Page 153 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

144 Writing Winning Business Proposals

wide variety of people, sift through masses of often conflicting information, and
achieve our objectives. If you demonstrate all that, by the way, you’ll be displaying
your qualifications much more persuasively than most qualifications sections can.
Here’s an example of a brief background section that contains three compo-
nents that we’ll discuss below:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Darth Vader and the evil Empire sought
to conquer all of galactic civilization, despite the efforts of the heroic Rebellion to
thwart their attempts at every turn. Through the extraordinary efforts of Princess
Leia and R2D2, we now have intelligence that the Empire is building a so-called
Death Star capable of demolishing an entire planet within minutes. If the Death
Star is not destroyed, the Empire will enslave every citizen of the galaxy.

Despite the Death Star’s blueprints brought to us by Leia, we still have many
questions that must be answered:

◉ How will the Empire defend the Death Star?
◉ What are its defenses?
◉ Where are those defenses vulnerable?
◉ What fighting force is required to exploit those vulnerabilities?

To answer these questions, we will develop an implementable plan to destroy
the Death Star. Subsequent to implementation, the Empire will lose its strangle-
hold on galactic civilization, the Rebellion will triumph, and Harrison Ford will
go on to become a bankable Hollywood star.

As Figure 9.1 illustrates, the background section above contains three com-
ponents (one per paragraph): Story/S1, Questions, and Closing/S2. Each of these
1
components offers you a significant opportunity to convince me that you under-
stand my problem or opportunity and know what it takes to address it.

The Story Component

To describe your understanding of my current situation, your Story Component
should tell me a compelling and engaging story by narrating a sequence of events.
Why tell a story? Because I and my colleagues like stories and become involved
in them. History is a story. So are biographies, plays, movies, novels, newspa-
per articles, soap operas, and even jokes. I like, read, and need stories so much
that even when I sleep I can’t help but tell stories to and about myself: I dream.
Stories are inherently interesting—I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like them.
And inherently interesting to me and everyone else on the buying committee