BPWME Sample Ch3

Business
Proposal Writing
Made Easy
Second Edition
Free Sample
Tim North
Scribe Consulting
Business Proposal Writing Made Easy www.BetterWritingSkills.com
Business Proposal Writing Made Easy
Free Sample
This free sample may be distributed freely as long as it is
not charged for or altered in any way.
The complete work is available from:
www.betterwritingskills.com
or
www.scribe.com.au
Second edition. Document last modified on 4 Jul, 2003.

ISBN 0–9578426–3–5
© 2003 Tim North, Scribe Consulting
All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this work may be reproduced by any
process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised without the written
permission of its author:
Tim North
Scribe Consulting
1, 66 Park St
Como Perth WA
Australia 6152
2
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
The extract that follows is chapter 3 of Business Proposal Writing Made Easy. It
should give you a “feel” for the book and, I hope, will be useful in its own right.
Please feel free to distribute this document as long as no changes are made.
The full version of Business Proposal Writing Made Easy comes with a 30-day
money-back guarantee and is available for only US$12.95.
Secure online ordering is available, or you can order by phone or fax.
Further information can be found here:
www.BetterWritingSkills.com
Regards,
Tim North
info@BetterWritingSkills.com
3
Module 1: Theory
In this first module, we discuss the theory behind proposal writing. This will
let us answer questions such as these:
• What is a proposal?
• What makes a proposal a good one?
• How can we write persuasively?
• What minimum content must every proposal contain?
4
3. THE ART OF PERSUASION

This chapter provides strategies that will help you to write more
persuasively.
3.1 Four questions that should keep you awake
You will have realised by now that writing to persuade is a very different job than
simply writing. There’s a specific challenge: can you write skilfully enough to
manipulate the beliefs of your readers, or will they remain unpersuaded by your
efforts?
Make no mistake: your proposal is an unashamed attempt at emotional

manipulation. You want your clients (be they internal or external) to be so
delighted by it that they’ll leap out of their chairs waving your proposal in the air
and yelling eureka!
To accomplish this, we need to look at how to construct a persuasive argument,

and this is the subject of the remainder of this chapter. We’ll see that to write
persuasively, you need to honestly answer four key questions before you start:
1. How are you perceived? Do you have an existing reputation for credibility, or
will you need to establish one?
2. How can you show that you’re providing what the client needs? You must
clearly demonstrate that you have a solution for their problem, rather than a
proposal that is just a solution to your problems.
5
3. How can you present your proposal well? Is it clear? Is it in a logical order?
Does it stand by itself, or does need to be accompanied by an audio-visual
presentation? Will it be the only one on the client’s desk, or will it be
competing with a dozen others? If there will be others, how will it compare
with those? How will it counter their strengths?
4. Who is your proposal directed at? Some people are swayed by numbers and
details, others by the big picture, others by gut feelings. Do you know what
type of client will be reading your proposal? Has this knowledge influenced the
style of your proposal?
Let’s look at these key questions in more detail.
3.2 How are you perceived?
If you received a stock-market tip as an unsolicited e-mail message (spam), would

you take it seriously? If you received another tip from a long-time friend who was
a rich and successful investor, would you take that seriously?
The differences here are credibility and trust. A spam e-mail message has neither.
A recommendation from a trusted and successful investor has both.
How likely is your proposal to be successful if it lacks these qualities?
So, before you start to write your proposal, you need to know in what regard
you’re held by your client.
Are you an unknown quantity to them? If so, it’ll be important to spend the
necessary time establishing your credibility. If, on the other hand, a colleague who
holds you in high regard is evaluating your proposal, your qualifications (and
other credibility-establishing matters) can be omitted or covered quickly.
6
Here then are a few questions about credibility to ask yourself before you start:
• How am I (or we) perceived by the client?
• Has the client ever actually said that they find me trustworthy and credible?
• If I’m perceived poorly (or even neutrally), how can I overcome this?
• What can I say or do to establish that I’m knowledgeable, trustworthy and

