Flickr user Audringje is a saint for graciously providing this photo.
So, you want to be that dude in the sweet hat, eh? Well, you’ll have to be quick on your feet if you want to write a better business proposal. Any successful piece of writing requires engaging in a balancing act between author and audience.
If you don’t sell yourself enough there is nothing to buy. But, if you don’t sell to your audience enough there’s nothing they would want to buy. “To” is italicized for a reason. You never want to sell at the audience, but rather cater to them.
Two very important things to remember when selling to the audience:
1. It’s very likely that the person reading your proposal has 100 better things to do with his or her time and doesn’t even enjoy reading business proposals in the first place.
2. However, this person really wants your proposal to be the winning one. If they didn’t have hope that yours would be worth their time, then they wouldn’t be reading it.
Keeping these things in mind here are 3 tips:
A. Backwards essay: don’t save the best for last. Your reader is short on time, so put the most important, most compelling information about you service at the beginning and work down from there. Remember, the audience wants your proposal to be The One, so give them what they want from the start and show them that you have what it takes to solve their problems.
B. Keep is short: Filling up pages with b.s. is also another essay technique that I don\'t recommend employing in a proposal. The longer a proposal is, the less likely someone is to read through it. So, identify what the reader needs to know, toss out the rest and make these need-know-points easily accessable for the audience.
C. Jargon watch: always keep your audience in the back of your mind when choosing your vocab. Do they know a whole heck of a lot about this subject? Great, use those fancy words. Are they noobs? Keep your writing elementary, then, my dear Watson.
Follow these tips and in no time your business proposals will be looking as suave and gentlemanly as our good friend up there.
Here is an article you may like on how to write a business proposal.
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