 Lecture 29, As-Salaam-Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. Today, we will look at writing proposals in a business situation. In today's lecture, you will learn about the different varieties of proposal writing situations. We will look at proposal readers as investors and talk about that. What are they investing? We will also look at the questions that readers are most likely to ask, questions that readers ask most often as we have done with other forms of business writing. We will look at a strategy of conventional superstructure for proposals and we will obviously go over the superstructure of proposals which will include the introduction, the problem and the problem will keep in mind the situations when the reader will define the problem for you or when the readers will provide a general statement of purpose and also when situations when you must define the problem yourself. We will also look at objectives, product, method, resources, schedule, management and costs. Keeping in mind all these things, we will look at the general superstructure of proposals. Firstly, let us have a look at the different varieties of proposal writing situations. What are the different situations in which you will be needed to or where you can be called upon to write a business proposal? You may write proposals in a wide variety of situations. It could be that your readers may be employed in your organization or they may be employed in other organizations. Your readers may have asked you to submit a proposal or you may submit a proposal to them of your own initiative. Your proposal may be in competition against other proposals or it may be considered on its own merits alone. In other situations your proposal may need to be approved by various people in your organization before you submit it to your readers or there could be situations where you may submit the proposal directly yourself and you do not need permission from anybody else. It could also be that you may have to follow strict guidelines concerning the content structure and format of your proposal or conversely you may be free to write the proposal entirely as you feel, as you think fit. There could also be a possibility that once you've delivered the proposal to your readers they may follow a wide variety of methods for evaluating the proposal. So you would need to keep that in mind as well. How will your proposal be evaluated? Or what method will your readers be using when evaluating the proposal or what is the purpose of the readers when they will be evaluating your proposal? So keeping all of these things in mind, keeping all these different situations in mind you will be writing your proposal or you could be engaged in one or many of these different situations during your work business life and write your proposals accordingly. Let's have a look at an example where a proposal needed to be written. Helen wanted a permission to undertake a special project. She thought that her employers should develop a computer system that employers could use to reserve conference rooms. She concluded that a company needed such a system as she'd arrived for a meeting several times only to find that the room was reserved for somebody else. As she's employed to write computer programs she's well qualified to write one that could reserve conference rooms. However, she cannot work on this new program without the permission of her boss. Consequently, she wrote a proposal to her boss. As she wrote, she had to think about two people her boss and her boss's boss who had to decide without consulting other people. These two people were her readers her own boss and the boss of her boss. Because her employers had no specific guidelines she could use any format, structure and content to write a proposal. Furthermore, she did not need anyone else's permission to write the proposal although she would need an approval for sending a proposal to another department. As you saw, she was going to write the proposal of her own initiative. Nobody told her that she wrote the proposal and Helen identified a problem herself and she thought that she'd send her boss a proposal to solve this problem by creating a new computer program and she wrote the proposal herself because her company had no specific guidelines and she could have chosen the format because she only had to show her boss and her direct boss so she did not need anyone else's permission. If she was sending a proposal to another department or another company, she might need permission from her boss. So keeping all these things in mind then she started writing her proposal. Also, Helen did not need to think about competition from other departments or competition from other people who were writing, who were proposing similar projects because hers would be considered on its own merit. There were no other people in her company who wanted to design such a program. She was alone so she did not have any competition. However, her proposal had to be persuasive enough to convince her readers that her time would be better utilized making this new program rather than her regular duties. Obviously, if she had to design a new program then she would need time and she might have to allocate some budget so now she has to convince her readers and her boss that the proposal she is giving and the work she is trying to do is much more beneficial for the company which she is currently doing. Obviously, she was doing her own work and that is why she was employed in this company so she will spend as much time in making a new program and she will leave her previous work and neglect someone else. So she needed obviously to get permission from her boss and she needed to convince her boss that the company would be better off by having Helen work on that new computer program. Now let's have a look at another example. We have seen an example of a proposal's situation. Now let's have a look at another situation in which someone else has to write a proposal. This second proposal will be written under much different circumstances than Helen's. To begin with, three different people would write this proposal. Let's assume that the writers were a producer, a scriptwriter and a business manager seeking funds from a non-profit organization and the federal government to produce television programs. The department learned that the government was interested in making programs about the environment to learn more about what the government wanted. The writers obtained copies of the request for proposals that the government had issued out. Now this situation was the case in which three people were involved working in a department together and they needed funds from a non-profit organization to make programs about the environment. They realized that the government wanted to give