The first step in the lifecycle of a good case study is gathering information. Knowledge management, or compiling, storing and organizing you’re a company’s work history, is a challenge we’ve seen consistently among companies of every size and across a wide cross section of industries.  Typically, companies are so focused on addressing their customers’ most urgent challenges that they fail to keep track of project details along the way. Once the project is concluded, stakeholders move to the next challenge and on to new roles, locations or even employers.

So, the real keys to information gathering are timeliness and being proactive. Keeping detailed records of projects in progress can be very helpful.  But we advise our clients to develop project closeout documentation that prompts them to summarize on project conclusion the key difficulties overcome, methodologies and approaches used, roles and responsibilities fulfilled, project metrics, and accomplishments both subjective and quantifiable.

Guidelines for usage

Once you’ve successfully gathered the necessary project details, your challenge is to present them in a way that best appeals to your customer, addresses their concerns about you, and supports your case as a partner of choice. A case study can be presented as a standalone piece of collateral or as part of a proposal, presentation or other document. In any instance, we adhere to the following guidelines when producing case studies for our clients:

Organize it.  Divide case study content into at least two, but preferably three or more sensible sections. We typically describe the customer’s business problem, our client’s solution, and results achieved separately.

Format it.  As with all deliverables we help our clients develop, we discourage presentation of monolithic blocks of text. Rather, we recommend use of tables, color and font variation, bullets and graphics like timelines, maps and process flow diagrams to make case studies less intimidating and more digestible to the reader.

Focus it.  Many projects solve more than one business challenge. Similarly, case studies can be used to address certain customer concerns specifically and deemphasize less relevant aspects. Accordingly, we frequently develop and archive separate case studies for the various aspects of a given project or client relationship. We review client case studies carefully prior to each usage to measure their applicability overall, but also to ensure we are addressing any known concerns or objectives on the part of the prospective customer.

Quantify it.  We always try to include important facts and figures describing the prior work.  How many people were involved?  How many work locations and where? Over what period of time was the work conducted? What was the total value of the project? What time or cost savings was achieved? What quality or safety improvements did we make? Such facts and figures grab your customer’s attention and help him establish a context for your story and its relevance to his current challenge.

Substantiate it.  We recommend inclusion in the results portion of the case study any evidence that validates our claims of project success. Customer scorecard data or satisfaction survey results, reference information and/or testimonials are all outstanding ways to substantiate your story.

Opacity or transparency

Many of our clients have confidentiality agreements with their customers that prevent them from disclosing details about their relationship or even the relationship as a whole. Such agreements can impact what you disclose in your case studies but shouldn’t prevent you from using them entirely. Typically in such cases, we’ll provide some project details without disclosing the identity of the customer. For example, instead of naming an insurance industry customer, we’ll describe it generically as a “Fortune 100 Global Insurance Company”. Or, rather than identifying a specific global oil company, we’ll call it a “Fortune 10 Oil & Gas Producer”. Similarly, where we have a testimonial but do not wish to identify the source, we’ll describe the source’s title while keeping the name confidential. Obviously, the optimal situation is where we have permission for full disclosure of all these details, but in the absence thereof we seek to provide the best case study we can under the circumstances.

In short, if you take the time to gather the right information and present it in a compelling way, a case study can be a vital weapon in your business communications arsenal. Enacting the simple measures summarized here are an excellent first step toward painting a clear picture of your capabilities and expertise. As always, should you need assistance improving your knowledge management or business communications capabilities, the professionals at Kinetic stand ready to help.

About Kinetic Group, LLC

Kinetic Group provides business communication services including brand/identity creation, website and marketing collateral design and content development, video production, and outsourced proposal/presentation writing. The Kinetic team brings decades of expertise developing the branding, positioning and communication tools that help clients establish unique identities, grow awareness and win business. The company serves companies around the world and across a wide range of industries with a distinct orientation toward practical, compelling output designed to achieve specific results in an efficient, client-centric fashion. Kinetic can be reached at (323) 465-5296 or info@kineticgroupconsulting.com.

(…or you can say it with pictures.)

