Note: The bulk of this issue is a table, so it’s easiest to read on desktop.
The distance between the proof you want and the proof you have is where our Messaging Playbooks can surprise clients.
Sometimes their proof sections are fuller than the team expected. (They came in thinking they had basically nothing.)
So here's a non-exhaustive list of proof types. Collection notes are based on what I typically see in sales-led and hybrid SLG-PLG software orgs.
Type | What it proves | Example | What it typically takes to collect |
|---|---|---|---|
User count | Scale and adoption (“people like me are using this, so I should consider it”). | Trusted by 30,000+ doctors | Self-serve or light cross-functional collaboration. |
Companies served | Scale and adoption. | Used by 1,200+ dental practices | Self-serve or light cross-functional collaboration. |
Tenure | You're not a flash in the pan. Counters the worry that a startup gets bought out or goes bankrupt. | Serving revenue cycle teams since 2013 | Self-serve or light cross-functional collaboration. |
Analyst or award badges | Platforms the reader trusts also trust you. | G2 Leader badge, Gartner Magic Quadrant placement, etc. | Mostly self-serve (“Where have we been featured? Do we have permission to publish? If not, what do we do to get permission?”). |
Star ratings | Overall happiness from customers and/or end users. | 4.7/5 on G2 (340 reviews) | Pull from third-party sites, or you need to implement a review system to generate them. |
Testimonials | A real buyer like the reader had this problem and your product solved it (snapshot). | “We were writing off $40K a quarter in unrecoverable claims. Now we catch them before they age out." — Tessa Testimonial, Billing Manager, 12-provider practice | Self-serve for pre-existing; time and resources for net-new. |
Case studies | A real buyer like the reader had this problem and your product solved it (expanded). | How a 12-provider practice recovered $180K in aging claims in six months | Self-serve for pre-existing; time and resources for net-new. |
Press or media logos | The media the reader trusts also trusts you. | Logo bar: TechCrunch, Modern Healthcare, Forbes, etc. | Mostly self-serve, possibly an email to confirm permissions. |
Integration logos | Helps the buyer reconcile their own tech stack and tick off non-negotiables. Also signals product breadth and trust from others in the space. | Logo bar: Epic, athenahealth, Salesforce, etc. | Mostly self-serve, possibly an email to confirm permissions. |
Partner logos | Commitment to the space, plus trust from a body your buyers already trust. | Certified partner, National Council for Mental Wellbeing | Mostly self-serve, possibly an email to confirm permissions. |
Product imagery and video | The product works the way you say it does. | Annotated screenshot of the claims dashboard | Highly variable. Self-serve if pre-existing image library exists; may need collaboration with Product and/or a designer on net-new assets. |
Product usage stats | That the product observably does what we say it does. | 90% of SMS appointment reminders are opened within an hour | Typically cross-functional collaboration (Product, Engineering, CS), or you need to build infrastructure to capture it. |
Customer outcome stats | The magnitude of the outcome. | 77% of customers recover an average of $30K in previously unrecoverable payments within 30 days of going live | Typically cross-functional collaboration (Product, Engineering, CS), or you need to build infrastructure to capture it. |
One more thing you can do with the proof you have is a play I call “doing the math”. Here’s how:
Say you've got a case study or a testimonial, and buried inside it is an outcome stat. Your product saves the customer 10 minutes per form sent. But 10 minutes sounds small, so you keep going:
If you also know that this practice sends about 200 forms a week, you can do the math:
200 forms × 10 minutes = 2,000 minutes a week saved on forms sent
Divide that by 60 to shift into hours, and now you're at 33.3 hours saved per week. (That's the equivalent of nearly a full-time job. Your reader is more likely to recognize that when you present the number in hours per week vs. if you’d said 2,000 minutes per week, or even 10 minutes per form.)
Now you have proof that’s meaningful to your customer.
The optional-but-recommended next step: find out what the person typically responsible for that task gets paid.
In this example, let’s say it’s an office administrator sending those forms. You’d research the average salary for that role in the geographic region you serve (this is typically fast research btw). Now you can also put a dollar value on the time you're saving the customer.
If you have case studies or testimonials with quantified outcomes, you typically already have all the pieces for a “doing the math” proof play.
This type of proof is particularly effective on focused web pages (think: product pages, feature pages, use case pages, etc.). It also works nicely in emails and for sales enablement.
Doing the math for your reader is what makes the bigger picture impact visible. (Never expect the reader to do the math themselves. They won’t.)
As I pointed out last week, proof is a brand decision. When a brand commits to proving its claims consistently, you can build systems to support the effort. And to do the math.
And in doing this work, you may find you have way more proof than you think.
‘Til next week,
Carolyn
P.S. This week’s newsletter stems from analysis for an upcoming healthcare messaging trends and opportunities report:
The dataset includes 121 VC-backed healthcare SaaS homepage hero sections.
Those heroes were analyzed by classifying 43 data points across 20 aspects of messaging and positioning.
The data is synthesized to explain where the industry converges, and where there are opportunities to stand out.
If this report sounds like something your team could use, sign up here. You’ll get it the moment it's live.
Before you go…
My firm (Boxcar) helps sales-led B2B software companies turn their proven sales motion into a clear messaging framework that generates more qualified leads.
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