Practical Strategy
PROVE IT! The Power of Proof-Based Selling
Executive Summary
Proofs are by far the most powerful tool for successful selling. Yet very few companies
have a conscious, systematic approach to generating the proofs their salespeople need
to win against competition. A proof is some evidence which verifies one (or more) of
your selling claims. Proofs are used to enhance the customer’s belief that (1) you have
an actual difference relative to a competitor, and (2) the impacts of that specific difference are significant and important. Proofs can help you in the following ways:
 Proofs can make a dramatic difference is in helping you to win sales that you
might otherwise lose by increasing the certainty of your claims.
 Proofs can help you win by arming your internal supporter(s) with the ammunition
to overcome your opposition.
 Proofs can significantly reduce the calendar time and number of sales calls required to win a sale.
 Proofs can establish new “rules of the game” regarding the customer’s buying
decision process that help you win.
Companies that establish and manage effective Proof Generation Programs can significantly improve their market share against competition.
Introduction
Proofs are by far the most powerful tool for successful selling. Proofs are probably the most under-utilized tool in selling. A proof-based approach to selling can transform the entire buying
process in your company’s favor. Very few companies employ a systematic proof-based selling
approach.
These seemingly conflicting statements are all true.
This article will explore the concept of proof-based selling, and describe how they can make a
significant difference in your selling success. We will explore: What are proofs? Why are they so
critically important in selling? How can proof-based selling transform the buying process in your
company’s favor? How can you establish a systematic, practical program to identify and generate the proofs that will help you win in your marketplace? And, how can you maintain these
proofs up-to-date over time?
1. What are Proofs?
A proof is some evidence which verifies one (or more) of your selling claims. Proofs are typically used to enhance the customer’s belief that (1) you have an actual difference relative to a
competitor, and (2) the impacts of that specific difference are significant and important. A proof
acts to significantly increase belief — belief that this selling claim is true in the mind of one or
more people involved in a customer’s buying decision process for your product(s). So, the content of a proof is some form of information that validates a selling claim; and the intent of the
proof is to impact the thinking of a specific person, or set of persons. Thus, there may be a
Copyright 2009 William Hollister, Practical Strategy. All rights reserved.
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number of different proofs for the same selling claim, each intended to impact the thinking of
different people.
There are three levels upon which a customer can choose to accept a sales claim:
 Faith: Acceptance based on your personal credibility, and/or your company's credibility.
"Believe me... after all, I'm a salesperson." While your personal, and corporate, credibility
is of critical importance in selling, it is necessary but usually not sufficient. Faith is typically not a differentiating characteristic: most salespeople, and most companies, are
granted faith by the customer unless they have done something in the past to destroy
that implicit faith. Acceptance based on faith is relatively easy to overturn with Logic or
Proof.
 Logic: Acceptance based on understanding, from explanation, reason, or theory. "Believe me because I can explain why to you." Logic is a powerful tool to use in establishing your sales claims. But, with many products, it is frequently possible to support a variety of opposing viewpoints with selective logic. You are arguing that your product can
provide the customer more of Result A because of your Feature X; but your competition
is arguing that their product can provide the customer more of Result A because of their
Feature Y. These conflicting logical sales claims tend to take a lot of selling time, and
leave the customer frustrated and confused. So, while it is important to help the customers to understand the logic which supports your position, mere logic can be relatively
easily overturned by proof.
 Proof: Acceptance based on evidence. "Believe me because I can prove that what I say
will happen to you has actually happened with other companies." Proof is the most
powerful tool in selling. Evidence of previous success in providing the benefits and
value you claim are always difficult to overturn or argue away.
Inexperienced salespeople, who have begun to really believe in their products, typically ask
customers to accept their claims and arguments based on faith and logic. Experienced salespeople typically rely on proofs to back up their key points (if they have them!). Because
they know it works.
Proofs can take many forms. Some of the more common forms are:
 References and testimonials – References are personal statements from someone outside your company to one or more people in a target customer that validate a selling
claim; testimonials are typically indirect written statements from someone outside your
company designed to accomplish the same result. To be useful, the source of reference
or testimonial must be appropriate and credible to engage the belief of the target people.
