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Meena S wonders: <<One of my colleagues just asked me how to write a
Technical Proposal. To be frank, I am stumped- even though I am a Technical
Writer, I have not come across any good technical proposals. A search on the
Net did not yield anything really good.>>
If you're looking for resources, check out John Renish's bibliography of
technical communication books (available on www.raycomm.com) and while
you're there, check out the archives using "proposal" as your search term;
we've discussed this at some length. Simplistically, you need to be able to
do two things when you're writing a proposal:
1. Identify the funding agency's requirements: Many (perhaps most) agencies
who ask for proposals have a very rigid manner in which they want the
proposal prepared. Deviate from this format and content, and your proposal
may be rejected without reading it, even if would be a perfect match for the
client's needs: they'll never read it, so they won't know how good it is. If
no such formatting and content guidelines exist, ask the contact person how
they want the proposal to be prepared. Meet their needs and they won't be so
distracted by your formatting that they forget to concentrate on the
content. Fail to meet their needs...
2. Writing a proposal is an example of the art of persuasion, and to succeed
in persuading someone, you have to understand both their fears (so you can
allay them) and their desires (so you can satisfy them). Typical fears
include the possibility that you're just a smooth salesman who doesn't know
what you're talking about, and will end up costing them twice the amount
they budgeted to produce an inferior product; your response is to
demonstrate, via the proposal, that you are expert in the subject, willing
to meet their budgetary requirements, and able to produce a superior
product. Typical desires are the wish to sit back, read a novel, munch a
chocolate bar, and not be interrupted for 12 months, at which point you
deliver the perfect product. Your response is to demonstrate that you can
work independently (as much as feasible) and that you'll deliver the perfect
product at the end of the contract, on time and on budget. A detailed plan,
with all your assumptions identified and justified, accompanied by
alternatives if those assumptions are wrong and you need to invoke Plan B,
is a strong selling point.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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