Proposal Writing Tips » Example

18 Ways to Improve Your Case Studies

Editor — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 22:22:56 +0000

You’ve never written a case study before, right? You wish there was some nice, easy way to get a handle on this. So, wouldn’t it be very nice if someone –guess who! – put together fifteen of the best articles on case study writing? Well, you’re in luck, we have!

1. How to Write a Case Study

Case studies and white papers are very effective tool to promote the benefit of a product or services. Case studies are the first most popular device used to promote the business.

How to Write a Case Study

2. Case Study: Focus To Be More Effective

As mentioned earlier, a case study is a soft-sell sales document. Its role is to highlight your abilities without resorting to market-speak and sales clichés.

3. Using Case Study in Your Marketing Plans

Case Studies are one of the most effective tools you can use to promote your products and services, especially if you are on a limited marketing budget.

4. What is a Case Study?

In general, case studies are made up of four sections: 1. Situation, 2. Problem, 3. Solution, and 4. Evaluation.

5. 5 Reasons To Write a Case Study About Your Business

There are several reasons you should publish a case study, for example to generate market awareness, raise your profile, or demonstrate thought leadership. Here’s how to do it.

Case Study – Sample Templates

6. How to Construct your Case Study

In the opening section of your case study, Situation, you describe the rationale for the case study, your background, current market position, areas of expertise, and what makes your company different from the competition.

7. Case Study: Length, Format, Style, and Presentation

Most case studies are between two-or-three pages and in the range of 500-900 words, although some tend to run longer. Try to aim for three pages, and include one large graphic per page.

Case Study – Sample Templates

8. Transform Case Studies into Success Studies

A case study should start with a powerful headline highlighting the major result or benefit of the project.

9. Writing Case Studies for Medical Products

These medical case studies are 500 to 800 words and describe how the device improves the diagnosis or treatment of patients.

10. How to Prepare Case Studies

A case study can be described as the study of an object, person or situation in its natural habitat in an uncontrolled and observational manner.

11. Writing Case Studies That Convert Prospects into Customers

Case studies are a very effective promotional tool, especially when your products and services are intangible, expensive, technical or provide benefits that are not instantaneously derived upon purchase.

12. Making the Business Case for Case Studies

Case studies are much more effective because they offer quantifiable success stories told from the perspective of current satisfied customers.

13. Trade Show & Case Studies

Trade show case studies can only benefit your company. Learning from past companies’ efforts and strategies adds to your own experience, almost as if you lived through their successes and failures with them.

14. How Freelance Writers Can Make Money from Case Studies

I remember the first time a client offered me a case study writing assignment. “What the heck is a case study?” “How long is it?” “What is the format?” “How much do I charge?”

15. Case Study for Market Research

There is another method of gathering information which is relevant and must be described. It is called case studies and it is the most adjustable of all research designs.

16. Case Studies as a Marketing Tool

An effective case study highlights how a specific situation was originally identified, what solution was selected for the problem.

17. How to Market your Business with Case Studies

A great way to increase the credibility of your marketing is to let your satisfied customers sell your service or product for you. Case studies are a wonderful way to do this.

18. Case Studies Research and Writing

The problem section of your case study has to have a ‘punch’. It has to signify something to the reader, something that can relate to, something that makes them take action.

Case Study – Sample Templates

If you have any questions about case studies, please contact me here or visit our blog.

Posted via web from Small Business Strategies

37 Business Proposal Writing Tips

Editor — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 22:24:00 +0000

This short course on proposal writing reminds us that our business proposal does not stand alone. It is process of a larger process that involves planning, research, writing, editing, proofing, submission and acceptance.

This list gives 37 ways to improve your next proposal. Scroll through it and tell me what I missed.