 ―War stories‖ – A ―war story‖ is some anecdote told by the salesperson (or another person from the selling company) to a customer that is intended to establish the validity of a
sales specific claim. It is typically a story is about some other customer. ―War stories‖ are
essentially testimonials, but instead of being written by a customer they are told about
the customer. These anecdotes present a "real-life" example of a sales claim to make
them live and breathe in the minds of the customer — so they can imagine themselves
experiencing the same results.
 Demonstrations – A demonstration of some aspect(s) of your product or service given to
the customer clearly can be a powerful proof…when the demonstration works as
planned. Be aware that too many salespeople use demonstrations in too general a manner, and often too early in the sales cycle. The purpose of a demonstration is not to
demo the product in some general way, but to provide specific customer personnel specific proofs to specific sales claims that will make a significant difference in their belief
regarding your product’s advantage(s) over the competition.
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 Documented Evidence – Documented evidence is any type of written information that
serves to validate a specific sales claim. Typical examples of documented evidence
proofs are specification sheets, installation lists, uptime reports, an industry article, a
scientific or technical article, or a report from an existing customer. As you can tell from
this list of examples, the documented evidence may come from your company, or from
an outside source (another customer, a supposedly independent study or analysis).
Documents from customers are always better than documents from your own Marketing
Department.
The most important and effective form of documented evidence available in selling is
proven results. There is no more powerful selling tool than a report that documents
some amount of business impact a company actually achieved from one of your key
competitive differences.
2.
Why are proofs important in selling?
Proofs are the most important tool a salesperson has available to influence the customers' buying process. Proofs can help you in the following ways:
 Proofs can make a dramatic difference is in helping you to win sales that you might otherwise lose by increasing the certainty of your claims.
 Proofs can help you win by arming your internal supporter(s) with the ammunition to
overcome your opposition.
 Proofs can significantly reduce the calendar time and number of sales calls required to
win a sale.
 Proofs can establish new “rules of the game” regarding the customer’s buying decision
process that help you win.
Way #1: Proofs can make a dramatic difference is in helping you to win sales that you might
otherwise lose by increasing the certainty of your claims. The increase in belief that effective
proofs can produce can fundamentally shift the customer’s thinking in your favor. There are
some sales that you are just going to win — because your product is a superior fit for their specific application, because they are tied to your unique technology, because you have been their
trusted supplier for many years, because your brother-in-law is their President, or perhaps because your price is significantly lower than the competition and your ROI is greater. While effective proofs may help, they are not the key to winning these ―easy‖ sales.
But they are the key to avoid losing sales that are not ―easy‖. Sales that are might be lost fit into
two categories:
 You are going to lose it no matter what you do. It is an ―easy‖ win for a competitor, for
reasons such as described above. Proofs are not going to make a critical difference in
these cases. Certainly, it is possible that the competition will make such a big mistake
that could cause you to have a chance to win these sales, but that is unlikely.
 You have a chance to win, even though you may be losing at the moment. Both you and
your competition have some advantages you are working to get them accept, and disadvantages that you are working to minimize. This is where effective proofs can help
change the tide in your favor. This category of sales will typically be won or lost on the
basis of belief, or certainty. For example:
o
The competitor’s price is lower than yours. Your sales claim is that you have certain advantages that will produce greater economic value to more than overcome this
price disadvantage. The problem is that the customer is certain they will pay a higher
price if they buy from you, but uncertain that they will actually achieve the greater
Copyright 2009 William Hollister, Practical Strategy. All rights reserved.
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o
o
value you are suggesting. Effective proof(s) could significantly increase the customer’s certainty that they will actually achieve enough additional economic value from
your product to overcome the competitor’s lower price. Proofs can shift the customer’s mind-set from, ―There’s a lot I like about your product…but your price is too
high‖, to, ―Your price is higher than your competitor’s…but you are worth it.‖ A fundamental shift in the customer’s thinking in your favor.
