Convincing Employee Profiles as a Competitive Advantage
For small and medium-sized consulting firms, the competition for clients is fierce.
To succeed in this competition, it is crucial to position yourself clearly and differentiate your services from competitors. Today, we want to highlight a measure , in addition to websites and pitch materials, is often underutilized by consulting firms in securing client projects: employee profiles.
In this article, we will explore how consulting firms can use compelling personal profiles to stand out from the competition and win over clients faster and more effectively.
The Employee Profile – The Business Card of Consultants
Whether for new or existing clients, employee profiles of team members who may be involved in a project are usually sent along with project proposals. Alongside websites, presentations, and pitches, these profiles serve as a “business card”, playing a key role in the client’s decision-making process when selecting a consulting firm.
Just like a well-crafted business card, consulting firms can use employee profiles to leave a lasting impression on the client. Three key factors play an important role in this: professionalism, personalization, and speed.
Professionalism
Employee profiles must exude professionalism. The first step to this is consistency: All profiles should be designed in the same style. This consistency is essential but often proves challenging in practice. To ensure a consistent presentation, firms should use a standardized template for creating personal profiles and ensure all employees consistently use the most current version.
When designing the template, it is important that the most key employee information (e.g., project experience, skills, etc.) is presented in a way that allows for quick and easy comprehension. Additionally, the template should align with the firm’s corporate design to create a clear distinction from competitors.
Learning 1: A professional template is consistent, allows the reader to quickly understand the key facts, and stands out with a strong corporate identity.
Personalization
Different projects require different experiences and skills from project staff. A good employee profile clearly demonstrates why a particular consultant is a valuable asset for a given project.
Therefore, it is important to tailor employee profiles individually to client inquiries – for example, by highlighting (or omitting) certain skills. Profiles should also focus on comparable projects the employee has worked on, while less relevant projects can simply be listed or omitted entirely. Adding an individual statement emphasizing the employee’s fit for the project can make a significant difference.
Learning 2: An individually tailored profile makes it easier for clients to quickly assess the employee’s suitability for the project, increasing the likelihood of success.
Speed
Speed is an often underestimated factor in the proposal process. Being the first to respond to a client’s request significantly increases the chances that your proposal will be reviewed, compared to being the last. Speed can thus become a decisive factor for success. Therefore, it is essential to prepare a professional and personalized profile for the client in the shortest possible time.
Learning 3: Speed increases the likelihood that profiles will be reviewed. Additionally, if your profile convinces the client early on, subsequent profiles from competitors may not even be considered.
Conclusion
When employee profiles are prepared professionally, personalized, and delivered quickly for clients, the likelihood of consulting firms winning project contracts increases.
The foundation for this lies in effective management of personal profiles and the ability to tailor them seamlessly for clients. Profilery, our tool for managing employee profiles, can provide valuable support here. Feel free to contact us at support@profilery.eu for more information – or simply try Profilery for free today!