The attachment to a first email
Someone has asked what you do. A profile answers it in a form they can forward to a colleague without explaining what it is.
Corporate profiles
The short document that gets read
A profile is not a shortened brochure. It is a different document with a different job: to answer one reader's question quickly enough that they finish it, and to leave them knowing what to do next.
The difference
Where a profile parts company with a brochure
Both are made from the same material. What changes is how much of it survives the edit, and what the document is asking the reader to do at the end.
| Company brochure | Short profile | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | Several times the length of a profile: every section has room of its own, and a contents list to find it by. | Short enough to read in one sitting, on a phone, before a meeting. |
| Audience | Anyone who has asked what the company does. | One reader with one question: can this company do the thing in front of them. |
| Pictures | Room for a picture in any section that earns one. | One or two, or none. Photography that has to be arranged first will hold the document up. |
| What it ends on | Contact and disclosures. | The single next step you want the reader to take. |
What it is for
Three reasons to commission a profile
Each one changes what the document has to carry, so say which applies and the quotation is written to it.
The document a tender asks for
Many invitations to tender ask for a company profile or capability statement to a stated structure. Where you have that structure, the document is built to it rather than to ours.
A version for each audience
The same company, described for two different kinds of buyer. Built as versions of one document so a change to the company details is made once.
What we need
Less than you would think
A profile is short, so the material for one is short. The work is in deciding what to leave out.
A paragraph about the company in your own words. The disciplines and sectors you want named. Your logo, and your typefaces and colours if you have them. Your registered particulars for the contact page. A portrait or two only if you want the people in it.
Where a tender or a buyer has given you a structure to follow, send that too: it settles the contents list before we start, and the document is built to it rather than to a shape of ours.
What the profile costs, how far it extends, when it is due and how many rounds of revision it includes are in the written quotation. The packages page lists the material to gather, and the brochure design page shows how the pages themselves are put together.
Say who has to read it
One reader, one question, one next step. Tell us those three and the quotation that comes back will be for the document that actually does the job.
Or write to communications@shinepages.tech and describe the document you have in mind. The form on the contact page writes the same email for you and opens it in your own email application, ready for you to read over and send.