Chapter 7: Establishing Your Credibility

Overview

There are four indispensable categories of information that every proposal should contain in order to be fully credible. Over the years we have found that these four kinds of content correlate highly with winning proposals, but that when one or more of them is missing, win ratios go down significantly. To some extent, the four kinds of content are a matter of common sense. They grow naturally out of your sales process, your client-centered analysis.

The four kinds of content you must include in every proposal are:

1. Evidence that you understand the client's problem or need. The reason for this one is obvious, based on our earlier discussion of the persuasive paradigm and of the process for developing a client-centered message.

2. A recommendation for a specific solution that will solve the problem and produce positive business results. Again, an obvious kind of content. Please remember, though, that most proposals don't recommend anything. Instead, they describe products and services. Simply writing in generalities about how good your stuff is won't do the job. And providing customers with a couple of pages of bullet points, listing all of your product's features whether they apply to this customer or not, is a great way to bore people.

3. Evidence of your qualifications and competence to do the job on time and on budget. The kinds of evidence that work include references, testimonials, case studies and success stories, third-party validation (awards, recognition, published reviews, analyst reports), resumes of key team members, project plans, management approaches, even the company history. The kind of evidence you include should be dictated by what the customer wants to see. Less is more in this area. One good case study, from the same industry, showing the same kinds of results that your customer is seeking, is much better than three or four generic case studies from companies that aren't even similar to the prospective customer.

4. A convincing reason why the decision maker should choose your recommendation. Your proposal must contain a clear, explicit value proposition. It must show that the customer gets more by buying from you than he or she can get from choosing any other option. We'll look later, in Chapter 11, at how to create a compelling win theme, but for now it's important for you to realize that if you provide the first three kinds of content, but fail to include the fourth, you have a very low probability of winning.

Why are these four essentials so important? Because they provide the decision maker with the information he or she needs to evaluate your proposal successfully and recommend it to others. Specifically, the decision maker wants to know three things:

1. Am I getting what I need? This question is about the responsiveness of your submission. It addresses the customer's concerns about whether you actually understand his or her business, whether you are addressing the important needs. The customer wonders, "Are they proposing what I need, or are they proposing what they have? Worse yet, are they proposing what will generate the biggest commission for them regardless of whether it really meets my needs?"

2. Can they do it? Can this vendor live up to the promises made in this proposal? Does the vendor have the competence to deliver the solution in a professional manner? Have they handled similar projects, built similar equipment, handled similar installations before? Do they have the resources to do the job? Do they have a quality-control program? A change management procedure? Do they know what they're talking about?

3. Is it a fair value? Customers are savvy enough to know that some vendors may lowball a bid, submitting an unrealistic price with the intention of making their profit on change orders. What they want is a fair price with no hidden costs, no misleading analyses, and no underestimating of the level of effort involved. They want to see what kind of return on investment they can expect, and they want to know if you are offering any value-added factors that make your pricing structure more appealing.

Generally, the decision maker's evaluation is weighted in that order: appropriateness to the needs, competence to deliver, attractiveness of the value proposition. In complex opportunities, where proposals are evaluated by committees or where the initial set of submissions is winnowed down to a manageable few, the criteria applied first are almost always about compliance and capabilities. It's not until the final stage that the customer attempts to compare on value.