The competitor has been the standard supplier to the customer for years. They
know the competitor, but they don’t really know your company. Your sales claim is
that you have certain advantages that will produce greater value to more than overcome this relationship disadvantage. The problem is that the customer is certain they
will have to give up their known relationship with the competitor if they buy from you,
but uncertain that they will actually achieve the greater value you are suggesting. Effective proof(s) could significantly increase the customer’s certainty that they will actually achieve enough additional value from your product to overcome the competitor’s established relationship. Proofs can shift the customer’s mind-set from, ―There’s
a lot I like about your product…but you are an unknown supplier compared to your
competitor (and I don’t want to disappoint them)‖, to, ―You are not as well know to us
than your competitor…but it is worth it for us to switch to your company.‖ A fundamental shift in the customer’s thinking in your favor.
The competitor has certain unique features of their product that emotionally appeal to the customer. You do not have these same features. Your sales claim is that
you have certain advantages that will produce greater value to more than overcome
the lack of these features that are emotionally appealing to the customer. The problem is that the customer is certain they will have to forego these features if they buy
from you, but uncertain that they will actually achieve the greater value you are suggesting. Effective proof(s) could significantly increase the customer’s certainty that
they will actually achieve enough additional value from your product to overcome the
competitor’s attractive feature(s). Proofs can shift the customer’s mind-set from,
―There’s a lot I like about your product…but you don’t have these features that that
your competitor has‖, to, ―You don’t have these features that that your competitor has
…but it is worth it for us to buy from you.‖ Again, a fundamental shift in the customer’s thinking in your favor.
If you are faced with a competitor with a significantly lower price, a more established relationship, or some emotionally attractive features you don’t have, about the only way you can win
these sales is to convince the customer that you can provide sufficient additional value to overcome the emotions of these issues. But the logic of your arguments is usually not enough in
these cases: the negatives of selecting you are certain, while the positives are uncertain.
Proofs are a key to value selling. They are the only tool available to significantly increase
the certainly of your sales claims.
Way #2: Proofs can help you win by arming your internal supporter(s) with the ammunition to
overcome your opposition. Your internal supporter in a customer’s decision process may voice
their support for you, and even state some of the sales claims you have made. But they can be
easily overwhelmed by another, more powerful, internal person who supports the competition.
But if they are armed with appropriate proofs by your salesperson (and coached on how to use
them) they can often overcome a more powerful opponent and sway the decision in your favor.
Way #3: Effective proofs can significantly reduce the calendar time and number of sales calls
required to win a sale. What activities extend a sales cycle? Whether you are dealing with a typical sales cycle of several months involving dozens of individual sales calls (typical of businessCopyright 2009 William Hollister, Practical Strategy. All rights reserved.
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to-business capital equipment sale) or a cycle of less than a month involving less than five sales
calls (typical of consumer selling), the two activities that cause the length of the sales cycle are:
 The need to meet all the people who might possibly influence the buying decision
 The need to explain all the reasons each of these people should decide to buy your
product instead of the competition’s product.
When winning the sale depends on building relationships and selling the logic that supports buying your product, you have to go through all the meet and explain steps with all the people who
might possibly influence the buying decision. But proofs offer a possible way to short-circuit
these activities that extend the sales cycle and absorb so much of the salesperson’s time. If you
have outstanding proofs that verify that your unique competitive advantages produce significant
increases in the results the customer cares about it is at least possible that you could have a
single meeting with the one person who can dictate the buying decision and win the sale! You
could use these proofs to demonstrate your superiority without having to go through extended
explanations of how your advantages produce these results — just that they produce them; and
win the sale without having to meet with all the other people and go through all the explanations.
You could win a sale in one sales call with one person, even for an expensive, complex product
that typically takes months to sell! Certainly, this is an extreme, and one that will happen rarely
in the capital equipment sales marketplace. But the fact is that it can happen, and has actually
happened, with effective proofs! Much more likely, effective proofs will still significantly shorten
the sales cycle by enabling the salesperson to spend less time explaining all the sales claims
and their supporting logic to each buying influence.
Way #4: Proofs can establish new “rules of the game” regarding the customer’s buying decision process that help you win. Most sales are won or lost on a complex combination of influences on each of the people involved in making the buying decision, influences such as relationships, logic, and personal/emotional impacts. But what if ―Prove It!‖ became the criteria?
