problem solution results. But when it comes to the problem, no matter what kind of story you're telling, you want to jump straight into the action. You want to set the stakes really, really early, and you want to make it personal right away. So the worst thing, in my view, and people will disagree with me on this, but the worst thing you can do to start a customer story, in my view, is to go, X is a company from X Place and this is what they do.

Michael Stelzner (44:15)

That sounds like a press release, doesn't it?

Joel Kletke (44:17)

It's so boring and it just sucks the life out of the story immediately. You know, rather than do that, plunge right into the action, we wrote a story for a cybersecurity company. And the first line was literally something like, you know, Tom's phone was ringing off the hook and every indicator light on his fraud dashboard was blinking at once. That's how you start a story. Not, you know, x is a bank. And Winston, yeah, you got to think.

Michael Stelzner (44:44)

Of it like Mission Impossible and you've just jumped into, like, Tom Cruise running 25 miles an hour or whatever. Right.

Joel Kletke (44:50)

And you'll notice though, in doing that, you plunge people in, you set the stakes, and you make it personal. You are not the hero, your customer is the hero. Give the hero a name and go from there. So the whole point of the problem section is to pull people in and make them relate. You want them saying, that could be me, I could be that person. I get this. I've been in this scenario, I've seen this. When it comes to talking about that middle section, that solution, this is not the place to cough up a bunch of bullets. This is not the place to say, we did this, we did this, we did this, we did this. The core of a good story here is to bring in not just, again, we talked about this, what was done, why, why did you make those decisions? Why did you take those actions? And what was the customer's experience on the other end of that, if you're a service provider or if it's a product, you know, not just these are the features, but this is how this person used that feature and here's why and what they got out of it. So that middle section is where clarity really needs to come in, where people need to see themselves using and experiencing and feeling what they want to feel as part of that process. And then when it comes to the results section, this is again, not the place to just. Okay, here's our metrics and we're done here. What we want to do in this section is show people the impact beyond the roi. And if you've done a great interview, you can do this. It's about putting a bow on. This is what is now possible. This is how that feels. And then the thing that drives me nuts is people stop there. Just like a landing page, just like an email series, your stories need a call to action. They need to ask people to do something. You've just told them a really compelling story. Whatever call to action you have should be tailored to the story they just heard. Don't go generic, don't go push here to contact us for a demo. If the story was about a particular pain, make the call to action about alleviation of that pain. Do you want to not feel like garbage anymore? Book a demo and we'll show you how. Make it specific and move seamlessly from. Here's the results, here's the impact, here's what that looked like for them to. If you want this too, here's exactly what to do next. Don't skip the the cta. So that's how to put that story together. And then the other piece was just keeping in mind, you know, across channels and media. Like don't send a 1500 word piece to do a 10 second video's job or like a one sheet. You can't give your sales team huge long stories. They need something succinct that they can bring up on a screen without making someone have a conniption. So you have to think about the context in which the story you're telling will be used and tailor it to that scenario.

Michael Stelzner (47:29)

Love it. Okay, this is really, really powerful. So your average story should be the equivalent of what you can print on a single page. Is that kind of what I'm hearing you say?

Joel Kletke (47:38)

It depends on circumstances. There's a really good time and place for the 1500 word deep dive and that can be on your site. And for people who want that level of detail, you shouldn't be aiming at that word count. But if you're telling a story to an audience that doesn't know a whole lot about who you are or what you do, you might not have permission for that big long story. And so that is where, okay, could it be as short as a carousel on LinkedIn? Can you have a one sheet with just the facts that gets them curious enough to go investigate a longer story? We had a framework for this called nibble Bite Snack Meal.

Michael Stelzner (48:14)

Real quick, before we get to that, I want you to talk to me about the celebration side of this because I feel like that is so important.

Joel Kletke (48:20)

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. You kind of alluded to this earlier, but one of the saddest things that happens is because these are so much work and you complete them internally, you do a round of backpacks, you're like, we did it. It's done, it's live. What a missed opportunity. If you've done the story well, your customer looks great. They should feel great about being in this story. You want to make the launch of this thing a celebration. And so, number one, we never, and you should never, in my opinion, launch a story that a customer hasn't reviewed and approved of and been excited to see themselves in. So we always had that as a final check. We'd write it approved internally, get customer feedback so that not only are we safe and compliant and all of that so that we can celebrate this thing when it goes live. You want them the minute this hits social, the minute this hits your site, you want them advocating for it and sharing, saying, I was in this story for this company. Have a look at this. Check out this win that this company and I were able to create together because done well, they're the hero and they feel good. And the worst thing you can do is just silently slip it out into again like a resources section. You want to make some noise. You want to make it a celebration. You want to send them the resources to go in and promote it themselves. This is the place where you might think about just sending them if you want to, an impromptu gift of thanks. You don't have to promise it necessarily. A doubts of like, hey, check this out. And you know, one thing I saw that was really cool and not every company does this obviously, but I thought it was really neat, is if they had a one sheet version of the story, they would actually print it out and frame it and send one to the client and keep one for themselves.

