Using Evidence to Win RFPs

Pretend for a moment that you're preparing for a trip to a country you've never been to, and you want to book a good hotel to help make your trip really spectacular. If you're anything like me, you're going to rely massively on customer reviews. If customers leave rave reviews about the location, service, and comfort: Sold. Done. In my calendar. I was glad to give you my $$$$.

It’s the same with proposals.

When your customers and credible third-party analysts gush about you, that is so much more powerful than you gushing about yourself.

Use Third-Party Evidence to Win RFPs

On paper, you risk the chance of looking exactly the same as everyone else; your competitors can probably do a lot of the same things you do, or at least they will say they can. Providing evidence and customer examples are one of the best ways to make you stand out from your competitors.

Persuasive evidence includes reference stories, reference calls/visits, quotes, awards, statistics, third-party evaluators, and proof in any presentation or demo. You need to employ all of these whenever appropriate.

Let your customers sell for you.

Are you ready to learn how to employ these useful tricks? Of course you are. You’re the best.

Your Audience is Everything

As we go through each piece of persuasive evidence, you need to keep one thing in mind: The Audience. The group of people reading your proposal have something they want to get out of the project; they have their own motives and problems. You need to have a good relationship with these stakeholders to know what these are, so you can tailor your proposal to them specifically.

Not having this information is writing to an audience you don’t know - and you’ll have to guess who and what is important. You can bet at least one of your competitors does know this information, and they will use it intelligently - and win the deal. 

Persuasive Evidence to Win Proposals

Reference Stories

Providing a reference story is the easiest way to prove you can do what you say you can do - and that you can do it well.

When I say "reference stories", I don't mean a long white paper you add as an attachment to the end of your RFP that literally no one will read. A reference story in a proposal answer is a short, one to two sentence example of where you’ve done something similar for someone else. Instead of just saying you can do something, you provide an example where you have done it for a similar customer.

Reference Calls and Visits

Before you receive an RFP, you should have already set up a reference call or visit between the prospects and one of your customers. The visit needs to address something the prospect has some hesitation around, or show how your product can fix one of their current pain points.

You can use the information from that call or visit directly in the response. For example, I once had a prospect who didn't believe we could do something as quickly as we said we could - because they'd never seen it done before. So we set up a visit between a look-alike customer and the prospect, where the customer was able to assuage the prospect’s incredulity. Within the proposal, we were able to reference that visit and how it went - as a reminder that the prospect’s worries were calmed - and that we can do exactly what we say we can do.

Using Video or Gifs

If you get the chance to demonstrate or present your product, this might be where you can once again prove you can do what you say you're going to do.

If there is a specific feature or service that your evaluators are unsure about, but you don’t think a quote or reference story is the right thing? Maybe they need to see it to believe it. You can even use a gif or very short video within the response to prove something is possible.

Event Visits

If you have a small or large customer event, invite your prospect. Maybe even give them VIP status. Once again, event visits should be done before the RFP. It helps your prospect see what your product can do, meet with current customers and your team, and know how special they will feel once they are your customer.

You can also reference the attendance of these events in your proposal when they ask about thought leadership, innovation, and how you partner with your customers. Instead of just writing a response that will probably look identical to your competition, they prospects will have a response that reminds them how true your statement really is.

Quotes

After reference stories, providing quotes is going to be one of the easiest ways to show evidence. 

Quotes are perfect to use in management/executive summaries, more strategic-based questions, feature questions where you can really jump out from the competition, and in general overviews about your product and company. Try and use them for ideas or features that you know are really important to the evaluators.

However, quotes need to be glowing. Never provide a lukewarm quote.

Statistics

If a recognized third-party has done some research about your product, and the outcome was great - use this information wherever relevant. 

But make sure it is easy to read by putting it in a nice graph or visual that really pops. Never make them guess what your statistics are trying to say.

Industry Awards

If you received an industry award for a particular reason, use it somewhere applicable within your response. It shows that an organization or group of people thought you did really well at something, and that resonates with the reader.

Use Look-alike Examples

Evidence from other customers is most effective if the reference is similar in industry and in use case. So if you are pitching to a budget airline company, try and use another budget airline company, instead of an example from a completely different industry.

However, I would suggest using an “impressive” reference from the industry if you think it would be just as persuasive.  

The Evidence Can’t be Lukewarm

I hinted at this before, but your evidence can’t ever be lukewarm. Imagine looking up reviews for a hotel for your next vacation. If you read one that says, “Yeah, it’s pretty good” compared to, “OMG IT IS AMAZING! I can’t imagine staying anywhere else!” You’re going to stay at the second hotel, without question.

Conclusion

Using evidence is one of the best ways to make your response stand out from the competition. Knowing who the evaluators are and what they care about will help you make smart decisions on what type of evidence to use - and when to use it. In short, keep all of your evidence relevant to them and what they care about. 

But aside from the evidence strategies I’ve listed, what types of evidence do you use?