What if the buying decision was based on which competitor could best prove that their product
would produce the greatest business benefits? If you are selling for a company that you believe
produces the greatest benefits and has the best proofs, you would welcome that standard! You
would act to influence each customer to apply the ―Prove It!‖ standard because it would help you
win. Of course, if your company does not produce the greatest business benefits, or does not
have the required proofs, you would want to avoid this standard. Even then, a ―Prove It!‖ standard by your customers would, over time, drive such a company to find the market niches where
they do produce the greatest benefits, and work to produce the required proofs to support this
claim…or they would go out of business. Many companies would be more effective in their selling if they acted to make ―Prove It!‖ the standard for their customer’s buying decisions.
3. Establishing a Proof-Generation Process
Powerful as they are, proofs do not appear by magic. At the beginning of this article it was
stated that very few companies have any sort of conscious, systematic approach to producing
the proofs their salespeople need and providing them to their salespeople in a timely fashion
and in a useful format. Why not? Every salesperson and sales manager seems to (at least intuitively) appreciate the value of good proofs. They will eagerly use proofs when they have them.
The problem is that, unless there is some consistently-maintained and managed process to define and generate the required proofs, the proofs which happen to be available usually only cover a tiny fraction of all the key sales claims in an overall selling strategy. So the proofs which
any salesperson has are usually not enough to support a sales campaign. Typically each salesperson has their own, unique, set of proofs — there is usually no formal process to share and
distribute good proofs. Someone may have an excellent proof that no one else knows about.
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The problem seems to be that it takes time and effort to identify, prioritize, produce, organize,
distribute, and maintain up-to-date a set of effective proofs, and it requires Sales and Marketing
to work together as a coordinated team. The vast majority of selling organizations are too busy,
and too fragmented, to make this happen…to their detriment.
An ideal sales organization would have an effective, formal, on-going process for defining, prioritizing, generating, formatting, organizing, distributing, and maintaining the proofs which are
most important in helping them win sales. An effective Proof-Generation Process must involve
both the Sales and Marketing organizations. It simply will not be effective over time without this
shared active involvement.
 The personnel in the Sales organization are the only people who know what proofs are
needed. No matter how good your Marketing people are, they can never be as close to
the day-to-day realities of the competitive selling environment as your salespeople.
Sales must be actively involved in a Proof-Generation Process, or it simply will not produce the desired results.
 Marketing personnel are typically the people who have the ―big picture‖ and worldwide
focus to coordinate an on-going Proof-Generation Process.
A formal Proof Generation Process involves structured and systematic methodologies for dealing with the following aspects of proofs:
 Defining a list of the proofs that need to be developed to help win sales in a specific
product/application segment.
 Prioritizing the proofs that have been defined as needed into some sensible order for
development. No company is likely to be able to allocate the resources (people, time,
money) to develop all the desired proofs at once. So some prioritization is important. It is
suggested that prioritization be based on the following factors: importance in selling, cost
to develop, and time to develop. As with each aspect of this process, prioritization must
be a joint effort between Marketing and Sales. At the beginning of a Proof-Generation
Process, it is important to develop and distribute at least a few proofs that Sales finds
useful within a short time after launching the effort to build credibility.
 Generating these required proofs. One key ground rule for a successful ProofGeneration Process is that the only people who can ―vote‖ on which proofs are required
are the salespeople and the first-level sales managers. No one else. It is not easy to establish a process to obtain this input from salespeople in a consistent manner over time,
but it is critical. One approach that does not work is for Marketing to send an email to all
the salespeople asking for their inputs on the proofs they need. This will usually result in
few, if any, responses (in case you don’t know this, salespeople are extraordinarily busy
trying to win sales, and don’t pay as much attention to their corporate emails as some
other workers)…so Marketing then complains that ―the salespeople don’t care‖ and uses
this as an excuse to do nothing. And no one wins. What does work divides into two
stages:
o The initial definition of required proofs typically requires a workshop focused on a
specific product/application segment (such as the Prove It! Workshop from Practical Strategy) with a selected group of Sales and Marketing people who are currently involved and experienced in this segment. The group applies a structured
process to clarify and organize the overall competitive strategy to win sales in this
segment. A major outcome of this process is the definition of the key sales claims
that must be understood and believed by the customers in order for you to win.
