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Don’t Think Different. Think What Clients Think
You only get one chance to make a great impression. You knew that, right? Sure.But what about those things which represent you -- your website, your brochures, your people,etc.. Do they make the right/best possible impression for you?
The point:
Are your clients able to understand how you are making that great impression?Let’s break it down and use your proposal template (or brochure) as an example.Look at your proposal template. Many businesses use a template to bid on projects. I do withPerception Lab business. It’s really easy to use a template, pass it around your team and askeveryone to comment on the template, make the changes and then call it done.But is it really done?
No.
Why? Because most of the people around you, if you are anything like typical businesses, arestaffed with SMEs -- Subject Matter Experts who know everything there is to know about TopicABC, but couldn't create a compelling piece of copy or design a great layout if you put a gun totheir heads. Yet, these are the people most sales teams and executives turn to for feedback.Bad idea. For example: just because Mr. Jones is a great Ops VP does not mean he is savvyabout what it takes to develop a compelling sales presentation or proposal.Here are a few thoughts about tuning your proposals:1.Don’t make the first 10 pages (or slides) all about you. No one cares about you, your company or your team -- YET. Spend a page or two conveying that you understand theclient, their needs, their priorities, their rationale in detail. That’s huge, and rarely done.Now you will have the client’s attention.2.Use graphics, but make sure they are relevant and not just clutter. For example, a piechart showing percentages of market share is useless UNLESS you tie it into the client’sworld. Try instead taking the same pie chart showing market share percentages andunderscore that with, “So as you can see Ms. Client, we have years of experience in your industry, understand your environment well and have growing edge in your industry.” Hugedifference.3.Org Charts -- everyone uses them. But its boring, doesn’t necessarily differentiate you anddoes not position you in the mind of the client. People, names, titles. Great. But what isyour client thinking? I’ll tell you: “How does this relate to me? What can they do for me?What WILL they do for me?” are the questions you have to answer. Honestly, some salesteams think a large complex org chart means that the client will be impressed. Not so much.Instead, try this: relabel your org chart as “ABC Client Partnership Team” and instead of allthose boxes with names and titles a client won’t understand, use terms the client willunderstand and PREFER such as Chief Customer Care Manager or Performance Manager or Your Quality Supervisor”. My goal would be to have the team leader with five to eightdirect reports on the org chart. If those direct reports have direct reports too, why notinclude a brief synopsis of the sub team, head count and speciality knowledge/roles too?That way at one glance, the client can say, “Hey -- they assembled a tailored team just for 
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