When bidding for new business, you need to convince a prospective client that your teams have the knowledge, the skills and the experience to more than meet their requirements.

To do this, you need a reference project.

What is a reference project?

‍A reference project is a case study – a real world example of how great you are at what you do. It’s a fast and effective way to highlight your teams’ past experience and success to external stakeholders.

One of CV Partner’s key features is a reference project solution. With our platform, you can easily create reference projects that emphasise the most important information. This includes:

• The project challenge - a summary of the brief set by a previous client and the challenges involved in delivering on it
• The project solution - the skills, experience and solutions your company employed to complete the project successfully
• Client benefits - details of how your organisation managed to achieve project objectives and the benefits this provided for the client

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This format gives you space to detail working methodologies, ingenious solutions and impressive performance metrics. In just a few short sentences you can provide ample evidence of your company’s ability to get the job done.

How do I create a winning reference project? 

A great reference project should achieve two objectives. It should:

• Convince a client of your knowledge and expertise
• Demonstrate your company’s ability to translate knowledge and expertise into successful execution and client satisfaction

For the first point on this list, you’d use CV Partner’s Master CV search function. With this tool, you can easily find and add employees with the required skill set to a proposal.

And for point number two, you’d make use of CV Partner’s reference project library, finding past projects that illustrate your company’s collective ability to deliver on this particular brief. 

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How to use the reference project library

1. Each time you complete a project, add it to your reference project library. Keeping up with the data in real time makes life easier in the long run.
2. Search the reference project library for projects that are relevant to this new client and their brief. You can search by category tags, industry type and skills as well as by using your own free text searches.  
3. Found the right reference project? Great! Simply add it to your new proposal. From here you can customise reference project content, perfectly tailoring it to your current client.

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What else can I do with reference projects?

CV Partner creates a single workflow for your whole enterprise. This means you can use reference projects completed by one team as a springboard for selling your entire organisation.

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Every reference project is searchable by all internal system users. So you’ll find it easy to share and deploy reference projects across different departments and locations.

The end result? A simple but super effective process for bids and tenders.

You can harness the collaborative knowledge of your company as a whole, conveying your expertise and winning business with the help of informative, well-crafted reference projects.

Don’t just tell people what you can do – show them! Request a free CV Partner demo to see our reference projects and other great CV management features in action.

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