Writing effective proposals is a vital skill for winning business in today’s economy. Now in a revised third edition packed with up-to-the-minute information and strategies, Persuasive Business Proposals provides you with powerful methods for crafting compelling messages and winning proposals that speak to your prospects’ needs and establish your firm’s strategic value. With clear instructions as well as before-and-after samples, this classic, bestselling guide shows you how to:
• Organize your content in the most persuasive way possible.
• Develop and deliver individually tailored, client-focused messages every time.
• Structure letters and formal proposals to present a winning value proposition that positions your firm as the ideal solution to clients’ needs.
• Follow up your proposal submission, analyze the client’s decision, and incorporate lessons learned to take better advantage of future opportunities.
Taking you step-by-step through a highly effective process for writing the kind of customized packages that capture new business, the third edition includes all-new ways to “power up” cover letters and executive summaries; advice for overcoming “value paranoia” ; essential questions for qualifying opportunities; guidelines for incorporating proof into a proposal; tips for winning renewal contracts; and much more.
You’ll learn how to boost the clarity of your writing, edit your proposal for optimal impact, and avoid the traps that can undermine even the strongest proposals. And you’ll learn effective strategies for dealing with automated procurement systems.
Your business has a lot to offer and it’s time to make sure your potential customers and clients know it! Packed with new information and invaluable strategies, this is the one guide you need to maximize the effectiveness of your proposals—and win more contracts.
TOM SANT is a well-known sales and proposal consultant, whose clients range from small entrepreneurial operations to Global 500 companies, including General Electric, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, and Accenture. He is the creator of the world’s most widely used proposal automation systems, ProposalMaster and RFPMaster. He lives in San Luis Obispo, California.
About the Author
TOM SANT is a renowned proposal consultant, whose clients range from small entrepreneurial operations to Global 500 companies, including General Electric, Microsoft, Lucent, and Accenture. He is the creator of the world's most widely used proposal automation systems, ProposalMaster and RFPMaster.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface
This edition of Persuasive Business Proposals has been thoroughly revised to reflect changes in the world of work that affect proposal writing and, more important, to incorporate lessons I have learned from working with some wonderful clients.
The basic principles of persuasion have remained consistent from the first edition onward, but thanks to insightful client feedback I have developed more effective ways to explain those principles. For example, the NOSE pattern that I present in Chapter 5 is an important instance of finding a simpler, more memorable way to communicate the key concept of persuasive structure. Likewise, the characterization of bad writing into the four categories of Fluff, Guff, Geek, and Weasel—an idea that I first presented in The Language of Success—has proved so popular in workshops and speeches that I decided to bring it to Persuasive Business Proposals, too.
The use of technology has exploded, moving us from the local area network to the cloud, and by collaborating with clients who are themselves at the forefront of information management I have learned how to use that technology to make the proposal writing task easier. I feel extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to work with proposal experts at Microsoft, Cisco, CIBER, Booz Allen, Thomson Reuters, Qvidian, and other leading high-tech firms. Technology can transform the way we work, as evidenced by the rise of virtual proposal operations on a global scale in recent years. But technology can also exert new pressures on the bidding process and the proposal writer, too. I have tried to address these new realities in this edition.
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Excerpted from PERSUASIVE BUSINESS PROPOSALS, 3rd Edition by Tom Sant. Copyright © 2012 by Tom Sant. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission.
All rights reserved. http://www.amacombooks.org.
