How You Can Change Your Clients’ Perceptions

Turn the negative into a positive.

In a recent article we looked at how the perception that your clients and prospects have of your business will affect their decisions. Their perceptions may not be 100% accurate but they exert a powerful influence.

Here, we are going to look at some of the ways that we’ve helped businesses to change the way that they are perceived to open up further contract opportunities.

First off, you don’t have to play fair. As well as changing the perception of your own business, the client’s perception of your competition can be also changed (especially if you have a direct relationship with the client). 

Without being derogatory or negative (never do this!) it is possible to influence the client to see that your strengths are key to delivering the project and business objectives, and that the strengths of your competitors may be less so.

Play to Your Strengths
Emphasize how your strengths align most closely with those needed to deliver the project. Play up those criteria which suit your strengths best.

The Bid Coach uses a matrix to measure the factors that the client deems important versus your and your competitors strengths and weaknesses. Once you have this information (gathered as objectively as possible) it's possible to look for ways to make the factors that match your competitors strengths seem less significant. And you can improve the perception of your business in these same areas. 

You might not need to score the highest in every single area (in fact, this would be damned near impossible), but if your overall score is highest then you will be in a strong situation.

Now you have some clear objectives to build into your communications, tender and presentation.

Objective Evidence
Next you have to translate this into evidence your client can measure and evaluate. This is the really challenging part. You must have a clear bid strategy with readily identifiable win themes. These MUST translate back to the client’s REAL needs as well as emphasize your strengths. 

The key information needs to be easy to identify, clearly written, and in the required format. It must relate directly to the question that you’re being asked in the RFP and display a benefit for the client. Alongside these criteria you must think about the perceptions you are trying to build.

We often find that bid writers or technical writers focus too much on the technical elements of a question without addressing what things mean to the client. They equally get distracted by one element of a question. They are rarely trying to change a perception.

This immediately limits the mark they can receive because they didn’t answer the question fully or give the client confidence. This could be down to time pressure, carelessness, or lack of knowledge or understanding of what the client wanted. Perhaps a question wasn’t worded that well (yes this does happen). 

Understanding Your Client
Misperceptions about the client are also a significant potential factor. Yes, it’s those pesky perceptions again. 

The objectivity of an external resource can be valuable. We don’t have the same perceptions of your business or your client. We also don’t necessarily have the ‘political’ pressures that can affect internal resources. AND we may well have a broader understanding of what the client is seeking – given our business or client knowledge. 

At the most basic level an external pair of eyes looking at a question can offer a different perspective. We may be better able to see how the answer may influence a client’s perception - negatively or positively.

We are experts at drafting answers that score well and help build the right image of your business. It’s part of what we do for a living. You may have had more hot dinners than the number of bids we’ve worked on, but it’s a close-run thing.  

Photo by Caleb Minear on Unsplash