Show that your response is logical and organized

Make the information easy to find. Cross reference against the Request For Proposal
Include a table of contents for proposals over 10 pages in length
Ensure that your Proposal is in compliance with the RFP
Arrange material in order of priority
Arrange everything in the order that’s most important to the client
Arrange the response in accordance with their requirements
Number pages and sections consecutively; do not re-number each section
Use headings
Each section title should stresses the main benefits
Each section title should help readers orient themselves
If possible, express the key point of the section in the headline, or immediately after it.
Highlight important points
You can emphasize the most positive points by using bold, underlining, different fonts, spacing, titles, bullets and summaries
Content – Sell the Message
Respond completely
Answer every question in the RFP. Failure to respond correctly to the RFP may disqualify your proposal. The client put these questions in for a reason, and expect an answer.
Avoid banal headings and titles
Rather than say “Development Section,” say “Ten Ways to Improve Your Processes”
Use action verbs in heads, especially verbs that stress a benefit for the client
Avoid boilerplate
Don’t recycle resumes and corporate profiles from previous proposals; modify them in accordance for the proposal at hand. Using old, tired resumes will be perceived by the reader, and will count against you when they can making the final judgments.
Avoid hype, padding and other self-congratulatory drivel. Remember that the proposal is a legal document that becomes part of the contract if you win
Support your recommendations
By giving specific details and quantifying the benefits whenever possible
Don’t just say that you will comply with a requirement — say how we’ll do so
Don’t attack competitors. Refer to rival products if you must.
Point out the weaknesses of alternative solutions.
Use a strong closing statement
Ask for their business; tell the reader exactly what you want him or her to do
Remind the reader of the benefits of taking action
Avoid business cliché’s
Avoid hackneyed openings and closings that clients have read a thousand times. Avoid “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for considering the enclosed . . .” Get to the point: “Here is your proposal.” Avoid “If you have any questions, please feel free to call.” That closing has been done to death, so avoid it and write something more genuine.
Make your proposal easy to understand
Use the same terms and jargon that appear in the RFP. Don’t try to impress the client with your own special brand of buzzwords or TLA (three-letter acronyms)
Use simple, direct language
Wrap up the Proposal with confidence

What did I miss?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh is a left-handed technical writer who writes business proposals for clients. He also shares business writing tips for smart people at Klariti.

How To Write a Consultancy Services Proposal

Editor — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:00:39 +0000

Use the introduction to place the proposal in context. This section should be one or two pages max. Don’t over-whelm the reader with background material. They can find more details about your organization on your website and in press releases.

So, what goes into the introduction?

1. Identify the Government bodies involved in this procurement process, for example.

The Health Department encompasses five counties in the greater London region. These are…

2. Identify any strategic plans that relate to the success of this project

The London Region, which encompasses the administrative areas of counties X, Y, Z, adopted a Strategic Management Plan in 2002.

3. Identify significant data that the bidder must be made aware of, for example,

The administrative area of this region has a combined population of 500,000 and covers 10000 sq Kilometres.

4. Next, outline your goal:

We now wish to review and replace 2002 Strategic Management Plan in compliance with the Waste Management Act 2003 and the Waste Management Regulations, 2005.

5. Identify other preliminary work that has been performed:

The new plan shall make reference to the existing Waste Management Plan, existing preparatory work, the recently commissioned Waste Management Study, EPA National Waste Database, EU Waste Management Plans and all other relevant documentation and legislation.

6. Close with reference to legal documents and supporting materials.

The new Plan should take account the Government policy statements:
• Changing our Ways
• Recycling Waste
• Waste Management Moving Forward

In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to write the Supervision section.

Consultancy Proposal – How to Define the Table of Contents

Editor — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:00:25 +0000

Over the coming weeks, we’ll look at how to write a proposal for Consultancy Services. This will be of use to government agencies or other bodies that want to procure the services of a consultancy firm, for example, an advertising agency, a PR or HR firm or another type of company that provides specialist services.
This type of proposal differs from contracts where, for example, you want to use a specific product, piece of equipment or have very exact specifications in mind.

In a proposal for Consultancy Services, you want to determine the most appropriate firm based on their expertise and capacity of deliver based on your needs.

There are several ways to do this.

To get started, I will create a table of contents for each of the main sections and then drill-down into each section.

Here is the table of contents

1. Introduction
2. Supervision
3. Deliverables
4. Consultation – Meetings schedule
5. Reports & Presentations
6. Programme
7. Award Criteria
8. Information to be submitted
9. Fee Proposal
10. Conflict of Interest
11. Terms of appointment
12. Ownership of Documents and Copyright
13. Termination of appointment
14. Dispute Resolution
15. Tax Clearance Certificate
16. Withholding Tax
17. Professional Indemnity
18. Confidentiality
19. Submission of proposal

In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to write the Introduction.