experienced?
Pondering questions like these will help you to decide how much effort to expend
establishing your credibility. Once you’ve decided how much effort to expend, the
techniques below can be used to establish this credibility.
Keep in mind that these strategies should be part of every proposal; only their
extent will vary.
To establish credibility:
1. Be candid about the limitations of your proposal. (To do this, you need to have
an honest and accurate knowledge of what your proposal’s limitations are.) If
you can spot them, so will the client. Address them. You might explain, for
example, how they are offset by the proposal’s many strengths. (This is
discussed further in section 3.3.4.)
2. Demonstrate your familiarity with the technical complexities of the problem.
3. Demonstrate your success in solving similar problems
4. Don’t overstate your claims or make promises you can’t keep.
5. Don’t try to be funny.
6. Don't use jargon unless you know that it will be understood.
7. End your proposal by making specific recommendations; e.g. ‘I recommend

that we immediately commence the investigation described here.’ Failing to
make one or more specific recommendations (particularly to an internal
client) might make you seem wishy-washy and indecisive.
7
8. Gobbledygook isn’t persuasive. As a general rule, reams of jargon, technology

and algebra are less persuasive than an appeal to business issues such as costs,
tax benefits and returns on investment. Excess technical detail should
generally be pruned out or confined to an appendix. (See sections 7.4 and 7.5.)
Of course, determining what level of technical detail to go into is a judgment

call. Keep in mind, though, that the proper amount of technical detail has little
to do with what you’d like to find in a proposal and everything to do with what
your client likes to find. (This is taken up further in section 3.5.)
9. Limit the use of sensational language and advertising-style exaggeration.
10. Spell check your document then have a real person check your spelling and
grammar. Do not rely on software to do these things for you.
11. Try not to offer the same old stuff. If you’ve been proposing the same ‘new
plan’ for years now, it’s less likely to be taken seriously. Innovative solutions
will gain attention and may enhance your credibility.
12. Where possible, provide links or references that substantiate your claims.
Exercises
1. Choose an internal client for whom you may have to write a proposal soon. Be
honest:
• How does that person regard you professionally?
• What new information could you provide that would enhance your
credibility?
• What could you remind them of?
2. Choose an external client and reconsider these same questions.
8
3.3 Are you providing what the client needs?
The second key element for establishing a persuasive argument is to clearly

demonstrate these three things:
• You understand what the client needs.
• Your proposal will deliver a solution to this need. (Ideally, a solution that is
better than any other possible solution.)
• You must overcome the suspicion that you’re proposing something that’s in
your own best interests. If you’re really more interested in increasing your
budget, getting the grant, selling your product or lessening your workload, it
will be very difficult to establish a persuasive argument to the contrary.
It is thus vitally important that you really are submitting a proposal that will solve
the client’s problems. It’s no use submitting a pie-in-the-sky proposal and hoping
that the client won’t notice that you’re the main beneficiary.
You need to come up with a win–win proposal that makes such good sense that
the reader would be a fool not to accept it.
The questions that follow will help you to establish such an argument.
3.3.1 What is the client’s problem and why?

It may seem obvious to say that you need to know what the client’s problem is,
but also knowing why it’s a problem can be especially instructive.
For example, let’s say that an external client has asked you to submit a proposal
for a training course on computer skills. Let’s further suppose that the request
clearly sets out what is wanted; e.g. one-day introductory courses for Word, Excel
and PowerPoint. You might feel that you have a good grasp of the problem
already, but ask yourself:
• Why is the training needed?
• Why is it needed now?
For example, is the client’s main intention to:
9
• lower costs?
• increase administrative speed?
• reduce staff numbers?
• reduce costly or embarrassing administrative errors?
If you were submitting a training proposal that would compete with several
others, wouldn’t knowing which of these was most important to the client give you
a major advantage?
Sure it would. Knowing the background to the client’s problem can increase your
understanding of what the client wants, and this makes it easier for you to prepare
a persuasive proposal.
Naturally, access to information like this is more likely to be available if the

proposal comes from an internal client. Still, with a bit of digging and a few phone
calls, who knows what you can discover?
3.3.2 What are the benefits of solving the problem?

Once you have a good appreciation of what the problem is and why it’s a problem
(see above), it’s important to identify the benefits or outcomes that solving the
problem should aim to provide. (Benefits are defined in section 7.2.)
Even before you necessarily know how you’re going to solve the problem (i.e.
what you’re going to propose), it can be very helpful to identify all the possible
benefits that a perfect proposal might have. In other words, try to come up with a
complete list of benefits that an ideal solution would possess.
You might not be able to provide them all, but such a list might help you to choose
between several competing ideas for meeting the client’s needs.
In some cases, all of the desired outcomes of the proposal will be explicitly stated
in a formal request for a proposal. In other cases, though, it will be up to you to
identify some or all of them.
10
Some typical outcomes and benefits are shown in the following list:
• Improve environmental friendliness.

