If you’re a contractor, engineer, construction company or surveyor and you’re looking to find new clients and win more new business, this post and video is for you.

You know your stuff but you’re frustrated in the amount of work it takes to find new clients for new work.

Selling professional services can be a tricky balance of what you do well and what your client understands and wants. The truth is, there’s often friction between the level of detail you want to share and the lack of detail they really want to hear.

Professional service firms are famous for touting expertise, experience and process – lots and lots of process.  The problem is, most people looking for a firm to hire are not truly interested in hearing about the processes you want to keep sharing.

What they really want is someone who listens to the problem, can speak intelligently about the problem and share with them that they can fix the problem.

So how can you navigate that issue better to earn more work and more profit?

We’ve put together the following recommendations to help you be both persuasive and prepared in your bidding efforts and help you win more business.

1. Committee Decisions

More than likely, the decisions you are going to be pitching to are to a committee or a group of people involved in the decision making process

Inside that committee, inside that group, are going to be people that you can probably identify that process, receive, and look at information in different ways.

You can probably categorize them though common characteristics in how they view and process information. When you put together your website, your printed materials, and your pitch, in your proposals, keep these groups in mind. Make sure information is presented and organized in ways that matter most to them.

When you’re putting your materials together, Don’t forget the obvious. Potential clients don’t know as much about your business as you think they do, or think they should.

So, don’t forget to remind them of the obvious – the who, what, when, where and why – of your business. Start at that foundation and add in the specifics in answering what their looking for to present the totality of your business.

2. Proof

Testimonials are important. Project case studies are important. Reviews are important.

It’s okay and encouraged to ask people you’ve done business with to leave reviews, hopefully positive ones, on Google reviews, social reviews, industry boards, written letters of testimonials.

Professional service providers, get busy in doing the things they are good at.  When a project is done, it’s normal to breathe a sigh of relief and move onto the next one. That’s what you’re programmed to do, in fact, that’s what they’re paying you to do, right?

It’s okay to pause, and ask for some feedback. Ask for a letter. Ask for reviews and build that library. The more diverse that library is- business types, business sectors, types of projects, size of projects, etc – the better prepared you’ll be to make a better business case for your business, as you go into the next opportunity.

3. Add Some Fresh Ideas

Don’t forget the additional thoughts and creativity.

Oftentimes, bids and RFPs are highly specific and most of the effort is put into answering the many line-by-line questions. Providing line-by-line answers is ok.  But, it’s also okay to include some additional thought and fresh ideas.

These could be a couple other ways to accomplish the goals.

First and foremost, you want to answer the basics and answer the questions and focus on the information requested. But beyond that, showing the little extra thought in bringing fresh ideas is a good way for your to make impact with a group that’s looking at the same old answers from different companies.

And additional thoughts and fresh ideas are always welcome, even though they may not be asked for in the RFB, we all want to know that people are thinking about us, right?

They’re going to hire someone to solve a problem they’ve defined. Why not show that you can not only solve the problem they’re asking for, but bring some additional perspective to the table as their partner.