Why The Table of Contents Is The Heart of Your Business Proposal?

How to Write Headlines, Summaries and Abstracts For Business Proposals

Editor — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 07:18:00 +0000

Philip Koopman, at Carnegie Mellon University, reminds us that, “Writing an efficient abstract is hard work, but will repay you with increased impact on the world by enticing people to read your publications. Make sure that all the components of a good abstract are included in the next one you write.”

Let’s look at how to write headlines, summaries and abstracts. Before we start, what is an Abstract?

Photo Credit Pjern

Why We Read Abstracts and Summaries?

When you open your inbox every Monday morning and see a stream of emails crying for attention. Which do you choose? I’d guess it’s the ones with the snappiest headlines, like these:

Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging
A Simple Four-Step Strategy for Developing Content That Connects
The Benjamin Franklin Guide to Marketing Your Business Online
Five Common Headline Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Become a Master of Metaphor and Multiply Your Blogging Effectiveness
Metaphor, Simile and Analogy: What’s the Difference?

These are from CopyBlogger .com and show how smart headlines can tickle your fancy. So, when you read, ‘Are You Leaving Your Readers Out of the Conversation?’ you can’t help but start to answer the question in your mind. And when you do that, you open the article and start to read.

So, good headlines act like hooks bringing you into the story.

Abstracts are also important. We have an ever-increasing need for quick access to information we rely on abstracts and summaries to provide a snapshot of what’s in the article.

If you visualize it as a pyramid, on the top is headlines, then summaries, and then the body of the article. You can see how one leads to the other.

How To Write An Abstract

You have two options. Write it before you start on the main document or after you’ve finished writing, take a break and explore:

What is the main subject in this article?
What conclusion has the writer made?
What message does the writer want to convey?
What do you want the reader to do after reading the document?

Analyze this and define it in one sentence – this is your ‘topic’ sentence.

Write one topic sentence that covers the entire document, regardless of whether the document is a five page letter or a hundred page annual report.

1. Getting Ideas

Then, look at the recommendations, conclusions, summaries, and results in the final document. When abstracting a technical manual, look at the tutorials and see if these help form the topic sentence.

2. Don’t Use the Document’s Title

Avoid using the formal name of the document as this can be misleading and may not help you write the topic sentence. Chances are the ‘working title’ will be too vague. Parts of the title might serve as modifiers in your topic sentence, but you’ll probably need to go beyond the title.

3. Be Specific

Make the topic sentence as specific as possible.

Avoid writing

"This report describes [document title]."

Instead, write something like

"The results of this [subject] study show that [result]."

4. Use Supporting Sentences

After you identify your topic sentence, write supporting sentences. Make each of these supply specific details about the ideas in the topic sentence. Think of what supports the topic sentence.

Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How? and
How much?

Give statistics, results, conclusions, or recommendations that back up the topic sentence. Only use two or three major supporting ideas. Include the less important evidence as subordinate clauses and modifiers.

5. Use Transitions

Arrange the supporting sentences in a logical sequence after the topic sentence. Add whatever transition is needed to connect the supporting sentences to the topic sentence and to connect ideas within the sentences to each other.

Re-write the sentences to improve the connections.

10 Other Ways to Write a Better Abstract

Write the abstract only when the document is finished. Abstracts written before then are just previews.
If you are forced to write an abstract before the document is completed, think about its purpose and write a topic sentence. Keep in mind that you’ll need to rewrite the abstract when the document is finished because it will no longer accurately reflect the contents of the document.
Before starting the abstract, list your thoughts on the document. Group related items together.
Prioritize the list and put the most important group first. The first few groups form the core of the topic sentence. The rest lead to supporting sentences.
If you can’t create a topic sentence, write the supporting sentences first. The topic sentence may then become obvious.
Write for an audience not necessarily up to speed in your subject area. This is important because you never know who will read your abstract.
Choose acronyms, abbreviations, and technical terms carefully as they may confuse many readers.
Define the scope of the project in the abstract.
Re-read your abstract after several days have passed and remove superfluous information and padding.