• Improve safety.
• Improve staff morale.
• Improve reliability.
• Create brand recognition.
• Increase profitability.
• Increase sales.
• Increase customer satisfaction.
• Lower labour requirements.
• Lower component costs.
• etc.
It may also be up to you to assign priorities to these outcomes. If this is not made
explicit by the client, you may need to understand the client’s processes well
enough to be able to anticipate their priorities.
Having come this far, you should end up with a very clear understanding of:
• what the problem is you’re being asked to solve,;
• why it’s necessary to solve it; and
• what the benefits of any solution must be.
With this information in hand, you’re well on the way to writing a persuasive and
successful proposal.
3.3.3 What solution provides these benefits?

At this point, you still need to come up with one or more solutions to the client’s
problems, solutions that (ideally) provide all of the benefits that you identified
earlier.
11
Of course, if you’re writing a proposal to sell a specific product or service then

there’s no need to come up with a solution. It’s obviously going to be the product
or service that you’re selling.
Your choice of solution may not be obvious though. You may be trying to decide
which of your products, services or ideas to offer to the client; or you might not yet
have thought of a solution to the client’s problem. Coming up with such solutions
may be natural and easy; or it may require days or weeks of meetings, brain-
storming sessions and research.
After suitable effort, it may be that a single solution presents itself, and this will
become the heart of your proposal. On the other hand, you may narrow your
search down to two or three possible proposal choices.
When trying to narrow down your choices, remember to evaluate the alternatives
from the client’s point of view. Ask yourself such questions as:
• Will this solution provide all the benefits you identified earlier?
• Will it be too expensive for the client?
• Will it require the client to undertake training or obtain new staff or

equipment?
• Will it satisfy the client’s timeframe requirements?
• etc.
It is natural to want to recommend the solution that leads to the greatest benefits
to you rather than to the client, but it’s usually in your best long-term interests
not to do so.
Imagine that you’ve come up with two possible solutions for a sales proposal. One
is high return to you, but only partly meets the client’s needs. The other returns
only a moderate advantage to you, but is better for the client. Which is the more
sensible one to propose?
Surely it’s the second one. It has a high chance of providing a moderate return,
and that’s a good result in anyone’s language. The riskier choice is to submit the
high-return proposal that, in all probability, will yield nothing and may also result
in your reputation being damaged.
12
Let’s consider it another way. Imagine you’re the client. You’re given two planning
proposals. One meets most of your needs, but you suspect that it’s mainly
designed to meet the needs of the department submitting it. The other meets all
(or most) of your needs and doesn’t seem biased towards the needs of the writer.
Which one would you be more likely to choose?
3.3.4 Review your proposed solution

Having decided upon a solution, compare the benefits it offers to the client with
the ideal list of benefits that you came up with earlier. If there are some benefits
that you have not been able to provide, say why in your proposal.
The advantages of this openness are as follows:
• This will allow you to engage in damage control. If you can’t provide benefit X,
explain why the other benefits that you are delivering make up for this and
why benefit X isn’t all that important in the long run anyway.
• If you can’t deliver benefit X, chances are that a competing proposal will.
Ensure that you explain why your proposal is stronger anyway. For example, if
you trying to sell a certain brand of inkjet printer but a competitor’s model is
cheaper, explain (for example) that the total cost of ownership of your model is
less in the long run.
• Mentioning your weaknesses will be perceived as providing an honest and

comprehensive response. This can increase credibility and trust.
Exercises
1. Consider an internal client for whom you might soon write a proposal. What
are the reasons behind the problem? Is there any inside information that
might give you an advantage when pitching a proposal to solve the problem?
2. Consider an external client for whom you might soon write a proposal. Do you
have any contacts within that company that you could call to ask for the
reasons behind a proposal?
3. Is it ethical to do this? If so, under what circumstances might it not be ethical?
13
3.4 Is the proposal presented well?
The third key element to establishing a persuasive argument is to present your

proposal well. There’s more to a good presentation than just putting your
proposal in a nice binding, though.
You can improve the presentation of your proposal by asking question like these:
1. How clear is your writing? Even if you follow all the advice from module 1 of
this course, it’s all for naught if your English is incomprehensible. Ask a
colleague or friend to read your proposal and play the devil’s advocate. Ask:
• What does he or she find unconvincing?
• What are it’s weaknesses?
• What could be added or omitted to strengthen it?
• etc.
2. Have you presented the parts of your proposal in a suitable order? For
example:
• Was it best to spend two pages establishing your credibility early on, or
should have gotten right to the point and hidden the credibility-
establishing stuff in an appendix?
• Was it best to put the technical description of your new process before the
list of expected benefits, or would it have been better after them?
3. Is your proposal of a suitable length? Writing a two-page letter when a

forty-page document was expected is just as bad as the reverse.
4. Does your proposal have a proper structure or is it just a long rambling

memo? (Structure is discussed in detail in Module 2.)
14
5. Have your forgotten any of the elements that should be in every proposal? For
example:
• A clear statement of the client’s problem. (Often — and particularly with

unsolicited proposals — this will emphasise its severity and the desperate
need for a solution. One that, conveniently enough, you just happen to
have. 1)
• A clear statement of the benefits to the client of solving the problem.
• A clear statement of your proposed solution to the problem.
• One or more clear recommendations for action.
(We’ll discuss these universal elements further in chapter 4.)
6. Keep in mind that an overly glamorous presentation can backfire if taken to

extremes. You run the risk that your proposal might be seen as more form
than substance. It is usually sufficient for your proposal to be neatly bound
and professional looking.
7. How will your proposal be considered?
• Will it be the only one on the client’s desk, or will it be one of a dozen?
• Does it stand by itself, or are you hoping to ‘explain it’ with an audio-visual
presentation?
• How would it fare if a busy client read the executive summary only and
used that to decide whether or not to keep reading?
Exercises
1. Discuss the points raised in this section.
2. What other presentation issues can influence the success of a proposal?
1 We’re setting up a clear carrot-and-stick scenario here. This refers to creating a situation where you are
motivating someone with both a reward and a punishment.
15
3.5 Who is the your proposal directed at?
We’ve already established that your proposal must provide what the client needs
(section 3.3). It also helps to understand a bit about the preferences of the specific
person (or persons) reviewing your proposal — not just their needs, but their
preferences for how they like to receive information. This is the final key element
in establishing a persuasive argument.
For example, let’s suppose you knew that either John or George would read your
proposal. John is an engineer: a real ‘numbers man’. He likes to receive pages and
pages of technical details and return-on-investment analyses. He likes charts and
data. George, on the other hand, is an ‘ideas man’ — he goes with his gut. He’ll
carefully read your executive summary and recommendations, flip through the
rest of the pages to develop a ‘feel’ for it then decide whether to accept your
recommendations.
Would knowing which of these two people were going to review your proposal
change the way you wrote it?
Of course it would, yet this sort of advice is never included in formal RFPs from
external clients and is often overlooked when internal clients ask for a proposal.
Knowing something about the preferences and personality of the person reading
your proposal will help you to be more persuasive by improving your ability to
give them what they want.
If you’re providing a proposal to an external client whom you don’t know (or don’t
know well), it may be difficult to obtain any insight into their preferences. In this
case, you might just have to use your best guess. If you’re writing for an internal
client, though, obtaining this information may be as simple as asking them.
Here then are a couple of questions to ask yourself about the person (or persons)
who will evaluate your proposal:
1. Do they focus on details or leave that to others?
2. Do they prefer to act unilaterally, or do they seek a consensus?
16
3. Are they willing to take risks, or are they conservative?
4. Are they technically adept, financially adept or both?
5. Are they the ultimate decision maker, or do they have to bump your proposal
up the line?
These may not be the easiest questions to answer, but armed with this sort of
extra information, you’re in a better position to construct a persuasive argument
by playing to the needs and preferences of your clients.
Exercises
Turn to the person next to you, and ask them to answer the questions above. Do
you think that having these answers would make it easier for you to persuade
them of something?
17
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this brief extract from Business Proposal
Writing Made Easy. Being only a single chapter, this sample is, of course,
quite narrowly focused. The complete work, however, covers a much wider range
of topics.
Here is the table of contents of the complete edition, which you can obtain from:
www.betterwritingskills.com
Regards,
Tim North
Author's introduction
MODULE 1: THEORY
1. What is a proposal?
1.1 The secret to your success
1.2 All proposals involve selling
1.3 Proposals are not reports
1.4 What are the main types of proposals?
2. Types of persuasion
2.1 The four Cs
2.2 Creating a belief
2.3 Confirming a belief
2.4 Challenging a belief
2.5 Changing a belief
3. The art of persuasion

