Page 97 - Writing Winning Business Proposals

88 Writing Winning Business Proposals

In a different situation, I become more concerned about people and their
relationships within my organization. This more supportive orientation is one
I often take during implementation projects in which I must convince others in
my organization to change. In this situation, therefore, I may desire your sensi-
tivity, your care for the personal and developmental concerns of me and others.
At yet other times, especially when I’m dealing with a future issue, one that is
often ill defined, I become more concerned with ideas and hypotheses and cre-
ativity. This orientation leads me to rely more heavily on intuition and feelings.
Therefore, I may desire from you a more conceptual and open-ended orientation.
Finally, in yet other situations, I become more assertive, more oriented to action,
more desirous of control. I may adopt this directing or controlling orientation when
I sense urgency and the need for rapid change or a forceful response. I become more
task-oriented, more insistent on getting something accomplished quickly. Therefore,
I may desire from you a certain assertiveness, a far more proactive orientation.
So even if you think you know me because you’ve seen me operate in one kind
of situation, you may be surprised at my response in another situation. Your
task is to make reasonable and educated guesses about the nature of my likely
response so that you, in turn, can respond to my situation and convince me that
you understand my organization’s problems or opportunities and that we can
work together successfully.
Additionally, if I’m not the only one making the buying decision (which is
almost always the case), you also need to know my colleagues on the evaluation
committee, how they perceive the situation, and what they like and don’t like
about the scope and range of potential solutions, as well as their relationship to
me, and mine to them. Would you be surprised to hear that we may see the situ-
ation differently, have different selection criteria, and even have different biases?
Well, more often than not, we do. So you and your team need to deal with me
and each of my colleagues. This can be a very complex interchange.

Miller and Heiman’s Four Buying Roles

Let me recommend a book to you that isn’t at all about writing but is about sell-
ing (and that’s what your proposal process needs to do: sell). The book, The New
1
Strategic Selling, contains a powerful method for analyzing the members on a
buying team. Each of these individuals, in what Miller and Heiman call a “com-
plex sale” (i.e., one with multiple decision influencers), plays one or more roles:
economic buyer, user buyer, technical buyer, or coach.
The economic buyer (only one exists in most selling opportunities) has direct
access to and control of the budget, discretionary use of those funds, and veto
power over the sale. This buyer’s focus is primarily on the bottom line and on the