money to make programs about the environment. Now it is obvious that the government also published some requests for proposals in the newspapers or somewhere else. So these three people took their copies so that they could know what kind of programs the government was making and by looking at the government's needs they will give their proposal. Because obviously if you have to convince someone that your proposal is good then you should first know what are the needs of the readers so that you can address those needs in your proposal. So in their proposal these three writers addressed an audience that was very different from Helen's audience. Helen's audience was only her boss and her boss's boss. The audience for these three people were people in the non-profit organization and people in the federal government. Let's have a look at who all would have a look at their proposals. Now we all know that the government receives many proposals every day. Many people are asking the government for their funds. Let's assume that this government received about four proposals daily and they only funded one of those proposals every day. To evaluate the proposals that the government gets it sends them to experts across the country. They send proposals to different experts to evaluate them. And then they review the proposals and write a review. Now these reviews are then read by staff at the government. The government people don't need to review the proposals themselves. They review the experts and send them a summary. That we reviewed them. Now when the staff at the government reviews these then they make a decision and depending on which proposal has received the best review, best response from the experts they decide to give the money to those people. So there are a lot of people involved in the final decision. There are a lot of people of the government who are forwarding the proposals. The proposals that they receive may not even send them to the experts. There are a lot of people who want to read them and then there are people who want to read the experts' reviews. And all of these people have to go through these proposals. So before the writers could even mail the proposal to the government they had to obtain the approval of their own department. They had to get approval from several administrators at the television station or where they were working or the producer with whom they were working. So we discussed that when the government reaches there, who will get the proposal but before that they have to get the approval from their department or from their company. And this obviously they need this approval because the proposal if it's accepted then it would be a contract between the station, the television station and the government. So obviously just three people working alone in an organization cannot send out a proposal on behalf of the organization. They have to get the approval from the higher ups within the organization as well because it becomes a binding contract if it's approved. So the station then the administration at the station looks at the proposal, shows itself that all the things that have been mentioned in the proposal, all the promises that have been made all the things that will be in the contract will be beneficial to it. These were just examples of two very different types of situations in which proposals can be written. Obviously they have a multitude of situations and these will vary from person to person and from purpose to purpose. Another thing that we need to keep in mind apart from the fact that proposals are written under different situations is that proposal readers are investors. The proposals written by Helen and the three writers from the TV station illustrate some of the differences between different proposal writing situations but despite these differences almost all proposal writing situations have two important features in common. One is that in your proposals you ask decision makers to invest some resources such as time and money so that the thing that you propose can be done. The other thing that is common in all proposals is that your readers will make their investment very cautiously. They will be acutely aware that their resources are limited that if they decide to invest in the purchase of the projects that you propose if they decide to allocate resources to the projects that you propose then those resources cannot be available for other users. So these two things are very important to keep in mind when you are writing a proposal. The first thing is that those who want to make a decision on the basis of your proposal will have time to invest in the projects that you propose. The second thing is that when someone wants to invest their time and money then they will use it cautiously so your proposal should be convincing that they are interested in investing their time and money. The readers are most likely to ask some questions as cautious investors. Proposal readers will ask questions about purchases about the project and about the other things that are proposed to them. But from depending on situation to situation whatever the situation is most questions will remain the same some questions will vary but generally by and large the proposal readers will be asking or the investors will be asking the same type of questions and also the answers that people at work find persuasive and satisfying are also the same type. One basic thing that readers will want addressed is the problem. Your readers will want to know why you are making the proposal and why they should be interested in it. Obviously they want to know why you are writing this proposal and what is the benefit of that why they will be interested also they will need to know what problems or needs or goals your proposal will address and why is that problem, goal or need important to them. Whatever you are addressing why is it necessary for them. Obviously you will then keeping that in mind that the reader will be asking these questions you will be giving out some solutions as well. So your readers want to know exactly what you propose to make them do and how it relates to the problem that you have described. They want to know what you want to do, how it will solve the problem. And therefore they will ask what kind of a solution will be successful to this problem and what will we need to do. Whatever solution it will be what solution it will be that you have already told what we will have to do. Another main question that readers will have will be about costs. What will you propose product or activity cost your readers and is it worth the cost to them. Obviously if you are giving a proposal or if you are saying that you should be involved or make a product then what will be the cost and the cost will be feasible or will not be for the