Then each key sales claim is analyzed to determine what proofs are required to
support this claim, and whether these proofs are currently available or not. At the
end, the list of ―desired, but currently unavailable‖ proofs is reviewed by the group,
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




and priorities for development established with responsibilities, metrics, and an action plan.
o Once this initial list of ―currently available‖ and ―desired, but currently unavailable‖
proofs are defined, a much small ―Core Team‖ for each product/application segment is established. This would usually be comprised of the Product Marketing
Manager for the segment, perhaps one other person from Marketing, two to three
salespeople (the ones with the most involvement with this segment, thus the most
to gain from participating), and one to two Applications people (if your company
has this position). This Core Team would meet (using Internet-based meeting software, so no one has to travel) once a quarter to review and update the list and
priorities based on changes in the competitive environment.
Formatting the proofs to be most useful in selling situations. Sometimes salespeople
are sent proofs from Marketing or other sources that have useful content, but they are
not formatted in a way that is effective with a customer. Perhaps they are too ―busy‖,
containing a lot of extraneous data that could confuse the customer or get them off the
desired focus; perhaps they contain other data that the salesperson does not want the
customer to see; perhaps they just look too ―pretty‖, as if they were made up by Marketing without any real data behind them, and are not as believable as they might be.
Again, only the salespeople can be the referees of the desired formatting. They should
be consulted before send out a proof.
Organizing the proofs to establish a data base and to afford easy access. Developing
mass amounts of proofs does no good if salespeople do not know they exist and know
how to easily access them. Each proof is a proof of some specific sales claim, against a
specific competitor, for a specific product/application segment. They should be organized into a data base that is searchable by sales claim, and competitor, and segment.
Distributing the proofs to insure availability to all appropriate salespeople. Proofs are
too important to sit on someone’s desk, waiting for a ―batch‖ of them to be produced before distribution. Get them out immediately.
Updating the proofs as the underlying situation referred to changes, and as the competitive environment changes. This is a function of the on-going work of the Core Team already described.
Managing the Proof Generation Process so that there are always clear responsibilities,
clear procedures, appropriate motivations, and effective metrics of results. For example,
a metric of ―number of proofs developed per quarter‖ is not an appropriate measurement. The goal is not to develop a large number of proofs that don’t help sell, it is to develop the specific proofs that most help sell. An appropriate metric would be ―number of
effective proofs developed per quarter‖ — where effectiveness is solely judged by Sales,
or a metric of ―number of top-priority proofs developed per quarter‖ — where the priorities are established by the Core Team. Managing the Proof-Generation Process is primarily the function of the leader of each Core Team, probably the Product Marketing
Manager for the product/application segment. Regarding the motivations, proofs are just
too important to be a ―when you can get around to it‖ responsibility. For a ProofGeneration Process to be effective, it must be made important by top management. It
needs to be a key part of the performance objectives of the Product Marketing Managers, and Sales Managers. Results need to be measured, reported, evaluated, and rewarded when good and punished when poor. It must be an on-going process, not a onetime event. The competitive market environment changes over time, and the proofs that
were useful yesterday may not be useful tomorrow. The Core Team for each product/application segment must meet regularly (probably quarterly throughout the life cycle
of a product) and constantly update the list of desired proofs and the priorities. Each
Core Team needs to be made important and visible by management, with participants
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rewarded for their involvement.
Summary
Experience has shown that just having ―good intentions‖ is not sufficient to establish
an effective Proof-Generation Process that produces consistent results over time. It must be a
visible, well-managed program. There must be appropriate metrics to monitor the results of the
program. The people who spend time implementing the program must have it included in their
goals and be rewarded for their participation. The good news is that, if you do all this well, after
a relatively short period of time you will have many times more good proofs than you had before
— or that your competitors have — and you will be winning more and more sales, at higher
margins, than you ever did before.
The author, William Hollister, is the
founder and President of Practical
Strategy. Practical Strategy is a consulting and training company that focuses on assisting ―selling organizations‖ (the combination of Sales,
Marketing, Applications, and Service)
to become systematically more effective through strategic processes that
are well-designed, well-implemented,
and well-managed. He currently resides in Petaluma, CA. He can be
contacted at www.prstr.com
Copyright 2009 William Hollister, Practical Strategy. All rights reserved.
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