3.1 Four questions that should keep you awake
3.2 How are you perceived?
3.3 Are you providing what the client needs?
3.4 Is the proposal presented well?
3.5 Who is the your proposal directed at?
4. Things that must be in every proposal

4.1 General strategies
4.2 Universal content
18
MODULE 2: CONTENT
5. Introductory components
5.1 Covering letter
5.2 Title page
5.3 Executive summary
5.4 Non-disclosure statement
5.5 Table of contents
6. Background components
6.1 Client background
6.2 Industry background
7. Detail components
7.1 Description
7.2 FAB: Features, advantages and benefits
7.3 Cost summary
7.4 Financial details
7.5 Technical details
7.6 Schedules
7.7 Training
7.8 Maintenance
7.9 Equipment or software
7.10 Project management
7.11 Legal matters
8. Proposer components
8.1 Proposer's background
8.2 Resumes
8.3 Case studies
8.4 Testimonials or references
9. Appendix components
9.1 Technical appendix
9.2 Financial appendix
9.3 Glossary of terms
MODULE 3: SAMPLES
10. Sample proposal

10.1 Overview
10.2 What type of proposal is it?
10.3 Description
11. Sample proposal

11.1 Overview
11.2 What type of proposal is it?
11.3 Description
Index
19
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Business

Business Proposal Writing Made Easy

The complete work is available from:

Second edition. Document last modified on 4 Jul, 2003.

© 2003 Tim North, Scribe Consulting

Secure online ordering is available, or you can order by phone or fax.

Further information can be found here:

3. THE ART OF PERSUASION

3.1 Four questions that should keep you awake

Make no mistake: your proposal is an unashamed attempt at emotional

To accomplish this, we need to look at how to construct a persuasive argument,

Let’s look at these key questions in more detail.

3.2 How are you perceived?

If you received a stock-market tip as an unsolicited e-mail message (spam), would

How likely is your proposal to be successful if it lacks these qualities?

• How am I (or we) perceived by the client?

• What can I say or do to establish that I’m knowledgeable, trustworthy and

2. Demonstrate your familiarity with the technical complexities of the problem.

3. Demonstrate your success in solving similar problems

4. Don’t overstate your claims or make promises you can’t keep.

5. Don’t try to be funny.

6. Don't use jargon unless you know that it will be understood.

7. End your proposal by making specific recommendations; e.g. ‘I recommend

8. Gobbledygook isn’t persuasive. As a general rule, reams of jargon, technology

Of course, determining what level of technical detail to go into is a judgment

9. Limit the use of sensational language and advertising-style exaggeration.

• How does that person regard you professionally?

• What could you remind them of?

2. Choose an external client and reconsider these same questions.

3.3 Are you providing what the client needs?

The second key element for establishing a persuasive argument is to clearly

• You understand what the client needs.

3.3.1 What is the client’s problem and why?

• Why is the training needed?

• Why is it needed now?

For example, is the client’s main intention to:

• increase administrative speed?

• reduce staff numbers?

• reduce costly or embarrassing administrative errors?

Naturally, access to information like this is more likely to be available if the

3.3.2 What are the benefits of solving the problem?

• Improve environmental friendliness.

• what the problem is you’re being asked to solve,;

• why it’s necessary to solve it; and

• what the benefits of any solution must be.

3.3.3 What solution provides these benefits?

Of course, if you’re writing a proposal to sell a specific product or service then

• Will it be too expensive for the client?

• Will it require the client to undertake training or obtain new staff or

• Will it satisfy the client’s timeframe requirements?

3.3.4 Review your proposed solution

The advantages of this openness are as follows:

• Mentioning your weaknesses will be perceived as providing an honest and

3. Is it ethical to do this? If so, under what circumstances might it not be ethical?

3.4 Is the proposal presented well?

The third key element to establishing a persuasive argument is to present your

• What does he or she find unconvincing?

• What are it’s weaknesses?

• What could be added or omitted to strengthen it?

3. Is your proposal of a suitable length? Writing a two-page letter when a

4. Does your proposal have a proper structure or is it just a long rambling

• A clear statement of the client’s problem. (Often — and particularly with

• A clear statement of the benefits to the client of solving the problem.