Imagine that you’re trying to buy this new cool new gadget, there are two companies that offer this gadget.

The first one has a strong marketing campaign telling everyone that “I’ve the best product ever!” while the second company has no marketing campaign, but everyone around you is talking about how cool it is.

I mean literally, all your colleagues, your friends even your parents are telling you how much they love that product.

Which company do you go with, company A or company B?

You would go for company B probably, because of social proof, because of word of mouth, other people are telling you it’s good so it MUST be good.

Obviously, this is not always the case as there have been cases in history where the majority have been wrong – for example the Jim Jones massacre, where 900 people committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana because one cult leader told everyone to do so.

But this example is to highlight the power of proof, a person is more likely to believe what you have to say if you can back it up with proof. Nowadays though, you can prove for anything – that the Earth is flat, the Earth is round, or the Earth is up-side down. Either way, PROOF is what creates a following, not shouting the loudest.

And in marketing, this proof manifests itself as having a strong reputation and proof of results.

Why You Have to Prove Your Results

People are risk averse by nature. They don’t want to take all the risk into investing into something that may not work out. Proving your case is vital in overcoming your customer’s objections.

From the companies that I’ve worked for – Asian Boss, hip digital media startups, manufacturers. The ones that do the best in terms of marketing and in business are the companies that can show PROOF of results.

They show proof of results through their excellent products they produce; they show proof of results by the social proof they generate from having a ton of people like their products, and they show proof of results by just creating a great overall customer experience.

What you need to do is gather evidence of this and to show your case to your potential customers. When you can prove your case, you’re giving evidence and assurance to your customers as to why your product is good and to be trusted.

Does This Mean I Need an Amazing Product?

Absolutely. From my experience, the companies that fail to generate sufficient revenue are the ones that have shitty products. Or a product that does not solve an existing pain point in the marketplace, which is a useless product.

The product needs to be so good that it kind of sell itself. I do not recommend faking reviews, and bumping up fake testimonials – because at the end of the once people try your product.

They’ll know for themselves whether something is good or bad.

And at the end of the day, there’s no shortcut in having a great product, because the reviews and PROOF will come from the raving customers that love your product after they’ve tried it.

One of the startups I’ve worked on, which was a Ganja-startup here in Bangkok. At first, they were not generating the sales they were expecting. But after I came in, and we fixed the quality of the product, and tailor made our solution it to specific customers. Scales skyrocketed after, garnering up to an extra $20k in sales over a period of a few months.

That’s the power of having a good product.

So how exactly do you prove your case?

Prove Your Case By Creating Case Studies

One way you can prove your case is through case studies, which is a proof of concept that allows you to show how you’ve helped a specific customer solve a specific solution.

With the number of bad quality products out there, people are dying to know that your product can help them solve their problem. But they also want to see specific case studies of what and where you have solved the problem in the past, this is because people use the past to predict future decisions.

Although people say that they want to hire people that are passionate about their jobs, the truth is that people want to see some experience beforehand. Hence, the 10-year experience required for fresh grads.

There are many case study formats out there, but you can also check out my portfolio for how I laid out my case studies.

Confidence in Proving your Case      

Remember, it’s not enough to have the case studies.

You need to TELL people about your case studies and the successes you have helped others achieve through the use of your product.

I believe if you are providing an honest service that can genuinely help other people, then you need to let others know about it.

However, many times we can be shy onto what we do. So, we do the minimum effort in promotion. We are not active in promoting ourselves. This cannot be further from a huge mistake, even if you do have the proof, the case studies, word of mouth, this is still not an excuse for you to stop selling yourself.

The mistake I see in many struggling businesses is that they believe that if they are already good, so they can just stop selling. So they sit back, relax and wait for all the customers to come.

I’m good friends with a few billionaire kids that are currently working in their parent’s businesses, I knew them from my school days – but I’ve never heard even though their companies are world renowned, that they need to stop selling themselves.

My family owns an 8-figure, approaching 9-figure manufacturing firm. I never heard my parents tell me to stop selling.

However, you can only really sell things that you truly believe in. So the key is to first, identify parts of your business that you believe can truly help people.

Then, identify the parts of your business that you believe will not add much value to others. Let go of the ones that you’re not confident in (yet) and double down on the areas that you feel are confident.

But yes, this is a practice. It’s also very dependent on your feelings. One of the best things you can do for your business is to work with your confidence.

If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to check out my free e-book: “Cash-Emails” in which you will have the best marketing templates, I learnt through my millionaire mentors, that will allow you write emails that can generate you a couple extra thousand dollars in sales. The strategies I will be sharing with you in this book are specifically made for email marketing but the templates can be applied onto virtually any platform. Download it through the link below.