Entering Your Evidence

Evidence is crucial in a courtroom—it’s the basis on which the judge or jury makes a decision.

It’s just as important in your sales process and your proposal. The kinds of evidence you use and the way you present it can make a huge difference in whether the verdict goes in your favor or against you.

That’s our topic this time.

We’ve been talking about persuasive structure in our recent messages. We said that effective persuasion follows the NOSE pattern: Needs, Outcomes, Solutions, and Evidence. We start by restating the client’s needs because that gets their attention and reduces their anxiety. We then outline the potential outcomes the client will achieve by solving their problems or meeting their needs, because that creates the motivation to go forward. Third, we recommend a solution, but we do it in a way that’s client-centered rather than product-centered.

I hope that so far you’ve been gulping down the Kool Aid and are in full agreement. Anyway, all that remains is the final step, presenting our evidence.

What are you trying to prove with your evidence? Basically, you are trying to show that you can and will keep your promises. You are trying to show that you can deliver the solution you have proposed on time and on budget. You are trying to convince the decision maker that this is your area of expertise. You might even be trying to establish that your firm is financially stable, properly managed, and well prepared.

Providing evidence is usually the part of the persuasive job that most proposals handle pretty well. But there are two ways we can do the job better. First, we can be thoughtful in selecting our evidence, choosing items that are most likely to appeal to the specific decision maker and to be relevant to the opportunity. And second, we can present our evidence in the most effective way possible.

In future messages we’ll deal with the second issue, covering the best ways to write typical kinds of evidence, such as team member bios, case studies, company histories, and so forth. In this message I want to discuss briefly what kind of evidence to use.

The first rule is that just because you have a particular bit of evidence doesn’t mean you should throw it into a proposal. Just because you have a map of North America showing all 78 of your company’s office locations, don’t use it unless it’s relevant. If you’re trying to sell to a company that also has numerous locations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and they closely match your locations, then it’s relevant and helpful. If you’re selling to a prospect who only has one location, forget it.

The second rule about choosing evidence is to consider the source. There are three kinds of evidence—things you say about yourself, things your clients say about you, and things independent third parties say—and each has a different level of credibility.

Among the things you can say about yourself, you might include information about product features, about the members of your team, about your project management methodology, or about your quality control philosophy. Those things are relatively noncontroversial, and a prospective client could check for accuracy if he or she really wanted to. These forms of evidence help establish your competence. They answer a key question in the decision maker’s mind, namely, “Can these people really do what they claim?”

Another form of evidence you can offer about yourself—a type of evidence that helps minimize the client’s sense of risk or enhances their perception of the value of your offering—focuses on measurable performance indicators and special financial terms. For example, you might provide evidence relating to unique contractual terms that you are offering. Or you might outline a “gain sharing” or “risk sharing” program based on specific performance guarantees or service level agreements.

The second source of evidence is your previous clients. What they’re willing to say about you is often more convincing than what you say about yourself for the obvious reason that they presumably have nothing to gain from it. You can provide evidence to a new prospect from a prior client by including references in your proposal. Just make sure you check with the reference to make certain they’re still happy with you. Sometimes yesterday’s glowing reference becomes tomorrow’s flaming law suit and we didn’t even know it. You might also include testimonials, including images of letters of praise from previous clients. But one of the most convincing forms of evidence you can offer is the case study. As long as your case study is from a client similar in nature to your prospect, who had a similar problem, who had that problem alleviated by a solution similar to the one you’re proposing, and who achieved measurable positive results from your work—then you’re in great shape. However, if your case study just rehashes the history of some project in chronological fashion, forget it. That’s boring.

Finally, third-party evidence comes in the form of awards, rankings, recognition, articles, analyst reports, and so on. Although that form of evidence used to be the most convincing of all, the fact that so many analyst firms are willing to sell their “approval” to the highest bidder has made them somewhat suspect in recent years. All the same, if you were named the “best place to work” or an “industry innovator” or “Five Star Quality Award Winner” or some such thing, take advantage of it when you can. That’s still good stuff.

The Sant Corporation has all kinds of evidence to back up our claims that we can save you time and increase your win ratio through our proposal automation systems and services. And we’d love to share that evidence with you! Give us a call and let us prove it.

Getting Out of the (Information) Dump

Even proposals that start with a great executive summary often lapse into the information dump mode when it comes to presenting the solution. How can we get out of the informative pattern so that our proposals are more effective in delivering a persuasive message?

The heart of the proposal is, of course, your solution. Your clients will be eager to hear your solution, if you have whetted their appetite by first discussing their needs and the probable outcomes of meeting those needs. But you can’t just lapse into the technical “info dump” style of writing that characterizes most solution write-ups.

Take a look at some old proposals, particularly the sections where you describe products or services. Do you see long lists of bullet points, the so-called “features” of your solution? If so, the solutions are informative, not persuasive, and most of your readers are probably skipping these parts.

To present your solution in a more customer-friendly, persuasive way, start by presenting your recommendations in two to three strong, focused paragraphs. You want to start by presenting the solution in general terms, focusing on business fit rather than details of execution. Emphasize why this solution is right for the client. Mention a couple of strong differentiators that set your solution apart and make your recommendations the right ones.

