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Intro: I’m Paul Higgins, an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who, for five years, struggled to grow a cloud Consulting business whilst battling a chronic disease. With the help of mentors and experts, I got the business model right, built a sales and marketing engine, and developed a high-performing team that ended in a successful exit. I received a kidney transplant from a mate, and now on my second life, I dedicate my time to helping other Cloud Consultants go quickly with less effort to enjoy life. Detecting an accent, I'm an Aussie working globally from Melbourne, Australia. I interview successful Cloud Consultants sharing their scaling story to give you inspiration and practical tips. I have dedicated experts for Cloud Consultants on the show to save you time and money by working with the right people. If you want to scale quickly with less effort to enjoy life, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

(0:55): Imagine this, you're on a sales call and the probability of success is very high and then the client drops the big question. The question you really don't want at that time. The question is, can I talk to someone like me that you've worked with before? You pause awkwardly, not knowing how to answer it. In the past, when someone has taken the time to talk to others, the momentum has suffered, and a lot of occasions you've probably lost the sale. Also, you know, when you hear it from someone else, it is so much better than hearing it from you. But what do you do? You're in a bit of a quandary. 

(1:33): Hello, this is Paul Higgins and welcome to the cloud consultants solo show. In this podcast, we'll give you a way to close the sale without losing that momentum. It is called a case study and I have a format just for you. Whether it's your first time tuning in or you're regular, you'll find insights gleaned from my experience, scaling, selling a cloud consulting business and mentoring hundreds of others. Subscribe now so you don't miss an episode. Now let's dive into the problem at hand. You're good at what you do and you get great results for clients, but clients don't want to hear it from you. How good you are, right? That's not what they're interested in. And you don't want to give them clients' names to talk to, right? As I said in the intro, it can slow the whole momentum down of the sale. And for a lot of clients, they don't want to have their identity shared with others, right? And that's very common in our says industry.

(2:32): So a great option is to give them a case study and not a boring case study like some of those SaaS vendors ones create. I'm sure you've been, you know, into a sequence and you've been sent them before. And also don't get me started on those white papers, right? Who reads them? Like if you ever read a white paper, they waste millions of dollars producing them when they can be giving it to you. Yes, you for marketing support. Anyway, I'll get off my high horse and back to the case study. I like a format I learned from a person called Taki Moore.  I've mentioned him on past episodes, but he does marketing for consultants. He's very charismatic and I like his case study buildup. So a big shout out and a thank you for you, Taki. And then I've adapted it for you as a cloud slash SaaS consultant. And there's six sections in it. So first person, second problem, third impact, four actions, five outcomes, and the last one, number six is lessons. So what I'm going to do is give you a quick example to illustrate the point. And I'll have a guide for you that I'll provide you shortly. Right? So if you're out walking, riding, driving, whatever it is, go through these and think of something. And then we've got the guide for you at the end. 

(3:49): So the first one is person. So ask for their permission to use their name. Right now, not everyone's going to give you the ability to do that. So what you might do is just give a first name and look, people know these days that they may not be able to give you the exact details, but anyway, try to get that if you can. What type of business they're in. So for example, what I've done in the guide is give you an example and it's a social impact agency and what's their monthly recurring revenue. So people sort of get an understanding for the size and also how many team members. Right? But most importantly, you've got the case study that lines up to the industry that you're selling into the size of business and hopefully even down to what they do, which in this case is a social impact agency. So that's person. 

(4:36): The next thing is the problem. Soin this particular case, and what I normally say is, you know, three to four key bullet points here, right? One would be the different systems that they use. So this is in a specific example, right? Well, what's the problem? So it's the different systems they use. It's the knowledge is in people's heads and it's all disparate. There's people working in different time zones. So when they can't get an answer, I'll tell you what the impact of that is in a moment. And they’veI've got unwieldy spreadsheets, right? And it's all in Google and it's a mess. Right? So so far you've covered the person, you've covered the problem. 

(5:13): The next is the impact. And this is the most important thing that I see most people miss in the case studies. What's the impact? So in this specific example, the impact was slow decision-making. Even worse, there was incorrect decisions being made. And some of that slow decision-making was because they're on different time zones and just couldn't get to the people to make the decisions at the right time. This led to tensions and a lack of trust. It sort of had a magnification, I suppose, of the problem that started off just not being able to get the right information at the right time, turn into something bigger. And sadly, in this case, it led to staff turnover and it was the people they wanted to really keep that left. Right? So so far we've gone through person, problem, impact. And this will be clear when you go through the guide, but we'll get at the end. 

(6:03): The next one is action. So what did they do? And in this case, what would you do? Okay. So they moved to a platform called Notion. They could have moved to any platform, but that's what they did. But most importantly, is one platform. They used a key champion to champion it internally. Right. So I'm sure you've done this on many occasions, but you get a key user that's really interested in it. And then you made it their, their idea. And then they got their peers on board rather than you trying to sell it. They did a lot of user training. They did lunch and learn sessions, which worked well for them for the different time zones. They had a dedicated admin resource, which is super critical to have something that's going to stick. And then they share their success stories internally. Right. So that, that built momentum. So once again, we've gone through the person first, the problem, the impact, the actions. 

(6:57): So then out of those actions, what are the outcomes, right? Which people want to see. They don't buy the drill. As I often tell you, they buy the whole. So what was the whole? It was that they retained their best people, which is great. And we all know how hard it is to get new people and then train them up. The second was they improve their profit margins. And the third is that they improve their MPS scores. So that's the way that they were getting measured by their end clients and they improved that. Right. So we've gone through people we've gone through, or the person, the problem, the impact, the actions, the outcomes. 

(7:34): And last thing is the lessons. Right. I think this is really powerful to help you bring it to your client, is what are the lessons learned? So in this specific case, it was make the job easier and people will stay good people and a poor process. That's what they had. They had great people. They just made it so hard. They had one arm tied behind their back and they dedicated money to solve the problem. And then they also had a person to keep it in place, which was really important.

(8:01): Okay. So just a quick recap of this case study. The framework is person, problem, impact, actions, outcomes, and lessons. They're the six. So let's get you started right now with a seven-page case study builder, which shows you how to close more deals faster. Right. So we will give you that and there's three key actions I want you to take. One is download the case study builder. The second is create just one case study. And then based on that one case study, then embed the process. But bottom line is people simply want to know you have helped people like them before and you've got them a result. And it doesn't have to mean that it's three weeks or four weeks and trying to get through to clients or, you know, clients, past clients of yours, and it becomes very messy. You can actually close the sale on that call because you've got some great case studies that they can do. And if you can get some videos, that's even better.

(9:04): Okay. Time for action. So get the case study builder I mentioned and you'll get also three bonus frameworks in it, including Donald Miller's from Story brand. Just click and go over to paulhigginsmentoring.com/casestudy. The link will be in the show notes. So ready, set, go. See you next time on the Cloud Consultants show, the solo show for more quick and simple ways to grow your cloud consulting business and live more of the life you want now.

Outro: Learning is just one piece of the puzzle. it is now time for action. Head to Today's show page at paulhigginsmentoring.com/podcast, get the links, and put it into action. Head to your favorite podcast platform, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Suggest topics for me to cover at [email protected], and don't wait one more minute to gain access to content, especially for you, a cloud consultant at paulhigginsmentoring.com/newsletter. This could be the difference between wasting time figuring it out yourself or scaling quickly with less effort to enjoy life.