Analyzing the Audience


Cicero has given us the word: You must consider your audience when writing proposals. It's crucial. Ignoring or misunderstanding the audience dooms hundreds, probably thousands, of proposals to failure every year, proposals that otherwise answer the needs or solve the problems of the corporations soliciting them.

The problem is that most people write proposals under duress. And most of us, when we're feeling stressed, will do something we're confident we can do well. In the case of proposal writing, we'll create the kind of proposal that we would like to receive and we'll include the kind of content we're confident we can do pretty well. If we are technical and detail-oriented by nature, we will create proposals that are technical and detailed. But how likely is it that the client will have the same attitudes and personality traits that we have? And even if the client does have a similar personality to ours, how likely is that he or she will be comfortable with the same language we are?

As Cicero has indicated, then, to write a winning proposal, you need to consider three key factors about the audience:

  1. Personality type ("think my thoughts")

    • Detail-oriented

    • Pragmatic

    • Consensus-oriented

    • Visionary

  2. Level of expertise ("speak my words")

    • Expert

    • Informed

    • Familiar

    • Unfamiliar

  3. Role in the decision process ("feel my feelings")

    • Ultimate authority

    • User

    • Gatekeeper

To appeal to and hold the interest of this broad spectrum of readers, you must balance many presentation skills, providing enough technical data to please the highly informed, detail-oriented customer, but not so much that visionaries will be bored or the uninformed audience intimidated.




Persuasive Business Proposals. Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts
Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts
ISBN: 0814471536
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 130
Authors: Tom Sant

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