Alright…so indulge us a bit with the title and the shameless Concentration game show derivation.  But if you have continued to read, the chances are that your interest was piqued or you were entertained – and that was the exact objective.  You see, if you can interest, entertain …or at the very least make your message easily accessible and quick to digest for your audience, the chances are that they will continue to read…and continue to absorb the information you what them to.

So, you can present your readers with a wall of exceptionally beautifully written prose – that will look intimidating and never get read – or move as much content as possible into relevant and easy to understand graphics. Or put another way, graphics can help your message end up:

Using Kinetic as a guinea pig, what we present below is a look into the difference between utilizing text versus graphics.  Judge for yourself which is easier to digest, which has more immediate impact, and which is simply more enjoyable to move through.

Work Flow

Nothing is more given to diagramming than work flows, process, decisions, etc.  That being said, we have seen numerous companies dedicated to presenting this information in lengthy outlines that does not give the client an opportunity to see the broad overview of a work flow and understand how everything comes together.There is nothing inherently complicated about the proposal development process…but it would take a lot of words to describe it.  Here, a picture is rather literally worth about 1,000 of them …

Qualifications and Services

A company’s qualifications to do specific work should not be reserved to long paragraphs of structured text. Just as people will quickly make judgments about the quality of your firm based on the appearance of the document, they can also quickly digest abbreviated information and extrapolate that information to create a bigger picture.  Offering snapshots of information provides immediate access to critical information while not allowing the reader to get bored. Even where some portions of a document may be more text-heavy than others, the integration of graphics helps keep things lively.

Services

Even where text must be used, the application of design elements can serve to effectively organize your content and deliver it in a pleasing, easily accessible way.

Sometimes, Only Pictures Can Really Work

“The Kinetic model matches variable client need with a variable cost solution.”

While that short and sweet sentence captures the essence of why we are economically compelling, we rarely allow that statement to stand on its own. In proposals, if left purely to text, we can easily spend a page or more discussing how that statement operates in reality – the difference between relying on in-house permanent employees, the variable (or cyclical) nature of RFPs and proposals, how we address those issues in a dynamic and efficient way, etc.

What we have found is that by using some relatively simple graphics, we can tell 50% of that story quite easily, and visually break up our documents with eye-catching graphics.

Conclusion

We hope we’ve illustrated for you how a variety of different graphics can be employed to simplify your proposals, make them more accessible to your audience, and make your documents a more compelling, entertaining and engaging read.  And of course…

(If you need a hand, just call or email!)

About Kinetic Group, LLC

Kinetic Group provides business communication services including brand/identity creation, website and marketing collateral design and content development, video production, and outsourced proposal/presentation writing. The Kinetic team brings decades of expertise developing the branding, positioning and communication tools that help clients establish unique identities, grow awareness and win business. The company serves companies around the world and across a wide range of industries with a distinct orientation toward practical, compelling output designed to achieve specific results in an efficient, client-centric fashion. Kinetic can be reached at (323) 465-5296 or info@kineticgroupconsulting.com.

The utilization of claims should be left to advertisers. Proposals, as a sales and marketing tool and potential basis for binding contract discussions, must inhabit the world of fact. Not only is this approach safer, but your documents will be that much more compelling for it.

Take this hypothetical example:

1. “Brite ‘n White Toothpaste is the very best at getting teeth white, and tastes great!”
2. “According to independent research, Brite ‘n White was found to whiten and clean
   teeth more thoroughly than any other non-prescription brand of toothpaste. Additionally, Brite ‘n White scored in the top 3 in a double-blind taste test.”

The punchlines of these messages are essentially the same, but their impacts are dramatically different. In the first statement, a simple claim is made that is unsupported. While it may be a great sentiment to want to include in a proposal or marketing brochure, a claim left unsupported by fact is left open to doubt or outright dismissal by the reader.

The second statement offers a factual foundation for the claims made in the first. The toothpaste has been proven to be the best at cleaning teeth, and has scored quite well in terms of taste. The fact that there may be some prescription toothpastes that clean better, or as many as two others that taste better, serves to bolster the company’s credibility: they are willing to demonstrate their honesty by pointing out minor shortcomings while not detracting from the overall strength of their product’s position.