investor. So that is also a key issue that you need to address when you are writing your proposals. Also readers will question your capability. If your readers pay or authorize you to perform this work how do they know that they can depend on you to deliver what they expect you to deliver or how can they depend on you to deliver from that project. So obviously when you put that money they will also want to know what is your capability what is the time and money that you are putting behind you whether you are able or not so you need to show in your proposal how you are qualified to achieve what you expect to achieve from the proposal that you are making. Now keeping all these things in mind we need to devise a strategy for writing conventional proposals. The conventional superstructure for proposals is a framework for answering all these questions and this has been found successful in repeated use in all kinds of situations where people need to write proposals. When you follow this superstructure you will provide information on up to 10 topics and will be just briefly I will be showing you a chart where we will look at all 10 topics. In some cases you will provide information of all the 10 topics that you will look at but in other cases in your proposal you will cover only some of the topics and that will also depend vary from situation to situation. Even the briefest proposals however you will probably need to treat 4 topics definitely and these 4 topics will be the introduction problem solution and costs. So these 4 things are the introduction problem solution and costs. You have to target in every small proposal but in long proposals there are a few more things that you will target and we will see them soon. But coming back to these 4 topics when you provide information you should provide more than just data. You should try to make persuasive points and we are going to look at a slide which describes persuasive points for each of the 10 superstructures. I have just told you that we will look at 10 points as soon as possible and now we will look at the 10 points that we were talking about. The first topic as I said is introduction. The readers question will be what is the communication about and that will be answered in the introduction. Your persuasive point how you can persuade the reader is that by telling them what you propose to do. When you are telling them what you are proposing you should tell them that your reader should persuade them that what you want to do is a solid thing that will benefit the reader. Another topic that is dealt with in proposals is the problem. Now the reader will obviously ask the question why is the proposed project needed? What is the need for this project? What is the need for this project? What is the need for this project? You need to tell them that the proposed action addresses a problem that is important to you so the reader will not convince the reader or persuade the reader that solving the problem is beneficial to them but they will not be interested in accepting the proposal. Another topic that needs to be addressed is the objectives. The readers will be asking what features will a solution to this problem need in order to be successful? What features will it need to be successful? So then you need to outline the objectives that the successful solution must achieve. The fourth topic will be dealing with the product. Basically the reader will want to know how do you propose to do these things? The reader will ask how will you implement these things? And your persuasive point will be you will start out by saying here is what I plan to produce and here is how it will work effectively at achieving the objectives. Now you will tell that you have to do this and you will achieve these objectives. Your reader will be asking you the question are you going to be able to deliver what you have described here? And this question will address the areas of method, resources, schedule, qualification and management. All these things will answer your question when you will address what are you using? What resources do you have? How much time will it take? How are you qualified and can you manage it or someone else will manage it so how will they manage it? All these things are about delivery. So all these topics then will be answering to this one question will you be able to deliver what you promise? And you need to persuade your reader that yes I will be able to deliver because I have a good plan of action for the facilities, I have the necessary equipment I have the necessary qualification and I will be able to manage this project successfully. So you need to give evidence of all these things. Lastly your reader your investor wants to know very importantly what it will cost them. So then you need to convince your reader that the cost is reasonable that the cost is reasonable according to the benefits that will be that the reader will get out of by approving this project. Obviously if the cost is too much then you have to show it that this cost is too much but because of this the long term benefit according to this cost is nothing. So you need to then show why it is feasible because maybe it has some long term financial benefit for the company but in the long term it seems expensive. So as you write you will see the relationship amongst the 10 topics that we have just talked about. A lot of them are interlinked and when you write when you start writing if you have these questions in mind if you have these topics in mind you will be able to effectively deal with the proposal and you will make a very persuasive proposal. Think of these topics through the following progression of thought. You lead your reader from generally learning what you want to do which will be the introduction then you take them to the problem where the readers are persuaded that there is a problem that there is a need that there is a goal that is important to them then you are taking them to the objectives where the readers are persuaded that the proposed action plan in solving the problem it will be effective in meeting the need it will be effective in achieving the goal that the readers now agree is important. In the last step you convinced the readers that the problem is important and the goal to achieve is important and now you will show them that the plan that you are proposing is effective and that you will be able to achieve the goals that you want to achieve. You will then take them towards the methods, resources, schedule, qualification management, all the logistic parts. You will persuade them that you are capable of planning and implementing and managing the proposed solution and you will also persuade them consequently that the costs are reasonable in the light of the benefits that the proposal that the project