Chapter 18: Give the Reader a KISS

If you ask people what they like to see in the business writing they receive, most of them will say something like, "Gimme a KISS!" In other words, Keep It Short and Simple.

As readers, we all know what we like: Conciseness. Clarity. Simplicity. Unfortunately, when we sit down to write, we too often fail to deliver anything like that. We produce lengthy, verbose, and complicated documents. Especially when writing proposals, many people subscribe to the "bulk" theory.

That's ridiculous, of course. To my knowledge, nobody has ever made a buying decision based on the thud factor—which proposal makes the loudest noise when dropped on the desk. It's true, of course, that an analytical decision maker will want quite a bit of detail, but details in and of themselves have no value.

One of our clients asked for advice that would help them improve their win ratio. When we reviewed their proposals, we were very impressed with their quality. In fact, we identified only two weaknesses. First, their value propositions were not as sharply focused or as well substantiated as they needed to be. Second, their proposals just seemed too long. So they worked on improving the value proposition, and they cut down the length by almost half. The result: Over the next six months, they won eleven out of twelve opportunities they went after!

Why would producing a shorter proposal have any impact at all on your win ratio? In a simple experiment we conducted, we asked people who make their living evaluating proposals to review three sample proposals. Actually, we weren't interested in their reviews at all. We just wanted to see which proposal they picked up first. One of them was twenty-five pages long, one was fifty pages, and one was one hundred pages. Which one do you think they reached for first? That's right—the short one.

Why does that matter? Well, let's suppose that you produced the short proposal. And you organized it using the persuasive paradigm, so you have focused on the client's needs, detailed the outcomes, recommended a solution, and substantiated it with convincing evidence that you can do the job on time and on budget. In addition, you've developed a payback calculation that's quantified and based on the client's own data, and you've linked that payback both to your differentiators and to credible evidence suggesting that this client is likely to see the kind of return you're forecasting. If this is the proposal your client reads first, what will he or she think of the bloated, unfocused, unpersuasive proposals that come second and third? They will appear worse by the contrast and will be evaluated even more harshly.

Lots of people pay lip service to short, direct, clear writing, but the reality is you don't see much of it. Within the business, scientific, and academic communities there seems to be a cultural bias against clarity and simplicity. Some of that may stem from insecurity. Writers don't feel confident about their knowledge, experience, or company reputation, so they try to impress the reader with big words, long sentences, and lots of extraneous content. Sometimes bad writing stems from laziness. Sloppy, careless writing takes less time and effort, even when it produces longer documents, than carefully edited writing. And sometimes bad writing is the result of bad training. Many of us remember English classes in which "good" writing seemed to be synonymous with big words, complicated syntax, and convoluted thinking. Even today there are books and audio tapes designed to help you develop a "power vocabulary," which basically seems to mean using lots of big words.

Overcome your anxiety and insecurity. Make the effort to write the kind of prose you want to receive—clear, compelling, and concise. And put behind you the bad training and wrong-headed advice you received from your English teachers. Your proposals are too important to your career and the success of your business. You must write them as clearly and economically as possible.

Here are some tips that will help you keep your proposals short and simple:

1. GYST. Don't write anything until you "Get Your Stuff Together." Lots of gas-filled balloons are launched from word processors by people who began to write before they really knew what they were talking about, why they were talking about it, or to whom they were talking. Analyze the client's business problem or need. Take the time to create a cognitive web so you have a basic outline to guide your writing. Give lots of thought to your decision maker's personality and priorities before you commit yourself to paper.

2. Watch your words. Churchill once said, "Short words are the best words, and old words, when they are short, are the best words of all." Great advice. Whenever possible, use everyday language in your writing.

   As a rule, use one- or two-syllable words. In fact, use them about 90 percent of the time. Can you still write a powerful message using such everyday words? Well, think about Churchill, rallying the United Kingdom in its darkest hours. Throwing a defiant challenge toward Hitler, he said: "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." You can feel the power that short, everyday words can generate.

3. Use short, simple sentences. A sentence is an idea. Sentences work best when they contain only one idea. And they work best of all when they're short and simple.

   Try to keep your average sentence length between fifteen and eighteen words. To determine the average sentence length, use the grammar checking function in your word processor. For example, if you use Microsoft Word, highlight the passage of text you want to check, then click on the spelling and grammar checking function. (Make sure that you have selected "Show readability statistics" in the Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar menu.) By doing that on this paragraph, I found that the average sentence length is 16.8 words.

   When I recommend that you write simple sentences, I am referring to the syntactical patterns you choose. If your sentences contain a lot of subordinate clauses, particularly clauses placed in the front part of the sentence, as I have done here, you will increase the complexity of the sentence and slow down comprehension. That sentence isn't horrible. You probably understood it all right. But a steady diet of sentences written like that will tire you out.

4. Write in a natural voice. Your writing will be easier to understand if you write in a natural, conversational rhythm to the extent possible. And try to say things in a positive way whenever you can.

Don't think writing short, simple proposals will be easy. You're probably surrounded by bad examples. Writing simply and concisely takes conscious effort. It requires more skill than simply rambling on does. But the effort is worth it. In fact, if your proposals embody the KISS principle, your readers may be so pleased they'll want to give you a kiss in return. Or better yet—a contract!