How to Make the Facts Work for You

Writing in a factually specific way requires employing a disciplined approach. Claims are easy to write and can sneak into your documents without your conscious awareness. The trick is to review your work critically and thoroughly, identifying all of the claim statements you have included. The keys to getting to a point where you can turn claims into facts are the following:

1. Know your company’s internal metrics – Without knowing what you’ve done, where you’ve done it, for whom, and what results you’ve achieved, writing fact-based documents will be exceptionally challenging. Think of the relative power of the following statements:
   • We have performed the scope of work detailed in the request for proposal many times for some of the most significant global companies in the transportation industry.
   • We have executed this very scope of work more than 80 times. Of those engagements, over 20% were in the transportation industry. Additionally, we have performed this scope in TransPort’s headquarters location within the past 24 months. Finally, in each of our engagements, we were able to successfully complete the project within budget and ahead of schedule.
2. When internal metrics are weak, develop approximations:
   • If you cannot possibly develop precise numbers, establishing approximations can be effective: “We have completed this scope more than 125 times,” or, “We have worked with more than 35 companies in your industry.” These statements, while not totally precise, are factual and illustrative enough to elevate them over pure claims.
   • Once you’ve established a line in the sand for these figures, you can add to them actual statistics tracked more accurately going forward.
3. Develop some good, detailed case studies. Regardless of what statistics you have available, case studies help you demonstrate to prospective customers exactly how you’ve helped others resolve very similar challenges.
   • Case studies augment statistics with factual details that illustrate the depth of your technical capabilities, responsiveness, flexibility and customer service as few other tools can.
   • Of course, developing good case studies is easier said than done. In fact, we’ve seen this aspect of building knowledge management capabilities to be a significant challenge for almost every client we’ve worked with, so we’ll cover this topic separately in another post.

An Important Distinction: Statements from Others

As we discussed previously in Ten Easy Ways to Make Sure Your References Are Saying the Right Things About You, references are an excellent way for other people to rave about you in a somewhat subjective manner that frequently have the power of pure fact. Similarly, client testimonials (actual quotes from actual clients) are no less valuable in that the commentary of others about you is frequently given more consideration for its factual basis than any claims you can make about yourself.

Making your Facts Stand Out

You may find it tempting to bury your facts and figures within paragraphs of text, but we think facts and figures are important enough that they’re worth separating out in graphical form as diagrams or tables. For example, we keep the statistics below handy to credentialize ourselves to prospective clients. We think they are compelling facts presented in a way to make immediate impact:

So, make it a priority to replace claims with facts in your sales and marketing deliverables; your documents, and your results, will improve.

About Kinetic Group, LLC

Kinetic Group provides business communication services including brand/identity creation, website and marketing collateral design and content development, video production, and outsourced proposal/presentation writing. The Kinetic team brings decades of expertise developing the branding, positioning and communication tools that help clients establish unique identities, grow awareness and win business. The company serves companies around the world and across a wide range of industries with a distinct orientation toward practical, compelling output designed to achieve specific results in an efficient, client-centric fashion. Kinetic can be reached at (323) 465-5296 or info@kineticgroupconsulting.com.

The trick is organizing all of them in a way that leads to effective and efficient reuse.  After all, they won’t do much good isolated on someone’s hard drive or buried in a bloated shared drive folder.  And if they’re hard or impossible to find, the cost to you will take the form of frustration, redevelopment, and even lost business.

While many of our clients think of us as writers, graphics gurus or positioning strategists, some of the highest-value work we do revolves around creating effective and sustainable proposal management capabilities.  After all, one of our ‘value adds’ is that once we develop something for a client, it is theirs to use. This particular value add isn’t worth much if they can’t find what we’ve created.

One of the first things we implement for a new client is a system for archiving submitted proposals and presentations. We’ll create a naming convention, a tracking tool and a storage system so that completed deliverables are conveniently organized and easy to locate.  For some of our clients, we include within this system applicable request documentation and correspondence related to each opportunity so that it becomes an “of record” system that may even be an input to the contracts function.

