How To Provide The Competitive Advantage Through Writing Success Stories

What Is a Success Story?

So let's look at the definition. Success story is an example of a successful practice when a company has achieved documented successful results. Success stories can be as short as three paragraphs or as long as twenty pages. It can be distributed in print, in PDF format, in the company newsletter; it also can be posted on your Web site, distributed at conferences, tailored and packaged to particular audiences for customer meetings, and sent in direct mail packages.

What are the reasons to write success stories?

• You can give your readers an example of real successful project. Examples can help to understand difficult concepts and complex business issues.

• You can generate empathy to enable readers to empathize with the challenge that you faced in your success story, in case your readers face a similar trouble. The goal is to make readers to closely identify with the author of the relevant success story.

• You can add credibility. People usually believe success stories because such case studies usually relate a factual situations, besides they are full of real facts. A good success story full with facts and figures can demonstrate ROI (in case the documentation of a return on investment is possible).

• You can share your ideas with others and to learn what works and what doesn't work.

• You can let the public know that you do good work that positively impacts people's lives

Writing a success story about your business provides the competitive advantage that your business need, and give you additional reason to be proud of your business which is also important for a successful businessman like you.

CARP - Model helps to write a good success story

There are a lot of ways to write an interesting and persuasive story and you can easily google them. Today we offer you the CARP-model for wring success stories. The model is easy to understand and follow, it's flexible enough to be changed giving you much space for self-expression and imagination. Finally it's quite effective.

The CARP-structure consists of 4 parts:

1. Challenge
2. Action
3. Result
4. Perspective

Challenge - Make readers identify with the challenge!

Who had the challenge? Who cares? What problem, issue or concern needed addressing? What was the cost of addressing or not addressing it? Why was it important?


Action - Demonstrate how you responded to the challenge!

What did you do to address your challenge? How big was the project? Include inputs and outputs - activities (teaching, facilitation, product development and people. Which product or services did you use to solve the problem? How did our products and services help? Why do you choose this product?

Result - Show that the benefits are real, quantifiable and compelling!

What resulted? Use quantitative and qualitative data to describe important outcomes (changes and benefits) achieved as a result of the actions described earlier. Describe the benefits you achieved (including benefits like increased customer satisfaction or reduced stuff turnover). Who benefited and how?


Perspective - Show that achieved excellent results are the part of continuous growth and you are full of plans and perspectives.

What is the perspective for the future? Is there a next stage that you now plan to implement? What are your goals and intentions? How do you plan to change your business in future?


So you need to follow the CARP-model and it will keep you from becoming confused while writing your success story. Answer all questions and you will get well-structured and clear success story. And some more tips:

• Proofread the text
• Don't forget about the appealing lead to the story
• Use active vs. passive voice
• Use attractive pictures
• Focus on the reader's interest (usually in terms of how clients benefit).
• Read it aloud before submitting somewhere
• Try to follow the classic structure for writing a success story: Problem and Solution, Before and After, Then and Now.
• If the story seems too long, delete one or more of the least important facts from the story.