Page 79 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

70 Writing Winning Business Proposals

Project, you will have only one objective, related to insight. A Planning Project
will have only one objective, related to developing a plan. An Implementation
Project also will have only one objective, related to implementing a plan.
Understandably, a project intended to develop a plan and implement it will have
two objectives. So will one that combines insight with a plan.
Two overriding questions existed in the XYZ situation, one related to insight
and one related to a plan. XYZ wanted to know whether entering the market was
desirable, and, if it was, the company wanted to know how best to do so. But you’d
be hard pressed to glean that information from the objectives shown in Figure
5.8. In fact, the objectives as originally stated don’t even suggest that the study
might only involve one phase—the market assessment. After all, if the market
were not worth entering, XYZ wouldn’t need or even want a plan for entering it.
Therefore, the consultants should have revised their objectives so that the first
related to insight and the second related to a plan:

◉ Determine if XYZ should enter the information-service market for motor
carriers.
◉ If entering the market is feasible, develop a plan for doing so.

These objectives much more clearly capture the desired results and also indicate
the phased nature of the project.

Step 2: After Placing Each Objective at the Top of the

Logic Tree, Order the Actions Necessary to Achieve It

In building a logic tree, you need to keep two principles in mind:

◉ Each box in the logic tree is a single action that expresses a result.
◉ The actions must be as specific as possible.

Because all the actions in the logic tree work together to produce the objective, all
are logically integrated. The integration occurs because each action on each level
is part of a group of actions that produces a result at a higher level. Figure 5.9
depicts this condition. On the lowest level are three groups of actions. Since the
logical reason for performing any group of actions is to achieve some result, each
group on the lower level produces an implied result at the next higher level:
Actions 1, 2, and 3 are performed in some logical manner to achieve Result 1.
Actions 4, 5, and 6 produce Result 2. And so forth.
As you construct your methodology, you must phrase these three results as
actions because they are undertaken to produce a higher-level result or group of
results. At the very top of the structure, regardless of how many levels it contains,