More to it than archiving old proposals

By properly storing and organizing submitted deliverables, we’ve made it easier to find them, but we haven’t made it any easier to find important components within these files. This is where a ‘reuse library’ comes into play.

A reuse library is a system for organizing and storing previously-developed proposal components outside of actual proposals for fast and easy retrieval in the future. As new ‘best-in-class’ materials are developed, they are placed in the library.  Common reuse library ingredients include:

• Proposal and presentation templates
• Important company facts and figures
• Value proposition and positioning - Graphics and text used to describe your value proposition, market position and differentiators
• Approaches or methodologies used to address business requirements
• People - Biographies or resumes of key personnel
• Content used to address specific issues or as responses to customer questions in various flavors
• Graphics - Org charts, timelines, processes, maps
• Experience - Case studies, references, metrics
• Certificates - Licenses, memberships, certifications
• Marketing collateral
• Sample deliverables
• White papers & market research documentation

The important thing is that these items are categorized, labeled and stored separately to make finding them and using them again a snap.

Maintenance as important as setup

An out-of-date reuse library is perhaps a greater liability than not having one at all, so it is critical that the library be maintained in real time, in a consolidated, centralized location.  As new items are created or older ones are revised or improved upon, the new best-in-class materials should be added to the library, replacing obsolete items as appropriate.  You can even add a notification function to the system, announcing to all stakeholders any significant changes to the system – new categories, folders or items.

The system should be accessible to anyone who plays a role in producing customer-facing sales and marketing deliverables.  And while we’re not against egalitarianism or flat organization structures, we feel strongly that updating privileges should be limited to a centralized proposal management function.  Again, whether you house this function internally or outsource it to us, the organization and contents of the tool must remain consistent with its purpose:  a repository for truly best-in-class materials that are correct, compelling and easy to find.  Extending maintenance of the tool to a wider audience has the potential to compromise this objective.

A variety of tool possibilities

The tool you select for storage can take several different forms.  We’ve helped clients implement and maintain MS SharePoint with considerable success, and we’ve also organized a system of simple folders on a shared drive to great effect.  The former provides greater categorization and filtering functionality through its tagging capabilities, while the latter is faster, cheaper and simpler to implement.  There are, of course, many other document management systems suitable for this purpose, built either on traditional servers or in ’cloud’ environments.  Like any tool, however, the quality of the result ultimately boils down to how it is used and how well it is maintained.

Whatever tool you choose, it is important that it not reside on a single user’s computer; this is not the kind of repository you want leaving the building after hours (or permanently in the event of an employee separation).  By building this system on a company server, it becomes important institutionalized knowledge extending across time, business units and geographies.

Want to learn more about how to produce your proposals and presentations faster, cheaper and easier by leveraging existing materials?  Contact Kinetic today to find out how to implement or optimize your own reuse library.

About Kinetic Group, LLC

Kinetic Group provides business communication services including brand/identity creation, website and marketing collateral design and content development, video production, and outsourced proposal/presentation writing. The Kinetic team brings decades of expertise developing the branding, positioning and communication tools that help clients establish unique identities, grow awareness and win business. The company serves companies around the world and across a wide range of industries with a distinct orientation toward practical, compelling output designed to achieve specific results in an efficient, client-centric fashion. Kinetic can be reached at (323) 465-5296 or info@kineticgroupconsulting.com.

1. A customer with a real, identified need and budgeted money to address it;
2. A customer’s identification of your firm as a prospective supplier; and,
3. A semi-captive audience – the customer has requested information from you, and someone in the customer organization is obligated to read it.

These are critical insights that very few marketing or advertising campaigns can reveal. Therefore, when your company can meet all of its client’s requirements, it is essential to not only respond, but to draft a document that is customized and highly compelling.

However, there are many occasions when the fit between your company and the client’s requirements make for a less-than-perfect match. Circumstances causing such a mismatch can include:

• Absence of a positive relationship or track record with the requestor;
• Poor fit in terms of product, capabilities, resource availability or geography;
• Lack of required documented qualifications or experience;
• Inability to disclose requested information; and/or,
• Unfavorable economics.