This technique works for documents of any length from a couple of pages to multi-volumes.

Using Keywords in Abstracts

I’ve added this in as many business documents are published directly to the web. This tip applies to writing abstracts, headlines and summaries.

Use keywords in your Titles, Abstracts, Headlines are documents are file electronically. As users search for documents by keywords, write the documents headings with these keywords in mind.

Likewise, your abstract must contain keywords that about the article, proposal, or report so readers can retrieve it quickly.

What other ways can we improve our business documents?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides Business Tips for Smart People on Klariti.com. His also runs the popular Business Planning Blog at http://www.ivanwalsh.com

Why The Table of Contents Is The Heart of Your Business Proposal?

Editor — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 13:43:31 +0000

This is Part 1 of a 20 part series on writing Business Proposals. What we’ll look in this course is how to get started, format the proposal, and submit it. Once we’ve done this, we’ll look at how to improve your chances of getting the bid accepted, for example, by giving presentations to the Assessors. I’ll also show you how to improve your business writing techniques.

And before you say I HATE GRAMMAR, I can guarantee you it’s not about grammar.

Ok, some parts will be, but they’ll be painless.

Instead I’ll show you how to use psychological tricks to get into the reviewers mind. To close the gap between what they need and what you offer. It’s very interesting. If you want to stay one step ahead of me, read Chip and Dan Heath’s Switch. That will get you started.

Example of Consultancy Proposal

There are different types of business proposals. Each type has its own requirements.

In this course, I’ll look at how to write a consultancy proposal and how to avoid the most common mistakes proposal writers make.

For example, this will be of use to government agencies or other bodies that want to procure the services of a consultancy firm, such as an advertising agency, Public Relations or Recruitment firm or another type of company that provides specialist services.
This type of proposal differs from contracts where, for example, you want to use a specific product, piece of equipment or have very exact specifications in mind.
In a proposal for Consultancy Services, you want to determine the most appropriate firm based on their expertise and capacity of deliver based on your needs.

Define the Table of Contents First

To get started, I will create a table of contents for each of the main sections and then drill-down into each sub-section.

Here is the table of contents:

That’s it for today. No homework! You get the weekend off.

In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to write the Introduction.

About the Author: Ivan Walsh is a Proposal Writer who develops Business Proposal Plans. He also shares Business Planning Strategies on IvanWalsh.com. Follow him on Twitter & Facebook.

How to Analyze the Buyer’s Mindset When Writing Proposals

Editor — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:58:14 +0000

One of the most difficult challenges for any Proposal Writer is to figure out what the buyer is really interested in. Is it cost? Is it value-for-money? Is it innovation? Maybe it’s a combination of factors. Think of each RFP as a set of requirements that you, the bidder, have to answer for your proposal to be reviewed.

How to Analyze the Buyer’s Mindset When Writing Proposals

Let consider the following scenario:

“As the RFP’s author, with a significant stake in the project’s success, I am very anxious that I could select the wrong partner and jeopardize both my own position and also the agency that I represent.

It is for this reason that you, as a prospective contractor, need to convince me that you possess the ability to address both my immediate (and long-term) requirements as captured in the RFP and also those that I may have overlooked or omitted, for whatever reason.

Therefore, when you respond to my RFP, it is imperative that you answer every point in the document correctly but also consider the possibility that there are areas to need to be explored for this project to succeed.”

In the competitive world of government contracting, it is not enough to merely answer the requirements as set out in the RFP.

You have to go much further than this; to win this contract you need to convince me that you understand WHY I have prepared this RFP and are sensitive to my needs, both spoken and unspoken, during this project.

After all, I am expecting that your expertise will uncover areas that I have overlooked and you can resolve these without exploiting me financially.

Most proposals that an RFP evaluation team receive are very similar in tone, content, style, and cost.

For the most part, they are dull, formulaic, and repetitive.

Almost all are congested with jaded business clichés, the buzzword of the month, and resort to pseudo-jargon whenever possible.

Though I have years of experience in my industry sector, the proposal’s authors frequently speak down to me, avoid the key ‘pain points’ highlighted in our RFP and attempt to impress me with new technologies, many of which they have not even implemented themselves.

