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 ...

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