When one or more of these conditions exists, it may be your instinctive reaction to simply ignore the request, but in such circumstances we remind our clients of the fantastic opportunity the request presents to build awareness of their company, brand and solutions. This is targeted, focused marketing at its best – you have a potential client with an articulated need and money to spend.  A response just might break down a barrier to larger conversations and a new or expanded relationship. Therefore, we counsel our clients to consider very seriously not only the decision to submit a response, but what kind of response they develop and ultimately submit.  It is important to remember that there are other ways to address a request besides an ideal, fully-compliant response.

Partially-Compliant Response

When our client is in possession of a request for proposal and meets most, but not all, of its requirements, we may recommend a partially-compliant response. This recommendation will hinge in large part on our client’s relationship with its client and the potential risks and rewards of such an approach. It should be noted that this is not a “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks” strategy. A partially-compliant response calls for thoughtful writing that openly and honestly presents our client’s capabilities and shortcomings in relation to the current opportunity.

When done correctly, this kind of response might keep you in the game even though you don’t meet all the requirements. And even if you don’t win all or part of the opportunity, you might just gain significant credibility and client mindshare that open doors for future opportunities – the exact purpose of good marketing collateral.

No-Bid Letter

When the gap between requirements and solution is too wide even for a partially-compliant response, a no-bid letter can still promote your company, highlight your abilities and differentiate you from the competition.  This is a thoughtful letter that, in addition to stating the reasons for declining to bid, details your capabilities and qualifications and how your company could help meet other business needs or help with the current opportunity should the requirements change.

Again, the idea here is to take advantage of the opportunity to present a customized document that speaks directly to an interested audience, gains awareness and builds momentum for future business. Few marketing collateral pieces have it this good.

Consider a Wider Audience

One of the biggest mistakes respondents to requests for proposals or information make is forgetting how diverse the group of people reading the response might be.  It’s easy to imagine the point of contact referenced in the request being the only reviewer, but this is seldom the case.  Responses are often reviewed by several different people working independently or in committee.  Reviewers might include representatives from the supply chain, operations, finance and executive teams.  Sometimes, responses are stored, forwarded or otherwise reviewed later by people with no stake in the immediate business challenge.

Therefore, it is vital to remember that whatever type of response you are submitting (fully compliant, partially compliant, or no-bid letter) may be read by a wide audience and continue to be read long after the current procurement process has concluded. Accordingly, the document should speak comprehensively to your company’s capabilities and cast you in the best light possible over the long term.

Quality Counts

Finally, please remember that the quality of the document is of paramount importance. Just as you might agonize over the contents and design of a brochure or website, spend some sweat-equity on your proposals. A proposal must be considered a piece of work product that will leave a lasting (if not permanent) impression. A hastily-prepared, sloppy document with poor writing, confusing messages or unappealing aesthetics will reflect very poorly upon your company and may – unfairly or not – be considered as the quality standard for your product or service.

Case Study

While considering a response to a key target account, our client elected to decline to bid, as the requirements of the bid and work-model presented by the prospective customer were not suitable.  Kinetic crafted a decline-to-bid letter that outlined the reasons for the no-bid and included a brief discussion about the firm’s overall capabilities, its differentiators, and the ways in which it could help the prospective client achieve its objectives were it willing to consider an alternate approach to the project.  The company subsequently requested a response according to our client’s work model, and has since broadened the relationship between the firms and awarded our client several strategically-important projects.

About Kinetic Group, LLC

Kinetic Group provides business communication services including brand/identity creation, website and marketing collateral design and content development, video production, and outsourced proposal/presentation writing. The Kinetic team brings decades of expertise developing the branding, positioning and communication tools that help clients establish unique identities, grow awareness and win business. The company serves companies around the world and across a wide range of industries with a distinct orientation toward practical, compelling output designed to achieve specific results in an efficient, client-centric fashion. Kinetic can be reached at (323) 465-5296 or info@kineticgroupconsulting.com.

