Proposal Strategy: How We Display Testimonials In Proposals
Every proposal should contain a killer slide which highlights their amazing advantage against others. Here's an example.
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Create Clear Distinctions For Prospective Clients
A common challenge is distinguishing ourselves from others.
Here’s a common situation. We might have spent seven months working with one client to rebuild their entire strategy and only to see another consultant add the same logo to their client list because they attended a single meeting with them at their previous company.
In one of my first posts, I mentioned many consultants haven’t been hired as consultants for the brands whose logos they display on their websites. They use some past association or vague wording to fudge the truth.
This muddies the water for prospective clients. How can they tell the difference between consultants when we all display the same logos?
The most powerful way to do this is through video testimonials.
Video Testimonials Are The Ultimate Form Of Proof
Video testimonials are perhaps the ultimate form of proof. If the client isn’t very happy with your work, they’re not going to give you 30 to 45 minutes of their time to participate in a video testimonial explaining how you helped them.
It also distinguishes us from others. If we can provide clear evidence to support our past success and others can’t, it improves our credibility at the expense of competitors.
I’m even happy to call it out in the proposal itself. i.e. ‘we’re the only consultancy whose clients are happy to speak on our behalf - please explore these testimonials’.
This makes it something for the prospect to consider. Why don’t other consultants have this? This works even better if others are relying on testimonials from unnamed persons. Then the quality of testimonials becomes the challenge.
The key is working out how best to deploy testimonials in the proposal.
What We’ve Learned About Video Testimonials
I used to link to our testimonials showcase (and use a URL which would track if the link was clicked).
To my surprise, the link was almost never clicked. We had spent all this time, energy, and money, creating testimonials no one clicked.
Then I adopted an approach I had seen on websites and simply embedded screenshots of testimonials within the proposal itself. Each video was linked to the hosted video on Vimeo (we send our proposals as PDF files so embedding them within the presentation would be a bad idea).
This gathered a few more clicks, but not as many as I expected.
Finally, on a hunch, I added a note to the slide saying any video listed could be clicked.
This increased the number of clicks on the videos significantly.
Deploy Your Advantage Powerfully
A key part of any proposal is to understand your unique advantage and deploy it powerfully and consistently as part of the process.
Everyone thinks they’re the best consultant. Saying you’re the best doesn’t make you stand out - and might even make you look a little insecure.
For FeverBee, we’ve been around for 14 years whereas most consultants in our space are relatively new. That’s an advantage we press home by showing copious evidence of our success and track record. If we can share a few pages of slides showing testimonials from our clients and competitors can only share a few testimonials, that’s a win for us.
But What If You Don’t Have This?
If you don’t have video testimonials, then get some.
If you can’t get them (that might be another challenge to resolve). But you might also want to refer back to this post:
You might instead compete on a new technique or source of expertise that only you have and find a means to deploy that.
If I was new, I’d be tempted to use a single case study which highlighted how many approaches are so much better and different from others. Show a graph of data showing the impact of what you’ve done. Or use a video presentation embedded within the presentation highlighting exactly what you did and why.
Here’s an example we’ve used effectively in the past:
This all comes down to your proposal strategy. If you’re the experienced option, that’s what you want to draw attention to. If you’re the new, exciting, option with a unique/different approach, the benefits of that approach is what you want to draw attention to.
Whatever your proposal strategy is, make sure you can deploy powerful evidence to support it in the proposal.