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 ...
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