While not all proposals require the use of references, they can be a key difference-maker in those that do. Tom Robertson, Vice President of Procurement at Tesoro Corporation, a Fortune 200 petroleum refiner and marketer, said, “Do they matter? You bet they do. It’s very valuable to check references.” Robertson noted that there have been occasions when references were the key factor tipping the scales either in favor of or against a proposer.

Obviously, not having enough well-qualified references for the product or service being offered can create a significant impediment for an otherwise good proposal. However, while a good reference is unquestionably preferable, a less-than-glowing one isn’t always the end of the story for the supply chain professionals who frequently check them.

“A bad reference can be overcome, especially if the supplier owns up to the challenges faced and demonstrates that corrective actions were taken,” Robertson said. “I would look positively on their honesty and forthrightness.”

“I might ask for another reference, though,” he added.

In addition to the most obvious impacts references can have, there are a number of subtle ways references can reflect well or poorly on the proposer without even being checked. Your references can impart a bad impression without saying a word if they are hard to reach or poorly presented within the document.

As with any proposal component, thoughtfulness, preparation and organization will make you stand out from your competitors. Following the guidelines presented below will help you improve the chances your references make a good impression and avoid creating obstacles to success.

1. Give Notice. Common courtesy dictates that you let your reference know he will be contacted before you present him.
2. Get Your Story Straight. Make sure your reference will, when contacted, speak positively and lucidly of you and your product or service. In addition, ensure your reference has a sufficient understanding of your past performance to address the more detailed or technical aspects of your customer’s inquiry.
3. Accuracy Counts. One way to make sure your reference reflects poorly on you without saying a word is to make that person difficult to contact. Make sure the contact information you provide is current and correct.
4. Make Contact Easy. Give your customer as many ways to contact your reference as possible (that are also acceptable to each reference) so he can pick his favorite means of communication. And, with electronic communication being preferred by so many now, make sure you include an email address. Finally, be consistent – provide the same means of contacting all your references so your customer doesn’t conclude you accidentally omitted something or, worse, were unable to obtain a common means of contact.
5. Devil in the Details. Provide a description of the product or services provided so your customer can mentally verify their similarity to those in the current proposal. This description will also give him a convenient place to begin a conversation with your reference. However, don’t get carried away and present something your reference might consider confidential.
6. Vary Perspectives. Providing references at multiple levels enables your customer to verify your ability to work with personnel throughout his organization. It is fine to present executive references as long as you also provide some staff ones so your customer can confirm you’re the best fit for each.
7. Avoid Confusion. Just because your reference has changed employers or roles doesn’t mean he can’t continue to speak glowingly on your behalf. Provide a simple explanation of your reference’s career move and keep it from becoming an issue.
8. Beware of Reference Fatigue. Overuse can diminish the enthusiasm of even your most die-hard fans. Keep track of how and when you use each reference and give your favorites a break; let some time elapse between uses.
9. Observe Freshness Date. Even the best reference must be retired at some point. Stop using references when they get stale. After a couple years of speaking to your customers about your product or service, it’s time to find some new ones.
10. Style Points. References don’t have to look difficult to read. Why not make them as appealing as the rest of your document? Present them in a table, use color or vary your fonts, and, as always, don’t be afraid of white space.

But remember, references are only a small part of the whole story. The greatest of references won’t overcome a critical weakness or poor overall proposal. “References are typically one of the last criteria I check,” Robertson said. “I don’t want to spend time checking references unless I know there is a likelihood we want to make an award or the supplier is at least going to be one of the finalists.”

Need more help making the best use of your references or improving any other aspect of your proposals? Contact Kinetic today.

About Kinetic Group, LLC

Kinetic Group provides business communication services including brand/identity creation, website and marketing collateral design and content development, video production, and outsourced proposal/presentation writing. The Kinetic team brings decades of expertise developing the branding, positioning and communication tools that help clients establish unique identities, grow awareness and win business. The company serves companies around the world and across a wide range of industries with a distinct orientation toward practical, compelling output designed to achieve specific results in an efficient, client-centric fashion. Kinetic can be reached at (323) 465-5296 or info@kineticgroupconsulting.com.