The profile took months. It opens with the chairman's message, then the history since founding, then vision, mission and values, an organisation chart, a page of services and a grid of project photos. It is sent after every first meeting. And most of the time, the client opens it, scrolls for a few seconds, and closes it.
That is not because clients do not read. It is because the profile was written about the company, for the company. The client opened it with questions: can they do a job like mine, who will actually do it, what happens if something goes wrong, what will it be like to work with them. A profile that sells answers those questions, in the order the client has them, with proof. It is built for a specific reader at a specific step of the sale, and often that means more than one version.
In short: A profile sells when every page answers a question a buyer actually has, with evidence they can believe. Start from the readers and their questions, not from the company's history. Put the answer first: who the company helps, with what, and why it is the right choice. Show proof as short cases, not photo grids. Make versions for different moments, and make sure each one opens on a phone and fits in a WhatsApp message.
Who actually reads a profile
In business-to-business sales, the person in the first meeting is rarely the only one who decides. Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner and Nick Toman's The Challenger Customer (2015), based on CEB's research, describes B2B purchases as group decisions, where the hardest part is often getting the group to agree. Suppliers who help the buyer make the case inside their own company tend to win more. The profile is often the document that travels into that room without the salesperson.
So the question is not “what do we want to say?” but “what does each of these readers need to see to say yes?”. Clayton Christensen and colleagues' “Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done” (Harvard Business Review, 2016) is a useful lens: each reader has a job they are trying to get done, and the profile is hired to help with it. The procurement officer's job is to avoid a bad supplier. The owner's job is to be sure the project will succeed. The technical lead's job is to avoid surprises.
The reader-question map: a tool to use today
| Reader | What they want answered | Proof that convinces |
|---|---|---|
| Owner or decision-maker | Will this work for a business like mine? | Two or three cases close to their situation |
| Technical lead | How exactly do they work, and who does it? | Process, team, standards |
| Procurement | Is this a safe, qualified supplier? | Registrations, certifications, references |
| Future day-to-day contact | What will working with them be like? | Who the contact is, how updates arrive |
Then every page faces one test: which reader is it for, and which question does it answer? A page that answers no one's question is a candidate for the appendix or the bin.
Building it, step by step
- A list of moments. Where the profile is used: after a first meeting, in a tender, at an exhibition, in a cold email, forwarded inside the client's company. Each moment may need a different length.
- A question map. The table above, filled in from the sales team's memory of real meetings and from deals that were lost. The questions clients ask twice are the most valuable.
- A proof bank. Short cases written as situation, constraint, what was done, result. Figures the company can stand behind. Certifications and registrations. Client names and logos only where there is permission to use them.
- A one-page storyline. The answer first: who the company helps, with what, and why it is the right choice. Then the pages in the order the question map suggests. History and size come in where they answer a question, such as “can they handle a project of our size?”.
- A version plan. Usually a short leave-behind of a few pages, the full profile, and an appendix for tenders. Sector versions only when the cases really differ.
- A format spec. How it will be read: on a phone, forwarded on WhatsApp, printed, projected. File size, page shape and type size follow from that.
- A review after the next few deals. The sales team notes which pages clients mention, which questions still come up, and where the profile was forwarded. The weak pages are then rewritten or cut.
A worked example
This example is hypothetical, and its numbers are only there to show the method. An office fit-out contractor in Dubai has a 40-page profile. The first twelve pages are the chairman's message, the history, vision, mission, values and an organisation chart. Projects appear as a grid of photos with names and no story. The file is too large to send on WhatsApp, so salespeople send a link that many clients never open.
The question map, filled in with the sales team, shows the same questions in almost every deal. Can you work in a building where the client's staff are still working? Who will manage the project day to day? Can you hold the handover date? What is your safety record? Several lost deals went to a competitor who answered those questions in the first meeting with examples.
The new storyline opens with one line that answers the most common question: office fit-outs for companies that need to keep working while the work happens. Then six short cases, each a single page: the situation, the constraint (an occupied floor, a fixed move-in date), what was done, and the result, with permission from each client. Then the process, with how disruption is limited; the project managers, with photos; safety standards; and finally the history and size, now answering “can they handle our project?”. Vision and values move to the back as a short page.
There are now three versions: a short PDF light enough for WhatsApp, sent the same day as the first meeting; the full profile, around twenty pages; and a tender appendix with registrations and certificates. After the next ten or so deals, the sales team reports that clients mention the cases by name and forward the short version internally. One page, on the company's in-house joinery, gets no mention at all and is cut to a paragraph.
Five mistakes we see often
- Opening with history and the chairman's message. It happens because that is how the company sees itself. The reader's first question is about their own problem. Instead: open with who the company helps and why it is the right choice; history comes where it answers a question.
- Vision, mission and values that could belong to anyone. “Excellence, integrity, innovation” tells the reader nothing. Instead: keep them short, and make them specific enough that a competitor could not sign them.
- A menu of services instead of problems solved. A list of everything the company can do makes the reader do the work of matching it to their need. Instead: group what the company does around the situations clients are in.
- Logos and photos without the story. A wall of client logos, sometimes without permission, and project photos with no context. Instead: fewer, permitted cases, each with the situation and the result.
- One heavy version for everyone. The same large file for a tender, a cold email and a WhatsApp follow-up. Instead: versions for each moment, and a short one that opens instantly on a phone.
When a profile is not the answer
A profile cannot sell an offer that is not clear. If the sales team cannot say in one sentence why a client should choose the company, the work starts with positioning, not with pages. Some tenders and prequalification processes require a fixed format; there, the job is to follow it precisely and make the cases strong inside it. For consumer brands, a profile rarely sells anything; the website, the pack and the content do that work. And if the content is already strong and only the layout is dated, a good designer may be all that is needed. We say so when we see it.
How OG builds a profile that sells
We start with the sales team: the moments, the question map and the lost deals. If the offer itself needs sharpening, that goes through brand strategy first. Then we build the proof bank and the one-page storyline, and write the copy with the same care as the design, drawing on our verbal identity work. Company profile and presentation design follows, in the versions the moments need, with photography where the projects deserve better pictures. The same storyline often feeds sales decks and the website, so the company says the same thing everywhere. Scope follows the need; there are no fixed packages.
The strongest objection
“Clients here expect to see our history, our size and our chairman. It builds trust.” In many markets in the region, that is true, and the answer is not to remove it. It is to place it where it answers a question. Thirty years in business is strong proof for “can they handle a project of our size?”; it is weak as page one, before the reader knows why they are reading. Trust comes from seeing a case like your own, more than from a long introduction.
Built on: our profile and sales-material work with clients since 2013; Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner and Nick Toman, The Challenger Customer (2015); Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan, “Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done”, Harvard Business Review (2016). The fit-out contractor is a hypothetical example.
Before closing this page
- In which moments is the profile actually sent, and who reads it after the first meeting?
- Which questions do clients ask in almost every deal, and which page answers each one?
- What does page one say, and would a buyer care?
- How many cases show the situation and the result, with permission?
- Does the profile open quickly on a phone and fit in a WhatsApp message?
