Put the Important Stuff Up Front

You should put your key points in the most prominent position. In business writing and presentations, that's first.

Whatever the audience sees up front in our proposal, whatever they hear first in our presentation, they assume represents our primary focus. It's a good idea to put the most important facts, information, opinions, or observations up front—that is, the things that are most important to the decision maker. This applies to the document as a whole, to sections within a document, to paragraphs, even to sentences.

Proposals and presentations will be most persuasive if they are organized in terms of what matters to the decision maker. That's why the persuasive paradigm works. (You can see why it's deadly to start a proposal with your company's history or an overview of your products.)

Sections of proposals will be easier to read and understand if they start with an overview. The overview should indicate what this part of the proposal is about and how it's organized. Be sure to put a strong selling statement at the outset of each section, too.

Paragraphs make more sense when they start with a clear topic sentence.

Sentences also benefit from following the primacy principle. For example, consider this:

Providing senior leadership during some of the recent projects presented in the table below is Mr. Ralph Brown.

Doesn't that sound odd? (It sounds like Ralph is in the table, doesn't it?) If we put the important point, namely Ralph's leadership, up front, it will read much better:

Mr. Ralph Brown provided senior leadership for some of the projects listed below.