Chapter 5: Developing a Client-Centered Message Every Time You Write


Overview

You've probably had an experience similar to the one I had recently when I was in Scottsdale for a conference. I separately asked three of the friendly people working at the Mountain Shadows Resort which was the best Mexican restaurant in Scottsdale. All three of them gave me the same answer. Hopeful that I was about to enjoy a great meal, I drove to the restaurant they recommended.

After waiting awhile to be seated, I looked at the menu and saw what I wanted, although I wanted a small change to the way it was prepared. Unfortunately, the woman who took my order was much more interested in yelling at a busboy ("Jose! I told you don't put that table over there. No! You put it in the wrong place, now you go move it!") than she was in taking my order. So when the food came, it wasn't what I had asked for. When I pointed that out, she argued with me. "Everybody orders it like this. That's what you want. You didn't say anything different." It got unpleasant pretty rapidly.

So here's the test question: Do you think I will go back to that restaurant?

Not likely, you're thinking, and you're right. In spite of the testimony of three separate people who assured me that it was a great place for dinner, the actual first experience I had there was negative enough that I'll never go back. Some research indicates that it will take seven or more positive experiences before we believe that our negative first impression was a mistake.

How does all of this apply to our proposals? Well, the "principle of first impressions" works in documents just as it does in interpersonal relations. What kind of first impression do you think proposals like these create?

A manufacturer of material handling systems developed a standard proposal, the first twenty pages of which consisted of a history of the company. Why? It's a Fortune 500 company, so it certainly didn't need to work that hard to introduce itself. What's worse, the history was boring. It was a litany of mergers and acquisitions, financial maneuvers, and so forth.

A notable research laboratory typically wrote proposals for grants that read like articles for technical journals. Each one plunged right in, discussing obscure technical issues, but never connecting the research being proposed to the granting foundation's mission or interests.

Account representatives for a major telecommunications vendor were constantly being pounded on the issue of price. The other guys were always cheaperor so it was claimed. Soon this vendor's proposals began to focus exclusively on issues of cost and value, almost completely ignoring the client's needs and the vendor's uniqueness factors.

The problem with all of these proposals was that they addressed what the writer was interested in long before they addressed the prospective client's needs and objectives. And in some cases, they never did address what the client cared about. These proposal writers had failed to get out of their own heads and into the heads of their customers.




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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