Persuasive Business Proposals: Writing to Win More Customers, Clients, and Contracts

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 ...