will bring so if they take action then in the light of the benefits that their action will bring the costs are reasonable. Now there is no guarantee that your readers will actually read your proposal from front to back or that they will concentrate on each and every word that you write It is not necessary that you should also write the words that you are reading or that your proposal is written from the first page to the last page they might skim through it, they might just look at the recommendations they might just look at key sections what are the costs, what are the solutions etc. So each section has to be very effective especially if it is a long proposal then you really need to consider how your audience is going to evaluate it. Each volume of your proposal may be evaluated by a different set of experts people who are specializing in their own domain but they might not read your whole proposal so it can be like this that in short proposals the people who are going to read it may read the whole but in long proposals one person may read your whole proposal different people may read their different sections and then evaluate it even when your readers will not read your proposal straight through the account given of the relationships amongst the parts can help you we talked about the relationships of the different topics so if you keep that in mind then that will help you even if the readers are not even if one reader is not reading the whole of your proposal or even if the readers are not reading your proposal in the sequence in which it is written so if you keep these 10 areas in mind you can write a very tightly knit very effective proposal in which all the parts support one another effectively so then even if one or two parts are missed out by the reader the other parts will jump in to support what they missed out up till now we just mentioned proposals that were several volumes long long proposals can be around up to 100 pages or hundreds of pages or even thousands of pages on the other hand short proposals could be less than a page how do you decide how long your proposal needs to be sometimes you can be very brief and still be very persuasive often you will need to touch upon only a few of the 10 topics that we talked about in order to be persuasive for instance Helen's proposal involved only one person Helen, we talked of Helen an employee who needed to write a computer program and her proposal only involved one person it was going to be written by one person it was only going to be read by two people so it maybe didn't need to be very long Helen's proposal didn't need any management plan because her readers already knew of her capabilities obviously her reader was her boss so he knew that she was able to design computer programs so she didn't need to write a lengthy background of her qualifications and how she was equipped to write that program so therefore she could omit that part she didn't need to say anything more than maybe a few words about the experience that she had in writing such programs and because she was asking for only two weeks time to prepare the program the budget that needed to be allocated for it didn't need to be very extensive very lengthy she didn't need to present a detailed budget report she just needed to justify her proposal schedule so although she needed the time she really didn't need too many funds so again that section didn't need to be very long however in other situations such as writing to maybe NASA or some other big department where you are maybe going to be involved in a project that is going to last over several weeks or months or years even and it's going to involve a lot of funds there then the proposal would be correspondingly long so depending on the scope the nature the purpose the length and the readership of your proposal you will decide the length of your proposal as well as I just said proposals that would be going to large organizations large government organizations you would need to address maybe all 10 topics and your discussion of each of these must fully answer the questions because maybe the whole proposal is not going to be read by one person it might be split up and be read by experts as we mentioned earlier in the end you need to decide how long the proposal will be and while you are doing that you will think about the questions that your reader will be answering as well and what reaction they will have to what you say although you will keep in mind questions that the readers will ask even in short proposals there will be less questions asked because the reader knows more about you and your abilities in longer proposals in larger projects there are more readers who know less about you they will be asking a lot more questions so you need to address all of those and in the remaining of this lecture we will describe in detail some of the 10 topics that form the conventional super structure for proposals as you go along keep in mind that the conventional super structure represents only a general plan and you don't need to include each and every section in your proposal you must use your imagination and creativity to adapt this super structure effectively to your particular situation in addition as you plan and write your proposal remember that the 10 topics identify the kinds of information you need to provide not necessarily the titles of the sections that you will include it is not necessary that all of these 10 topics that you have to make these sections you don't have to give these headings in your proposals it is just that you have to give 10 sections or give 2 or 3 sections or give 10 sections it will depend on your report in brief proposals some parts may take only a sentence or a paragraph may deal with several topics together for example writers often combine their announcements of their proposals their discussion of the problem and their explanation of the objectives under a single heading introduction or it might be titled a problem or need etc in one heading two or three different things can be addressed also remember that the conventional super structure may be used with any of the three common formats proposal may be written in the form of a letter or a memo or a book so it could be any of these three formats depending on the length and the purpose of the proposal while making your proposal you should have sufficient information about the particular format that you are going to see now let's have a look at the topics each of them in turn at the beginning of a proposal you want to do the same thing that you do at the beginning of anything else that you write on your job you want to tell your readers what you are writing about in a proposal this means what you are proposing then you will announce it in your introduction obviously you are