Michael Stelzner (50:03)

Oh, that's really cool. I like that a lot.

Joel Kletke (50:05)

And put it on their wall. Right. If you have an office space or whatever, but give them something tangible or it's like, thank you. Thanks for making this possible. We are so excited to share this. We hope that you're so excited about how you look. Make it an event, make it a celebration. Yeah.

Michael Stelzner (50:19)

Okay. You were about to talk about this nibble thing. Go for it.

Joel Kletke (50:22)

Yeah, yeah. So to bring it back around, I talked about at the very outset, you can get an entire campaign's worth of content from one solid interview. Here's exactly how to do that. We use the nibble bite snack meal buffet kind of concept framework to think about how we take one story and slice and dice it up for people who have different informational appetites, people who need and want different things. So let's just run through the spectrum. A nibble, this is someone who's just early, early on in the awareness stage. They may not even be really deeply thinking about their problem just yet. But this might be something like a really quick social post. This might be something just like a visual graphic of the KPI from the story or the big lift or the big outcome. Something really small, something that catches attention, something that kind of whets the appetite. A bite is something that might be just a little bit longer. So if a nibble is like a single testimonial or a single KPI call out or a single image, a bite is something more like that plus a post or that plus a little 10 second teaser video. Again, it's for these earlier stage people. It's for channels and mediums where you don't really have the permission or the buy in from people for something weighty and long. But this is for people who are, they're peckish, they're maybe interested, but they're not ready to go whole hog. So snack is okay. This person is hungry, they're interested, they want some information. A snack is something like a one sheet. This is something like you might give the sales team. So during the sales call they can bring up the salient points, they can talk about the impact. It's more than a single quote, more than a testimonial, more than just, you know, a tiny little pocket story. It's something that kind of, it gives them the gist, it gives them the overview, gives them enough detail to decide if they're hungry. You know what? Oh, I've had a. Actually I'm ready for a full meal. So this could be a one sheet. This could be again like a 30 second video, a little bit more substantial when we get into the meal. Now we're into, okay, this is the full weighty acid. This is your 1500 word piece. This is your two minute video. This is your more extensive combination of those two things. And then buffet, which I only added later on. These are compendiums. These are for people who want like shock and awe and choice. And one of the smartest things we saw a client do and then we learned from them and started doing it too, is they would do both roundups of their story from the past year. And so they do like a best of kind of highlight reel. And then the other thing that they would do is they started to compile stories and they put them in what they called a nuclear deck. And the goal of this thing wasn't to get end to end, it was literally just to go, holy cow, there is a ton of proof here. They organized it by industry. You could organize it by feature or service or product or impact, but it was, it was one PDF that was just chock full of one sheets of everything organized nicely. And when you drop that in someone's lap, really the only thing they can feel is there is a lot of credibility here. There's a lot to look at.

Michael Stelzner (53:32)

Joel Kleet Clee, this has been fascinating and I know there's gonna be people that wanna connect with you. This called the social media marketing podcast. I'll ask if you have a preferred social platform and also where do you wanna send them if they wanna potentially hire you to do some consulting work for them?

Joel Kletke (53:46)

Yeah, the best place by far for me is LinkedIn and I don't always respond immediately, but I do always respond whether it's a question, connection, request. I am always happy to kind of jam on things or share something there. And that's usually where I'm most active in terms of sharing what I'm working on. I try to be really pragmatic, you know, when I put something out, I tend to shy away from theory and a lot into, hey, like, yeah, here's.

Michael Stelzner (54:11)

How to do it.

Joel Kletke (54:12)

Go and do the other place that you can find me. I think for the moment I'm working on making JoelCletKey.com less of a dumpster fire. So we'll get there really soon. But business casual copywriting, dated as it is, is a good place to kind of check in. And if you want to send me an email, explore some consulting, I'm happy to connect with you there, but LinkedIn is, I'm super active there.

Michael Stelzner (54:33)

Business casualcopywriting.com was that the URL.

Joel Kletke (54:36)

You got it. Yeah.

Michael Stelzner (54:36)

Okay. Joel, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

Joel Kletke (54:39)

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Michael Stelzner (54:41)

Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com 674 and if you're new to the show again, follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, would you do me a favor? Share this show with your friends and and maybe give us a review on whatever platform you're listening on and do. If you love hearing my voice and the questions I ask, check out the AI Explored podcast. And also check out our Social Media Marketing talk show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Just a quick reminder before you go. If you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting social mediaexaminer.com AI I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.