Chapter 21: Editing Your Proposal


So you want to be a good writer? Then force yourself to be a rewriter. That's where good writing happens.

A lot of people apparently believe that good writers don't need to revise, that excellent proposals simply pour out of them in their complete and final forms. Trust me—that's a delusion.

How Much Should You Edit?

How much editing should you do? As much as you can. I know that's a bit vague, but I'm sorry to tell you that there's no magic formula, such as "five minutes per page'' or "15 percent of the total time allocated to document development.''

Another way of asking "how much'' is to ask yourself: "How good is good enough?'' When is your proposal good enough to go to the client?

First, you need to recognize that perfection is not a realistic goal. Instead, the goal should be excellence. We want to deliver a proposal to our client that is truly excellent, that is in the top 1 or 2 percent of all the proposals he or she receives.

To define excellence, we can consider six levels of "correctness,'' listing them in order of increasing difficulty of achievement:

  1. There are no mechanical, spelling, or punctuation errors and no typos.

  2. There are no obvious errors of fact, content, or logic.

  3. The proposal follows an effective and appropriate structural pattern and has been adequately divided into functional units so that the reader can understand and use it easily.

  4. The proposal writing is clear and concise, free of needless jargon, ambiguities, or possible misinterpretations.

  5. The proposal has been slanted correctly in terms of the primary audience's level of expertise, personality, and values.

  6. The proposal is intelligent, written in a crisp and interesting style, and delivered in a format that makes it easy to use.

So—how good is good enough? Lots of technical or business professionals are satisfied if their documents reach level 2. If it gets by on the first reading, it's good enough for them.

From a reader's point of view, however, nothing less than level 4 will do. And for a proposal, where the reader is making a buying decision, you shouldn't tolerate anything less than level 5. So how much should you edit? Enough to get to that level of excellence.




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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