To focus on what matters in your solution, write from the customer’s point of view and move from general to specific:

Recommend the solution in a single sentence. Focus on functional impact, not operational or technical issues. In other words, in the first sentence, tell the customer what your solution will do for them. By the way, if you have a branded product or service, do not use the product name at this point. Product names are jargon and no one knows them outside your company (unless your product is as well known as the iPod or the ThinkPad). Tell the customer what they are getting and why it’s the right approach.

Explain the recommendation in another sentence. In the next couple of sentences, focus on at least one detail that relates to your intellectual capital, unique methodology, relevant expertise, or depth of experience. Focus on how you will do the work and what the results will be.

Differentiate your recommendation. Provide two sentences that state relevant differentiators that set your company apart from others who provide this kind of solution. Indicate why these differentiators add value for the client.

Present the features of your solution in the context of the customer’s needs or problems. Remember that customers do not automatically recognize that the solution you are proposing will give them the results they want. Particularly in a highly complex or technical environment, you must link the outcomes of what you are proposing to the elements of your solution. Imagine the client asking after each mention of a feature, “So what? Why should I care?” This means you should not mention a feature without linking it to the customer’s issues and to the benefits that feature will provide. (The benefits should also be linked to the customer’s issues, needs, or goals, of course.) Remember: a feature is a component of the solution, but a benefit is an impact on the client’s operations that the client will find desirable.

In fact, the details of your solution will be much more persuasive if you don’t focus on features at all. Instead, start by mentioning one of the customer’s key needs. Then mention the feature(s) of your solution that address that need. Point out the benefit the feature offers, and conclude with a brief proof statement showing how this feature of your product or service worked in another account (a mini case study).

Then start with another key need, link that to one or more features, show the benefit, and conclude with proof.

This pattern will make it easy for your customer to see instantly that what you are offering truly is a solution, because it’s presented in the context of the customer’s problems or needs.

After you’ve shown how the customer’s needs are being addressed, you can move into a more traditional description, going through the important details of your product or service in some logical order. Now if the customer starts to skim, we don’t mind because we’ve already made our point persuasively.

You can store persuasive descriptions of your products and services in the content library that comes with ProposalMaster and RFPMaster. That way you can pick and choose the right details to present at the right time and keep yourself from falling into the information dump.

Does it Sizzle?

Ever hear the expression, “Don’t sell the steak—sell the sizzle?”

No, it wasn’t Snoop Dog who first said it. (He said something about “f’shizzle” which I have never understood.) It was Elmer Wheeler, a man who’s scarcely remembered today but who was America’s number one sales guru for more than twenty years.

“Don’t sell the steak—sell the sizzle,” said Elmer Wheeler. And he went on to say, “The sizzle has sold more steaks than the cow ever has, although the cow is, of course, mighty important.”

What Wheeler meant by a “sizzle” is the detail that has primary appeal for the customer—the aspect of our product or service that grabs their imagination and gets them excited. It’s the feature that’s most closely linked to the customer’s interests or motivations.

Wheeler described “sizzles” as being the “best selling arguments” we can come up with, factors that have a real gut-level appeal to the buyer. Wheeler thought this kind of appeal was spontaneous and irrational, and he used lots of food analogies to make his point—the sizzle of the steak, the bubbles in the wine, the tang of the cheese, the aroma of the coffee. A good “sizzle” will have the same immediate impact on us as walking into a restaurant and smelling something delicious, like hot pizza.

Wheeler’s point is a good one. Customers want to know, what’s in it for me? Unfortunately, the vast majority of sales presentations and proposals focus on facts. They cover details of the product or service or, even worse, the vendor’s history. No sizzle there!

A good sizzle should answer the one question every customer has rattling around in their head when they are listening to our sales presentation or reading our proposal: So what?

According to Wheeler, the rule to remember is this: “What is a ‘sizzle’ to one person may be a ‘fizzle’ or a whole bonfire to another person. Therefore, fit the ‘sizzle’ to the prospect on hand!” Figure out your client’s hot button and lead with that.

A technique I recommend to clients is to itemize their differentiators. What is it you do that nobody else does? What are the unique features of your products or services? What separates you in terms of methodology, management techniques, facilities or resources from the competition?

Once you’ve got your list of differentiators, put them down the first column of a table. Across the top, put the kinds of value customers look for—increased productivity, reduced operational costs, improved quality, whatever. This gives you a matrix of differentiators and value orientations. Now you can rank each differentiator in terms of its ability to prove to your customer that they’ll get that kind of value if they choose you. If it’s a terrific proof statement, give it maximum points. If it’s basically irrelevant, give it one or none. When you’re all done, you’ll not only have your sizzles, you’ll know when to use them. If you’re selling to a customer who’s looking for guaranteed compliance with regulatory standards, and you have three or four differentiators that help assure that, those are the ones you mention.

The next time your mouth starts watering at the smell of a onions sizzling in the pan or the aroma of chicken roasting on a spit, remind yourself that your sales presentations and proposals need to create that same kind of quick, visceral impact on your prospects and customers. Start looking for the hook, the sizzle, the appeal to the customer’s interests that will make them excited and eager to hear your message.