In short, despite what their executive summary may profess, they make no real effort to understand my needs and even worse, don’t appear to grasp the urgency behind this proposal nor the months of effort my team put into it. It feels that we were simply another proposal on their lengthy to-do list.

Question: Do you know how a proposal is typically evaluated in your country?

If not, contact your national procurement agency and ask for the guidelines on proposal evaluation. If none are available, contact the government agency who issued the RFP and ask if they have guidelines. You can do this either before you submit your proposal or during the clarification stages.

With this in mind, if you sincerely want to win my business, you need to differentiate your proposal from the rest of the pack as otherwise they are politely refused. Future submissions from your company will not be anticipated with much enthusiasm.

So, if you acknowledge this and want to raise the profile of your submissions, consider the following.

Identify the individuals in my team who will ‘buy’ this project.

After all, I don’t make the final decision on my own. On the contrary, I will consult with my colleagues through-out the entire procurement process.

Making an impression involves analyzing the buyer’s interests. In other words, you need to consider what types of buyers are involved in the procurement process and then write your proposal around their needs. For example:

Technical

What does the technical buyer look for?

Is it a track record of similar deployments or is s/he interested in a particular skill-set?
This person’s role is to screen out technologies that do not align with their strategy.
It’s also to determine if you really have the expertise you claim you have.

This person(s) may be in the business for many years and could be (read: will be) suspicious when dealing with unproven consultants. S/he has been burnt before and does not want to engage another ‘cowboy’ who will ruin their project.

How do you prove you are trustworthy?

Finances

What is the financial controller interested in?

This person will have the final word on the project’s go-ahead.
They are solely concerned with the bottom line and how you will impact their profit margin. This person is afraid that you will exploit grey areas in the contract to your advantage, such as forcing the project into extended change control and accumulating additional man days.

How do you reduce these fears?

They will ask colleagues (i.e. due diligence) to get an idea of how you operate and will listen to those who have worked with you. If you are new in town, they may make them more nervous as you could potentially disappear in mid-project or prove to be a totally unsuitable match.

Operations

How does your proposal go down with the Operation buyer?

This person will work with your team on a daily basis and could be concerned with ‘rumors’ that you will try to bully or intimidate staff during projects. Some consultancies come with a very tarnished name!
This person is concerned that s/he may be excluded from the project’s success or blamed if it fails. After your team has left, this person will have to use the solution that you will have implemented. Remember: one reason you are being contracted is because this person’s team do not have the skills to implement the solution by themselves – this area can be a very sensitive!
Now that we know that there is a ‘team’ of buyers, each of whom may have a different appreciation of your proposal, you need to prepare all communications with this in mind.
The buyers know that their proposal is not perfect and that there are gaps, inconsistencies, and errors in its construction. But they expect you to accept this and patiently help them to remedy the situation.

What I’m emphasizing here is that you need to build trust with us, the buyers, and unless you have a physiological profile of us in mind, your proposal will probably miss the mark.

You see, we have never met face to face. You don’t even know my name. But, I may know quite a lot about you – and some of what I’ve heard may not be very nice.

If you take this on board, your proposal needs to go to great length to assuage these fears and demonstrate repeatedly that you are not just going through the motions with this bid but have a very compelling argument that will justify us in awarding you with this business.

Profiling the buyers

Keeping in mind that we are a team of buyers, you need to prepare profiles for each role. You won’t get it 100% right the first time, but you will definitely be moving in the right direction while your competitors are laboriously cranking out the same ‘boiler-plate’ proposal as per usual.

To understand the buyers:

Classify the team members based on their role and estimate their input (i.e. influence) into the final approval.
Define each member as a buying type. Note that some buyers may have more that one role, e.g. the CTO may have a role in the technical evaluation and signing off the project budget.

For each buyer, identify their fears, hopes, anxieties and what they would consider to be major success factors.

Put these in a matrix and cross-reference this when evaluating your own proposal. Apply weights and values if appropriate.

Once you have completed this task, the next

step is to write your response with these buyers in mind. Remember: you are not writing to an anonymous disembodied entity – there is a very real person examining your proposal.

With these profiles at hand, you can blend into your proposal all those points that answer all the unspoken requirements not laid out in the proposal.

Warren Buffet Guide to Plain English Business Writing