«Return to Blog List Rescuing a Case Study from Certain Death
Whew!
A case study has been saved. It was close.
Here’s how it went down:
We created a case study that my client really needed, the first one on a specific mix of products used together by one customer.
Everything went incredibly smoothly until the signoff phase. Our main customer contact sent it up to his legal team, who said effectively, "No, we don’t like your release form, so we can’t agree."
From there, we engaged the company’s PR contact, who was frustrated that legal shot down this free PR opportunity.
The PR guy let legal know the case study was important, getting legal to take another look.
We compromised with some modifications to the legal release form and the story got through.
It’s a lesson in not taking "no" for an answer. If you understand the reasons for case study rejection, you can often work through them successfully.
All’s well that ends well.
Lessons learned: Let legal see the release form before starting a customer story.
Find more tips on clearing roadblocks to customer story signoff in Ch. 8 of Stories That Sell.