You can integrate your best sizzles with Sant Suite. To see an interactive, Web-based demo of our software in action, visit our Web site, www.santcorp.com. Or you can request more information from me by sending an e-mail to tomsant@santcorp.com.

Formulas for Solving Word Problems

Clarity is the first rule of persuasion. If our customers don’t understand what we’re saying, they’re not going to reach for their wallets and offer us wads of cash. When people are confused, they slow down the buying process or shut it off completely. So it’s in our best interests to make sure our message is easy to understand. That’s our topic this time.

I was working with a group of engineers recently and mentioned that many editors use mathematical formulas to determine if a piece of text is readable. Their faces lit up like children who just saw grandma and grandpa pull up in a car full of presents.

“Formulas?” they asked. “There are formulas to show us how to write better? Why didn’t anyone tell us this before? We understand formulas.”

So we spent the next half hour looking at readability formulas, why they work, and how they can serve as a rough but reliable guide to the clarity of your writing. I honestly believe those engineers will now write better, because they have a tool to help them measure how well they’re doing.

Most readability formulas (and there are lots of them) measure how long your sentences are and how many big words you use. The underlying assumption is that long sentences and big words are harder to decode. Obviously, long words aren’t always hard to understand. And long sentences aren’t always difficult to read. There are exceptions. However, as a rough guideline, these underlying assumptions work pretty well.

The easiest way to calculate readability is to let your computer do it for you. There are two other formulas that are simple enough you can do the calculations in your head.

Measuring Readability with Your Word Processor

If you use Microsoft Word, open the “Tools: Options: Spelling and Grammar” box and select “Show Readability Statistics.” Now the word processor will calculate your readability each time you run a spelling check. If you want to check the readability on just a portion of a document, simply highlight the portion you want to check and click on the spell check icon. When it asks if you want to check the rest of the document, select “No.”

Microsoft Word presents your readability in a chart titled “Readability Statistics” that gives you lots of useful information. (WordPerfect users have a similar tool that also yields a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level index.)

There’s a lot of useful information here. I can see that my average sentence length is about right (around 15 to 17 words is a good average sentence length for adult readers), and I see that I’ve completely avoided passive voice constructions. But what about the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level numbers? Are they good or bad?

The Reading Ease score is based on a standard of 100. The higher the number, the easier the writing is to understand. In business writing, which includes proposals, of course, a good score would be somewhere between 50 and 70. Based on that score, my paragraph is all right, but it could be simpler.

The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level measurement correlates the complexity of the writing with the equivalent U.S. grade level of education the reader needs to read the particular passage easily. (Note that this is strictly a measurement of the complexity of the writing. It does not mean the content is appropriate for someone at that level. Readability and content are different issues.)

What is the right level for your proposal? For your executive summary, aim for a grade level equivalent of 10 or less. That’s approximately the level of front page articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, which are clearly intended for well educated adults. Other parts of the proposal could creep a little higher than 10, but 12 is the danger line. If the grade level is higher than 12, you must simplify the writing. Unfortunately, I’ve seen executive summaries that had readability scores above 20!

Sometimes you can’t use the word processor to calculate readability. Maybe you have hard copy only, or maybe the text is stored in Adobe Acrobat. Retyping an entire passage just to measure its readability is not a task most of us would gladly undertake. The good news is that you can still calculate readability easily by using either of two simple techniques: Gunning’s Fog Index or the SMOG Index.

Gunning's Fog Index

Robert Gunning first published his measure of readability in 1952. Half a century later, people still produce “foggy” prose, so his tool is still relevant. To calculate the Fog Index, follow these three steps:

1. Choose a passage of about 100 words and determine the average sentence length for that passage. (You just divide the number of sentences into the total number of words.)

2. In the same passage, count the number of big words—which, by definition, means words with three syllables or more. Do not include proper nouns (like Cincinnati), words that are combinations of short, easy words (compound words like bookkeeper and understand), or verb forms that acquire three syllables by the addition of -ed, or -es or -ing (like created, trespasses, traveling).

3. Add together the average sentence length and the number of big words. Then, to determine the Fog Index, multiply this sum by .4. This will produce a number that is a grade level equivalent, just as you got from the Flesch-Kincaid index.

The Smog Index

Like the Fog Index, the Smog Index measures the murkiness inherent in a piece of writing. It uses a slightly different method to arrive at the final answer, which is again a school-grade level that indicates the relative difficulty or ease of reading the given passage.

To use the Smog Index, count the number of big words (same definition applies) in a passage of 30 consecutive sentences. Then find the square root of that number. Add 3 and you’ll have a grade level equivalent.

I know these formulas probably sound goofy to you if you’ve never heard or them or tried them before. But if you try them a couple of times, you’ll see that they’re both easy and helpful.

Another way to improve the readability of your writing, of course, is to hire people who can write clearly to do it for you. That’s where the Sant Corporation can help. We have writers trained in persuasive communication principles who know how to produce clear, simple prose for your proposals and presentations.