Page 117 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

108 Writing Winning Business Proposals

Hot Buttons

Hot buttons (Psychologics Worksheet, Cell 2; see Figure 7.2) are needs and desires
of individual buyers that can be addressed during your face-to-face meeting with
me and other buyers, by altering your project’s methodology, and/or by changing
your project’s team. Hot buttons are almost always psychologically oriented and
process oriented. For example, in the RST excerpt, complexity happened to be
one of my hot buttons. I was concerned about the complex nature of the project,
about all the possible pitfalls, including those I could see and those that I couldn’t
see at the time but knew would present themselves. Complexity, then, wasn’t
a result of the study, but it was an issue from my point of view that had to be
addressed strategically during the study. Therefore, the writer built into his pro-
posal’s methodology specific tasks for managing the study’s complexity. And he
conditioned my response to that methodology by convincing me, in his propos-
al’s opening section, that he understood the complex nature of our undertaking.
Addressing hot buttons is extremely important in selling your services because
your recognizing and acting on my hot buttons significantly helps build the trust
and chemistry essential to building a good business relationship. Also, using hot
buttons offers you a further advantage: They help you generate additional ben-
efits for your proposal. The following little stories suggest how.
Several years ago, my spouse and I had our house remodeled by people we
would never hire again. Their expertise or craftsmanship wasn’t at issue—they
did a fine job at what we hired them to do. The way they did it, however, caused
us unnecessary time, frustration, and anger. In a word, they were slobs. They
tracked mud inside, failed to control the dirt and dust, and even left cigarette
butts on the floor. As a consequence, my spouse and I returned from work every
evening with more work to do: mopping, vacuuming, and, most strenuous of all,
controlling our tempers. The problem wasn’t with the “what” (their expertise) but
with the “how” (the application of that expertise). If we were to remodel our house
again, the contractors bidding on the job would be confronted with our unmis-
takable hot button—call it neatness or cleanliness or just plain consideration.
Note that two effects would occur if the contractors would have addressed that
hot button, neither of which involves their technical approach to addressing our
problem. First, they would alter how they work for us (assuming, of course, that
they weren’t already paragons of neatness). Second, we would benefit from that
alteration: We would be saved both time and aggravation.
Here’s another, but similar, situation. You know how to drive your car, and you
know a bit about how your car works, but you don’t know very much about how
to fix it. So when your car doesn’t work, you take it to someone with the expertise
you lack. As in some situations where you have little expertise and someone else
has a great deal, you have little control and feel quite helpless. Knowledge is power,