Page 160 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

Writing the Situation and Objectives Slots 151

Before I can make the transition from S1 to S2, your project will have to answer
important questions. Articulating them in the Questions Component suggests
to me that you will be able to do that. Framing these questions also forces you to
think hard about your project’s issues, assumptions, and hypotheses.

◉ What are the key issues that must be resolved?
◉ Which issues are crucial, and which are tangential?
◉ Given the crucial issues, how will your methodology be designed to resolve
them?
◉ In resolving them, what benefits will accrue to me and my organization?

The last two questions suggest an important function of the Questions
Component: It helps situation speak to other proposal slots, in this case, to
methods and benefits.

The Closing Component

The function of the Closing Component is to provide a smooth transition from
the text above it to the text below it, to state the project’s objective(s), and to con-
clude situation with a closing oriented toward me, your potential client.
The Closing Component can include briefly stated themes related to hot but-
tons, evaluation criteria, and counters to the competition. These themes could
emphasize your experience, expertise, past performance, or previous relation-
ship with me or others in my organization or industry. Or they could sell certain
aspects of your methodology. Depending on the overall length of the proposal,
the Closing Component might be two or more paragraphs or a single sentence.
Whatever its length, it contains these elements:

◉ Backward transition from the Questions Component
◉ Forward transition to methods
◉ Project objective(s)
◉ Briefly stated benefits if they are not immediately apparent in the objectives

For content related to the third bullet above, your project’s objectives, rephrase
the overriding question(s) from Cell 4 of your Logics Worksheets or the desired
result(s) from Cell 5. For content related to the fourth bullet above, look to the
benefits you have included in Cell 6, choosing two to four powerful selling points
of your project. Note how the following sentence, which completes the sample
background section we have been considering, contains those four elements: