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

The Decision Maker’s Role and Values

The third aspect of your reader that you must evaluate as you prepare your proposal is the reader’s role in his or her organization. This is important, because people tend to apply the same standards in evaluating others that are applied to them. If my bonus depends on increasing net profitability, you can bet that I’ll be looking at your proposal in terms of its impact on net profitability. Thus, if you understand the decision maker’s role in the organization, you are more likely to understand the values, or “feelings,” to use Cicero’s term, that he or she brings to each decision.

Ideally, every proposal you write will go directly into the hands of the final authority, the one person charged with responsibility ...