5 Keys to a Great Case Study Presentation in Sales

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1. Think of any great movie plot.
The first step to crafting a great case study presentation is to put on your movie-director hat for a minute. Because a case study is ultimately just an example, which is, in turn, just a story. It’s a story of one of your clients, highlighting the success you’ve helped them achieve. And you want to tell that story just like a great director would direct the plot of a good movie.

Let me explain what I mean. Every case study should start with a customer who’s dealing with a problem and thus struggling to succeed in some way. This is the same essence of a good movie, where the hero of the movie starts out struggling with something they just can’t figure out. At this point, both the customer in our case study and the hero in our movie may have tried some stuff to fix their problem, but nothing has worked very well up until this point.

Next, in every great case study, the customer should meet us (the salesperson) and finally do some things that help them achieve exactly what they want. And as a result, they are able to accomplish specific goals, which you’re going to tell your prospects all about in your presentation. Again, this follows the story arc of any good movie plot—something happens that finally changes everything, and we stay glued to the screen to find out what happens as a result.

2. It’s not about you.
Most case studies and customer examples are very focused on the salesperson and the organization offering the services or selling the products. It's a me-focused presentation. But what we really want to do is focus the case study presentation completely on the customer's example challenges.

By focusing solely on the customer's challenges and where they were before you helped them, you can make your case studies truly powerful when you share them in your presentation. Otherwise, if you focus on yourself, even a great case study will come off sounding like a thinly veiled sales pitch. And that’s the last thing any prospect wants to hear.

3. Know their challenges.
This is less about the actual case studies and more about where the case study presentation fits into the sales process. Before you give your case study presentation, you must fully understand your prospect's challenges in order for the presentation to be effective. The more you understand your prospect's challenges, the more you can leverage your case studies to demonstrate where the prospect is right now versus where they want to go.

So dig deep to find out: What are the outcomes and goals that your prospect is looking to achieve? Seek to understand what they want to achieve, and what exactly is holding them back from getting there—and why. The more you can understand these aspects of your prospect’s world, the better you can demonstrate that you know exactly how to solve their challenges through the case studies you show.

4. Have an arsenal of case studies.
Case studies are like arrows in your quiver. You never know when you're going to need one, so having a number of different case studies in your arsenal is to your benefit. Remember, case studies are really just client examples. They’re the stories of existing customers who you’ve already helped. And when you give a case study presentation, you’re simply talking about their journey, from the challenges that they faced, to what you did to help them, to what they ultimately accomplished with your help.

Having an arsenal of these stories will give you the variety you need to pick and choose the best, most relevant case study for each prospect, depending on what they will connect most with. You never know exactly what the prospect's situation is going to be until you start talking to them. So have an arsenal of case studies at your disposal and pull out the right one when it’s time to present.

5. Get them engaged.
Many salespeople still present in a way that’s very one-sided—like a monologue. But even the presentation phase of the sale should be a true dialogue, a two-way conversation. When giving a case study presentation, you should constantly be bringing the prospect back into the conversation. You might share your case study and then say, “So does that make sense for what you're going through?" or "Do you see how that might work in your world?" And get the prospect to say, "Yeah, I can see exactly" or "You know, actually, our situation is a little bit different." And then you say, "Well, tell me how."

By getting the prospect to engage with your case study presentation, you can turn it into a two-way conversation about the substance of what matters. The more you can get your prospects engaged, the better off you will be.