proposing something so it is called a proposal now you will need to consider how long and detailed your introductory statement needs to be in proposals the introductory statements or the introductory announcements very considerably in length but they are almost always very brief by custom the writers reserve the full custom of what they propose until later they do not always say exactly what they are going to do right up front they indicate it after they have discussed the problem and that their proposal is going to solve then they give the solution or then they talk about what it is exactly that they will do but initially in the introduction they announce briefly what the proposal is about and then reveal what it is that they will actually do you may be able to introduce your proposal in a single sentence Helen did this in her proposal let's have a look I request permission to spend 2 weeks writing, testing and implementing a program for scheduling conference rooms in one sentence she told the whole what she is requesting what is her proposal now she will tell what the plan will be when you propose something more complex than a 2 week project you may need more words to introduce it obviously you will need to justify it you will need to give a longer rationale in addition sometimes you may need to provide background information to help your readers understand what you have in mind if it is a complicated process then you need to give some more background information so that your readers can actually understand now after you have announced what you are proposing you need to give the readers what the problem is you must persuade the reader that your proposed action will address a problem that is significant to them your description of the problem is crucial to the success of your proposal if your reader will feel that what you are proposing is not a major problem then obviously you will not be ready to invest you must not only define the problem but also make the problem seem relevant to the reader there may be times when the readers define the problem for you for whom you are writing a proposal they have identified a problem and now you are writing a proposal to solve the problem if you are in this situation then you need to do the least research when your readers define the problem generally this happens when the reader has asked you to submit a proposal you are not taking your own initiative you have been asked to write a proposal and in such a situation your primary purpose in describing the problem will be to show your readers that you thoroughly understand what they want you don't need to convince them that there is a problem you just need to convince them that you understand the problem and you understand what the reader wants at other times you will need to devote research and creativity in writing a proposal when you are in such a situation you should find out what sort of problems your readers will consider important now there can be times when the reader does not define the situation but you must define the problem yourself you may not have the aid of explicit statements from your reader to help you formulate the problem this is most likely to happen when you are preparing a proposal of your own initiative without being asked by someone else to submit it when you are in such a situation then obviously you have to use more convincing power you have to make your own proposal more persuasive because you have taken an initiative like we have seen in Helen's case that she herself took the initiative or we have seen the three writers' situation but in the three writers' situation she had to convince her department but the government had asked for proposals in Helen's case, her boss did not ask for proposals she identified a problem and convinced her boss that this is a problem and this can be solved now once you have done this then you talk of the product when you describe the product your proposal will produce what is it that your proposal will do what is the product you explain your plan for achieving the objectives you told your readers about you told your readers about you said that if I do this then this will be the result now you need to persuade them that you can actually do this you need to describe your project or your product persuasively and to do this you need to do three things you need to tell your readers your objectives you need to provide enough details to satisfy your readers and you need to explain the desirability of the product which will be the end result of your project then you will come to the method the decision makers who act upon proposals sometimes need to be assured that you can in fact produce the results that you promise those who have time don't do this sometimes they need to be assured they also want to know that you can really do the work and how you will do it when they see how you will do the work they will be satisfied that you can do this work this happens specially in situations where you are offering something that takes special expertise something to be customized or created only if your proposal is approved now obviously once you have outlined the method you will need to also outline the resources that you will need by discussing the facilities equipment and other resources to be used in your project proposal you assure your reader that you will actually use whatever special equipment necessary to do the job properly if part of your proposal is to request the equipment or to ask for the equipment tell your reader what you need to acquire and why what special purpose does that equipment fulfill in making your project successful you also need to tell your reader about the schedule about the time period involved what will be done when what are the specific deadlines people who read and listen to your proposals have several reasons for wanting to know the schedule of your plan the most common way to present a schedule and we will be looking at schedule charts in future lectures also I mentioned earlier that people want to know whether you are actually qualified enough to do the job or not whether the proposal the project that you are proposing will you be able to fulfill it do you have the necessary expertise to do that when proposal readers are thinking and investing in your project they want to be sure that the proposal has the relevant experience and capability to carry out the project properly for that reason a discussion of the qualifications of the personnel involved with the project is a standard part of most proposals if you are alone involved in that proposal then you will tell your qualifications what is your expertise if you have a team and other people involved then you will also tell their qualifications that all the personnel involved in this project if you have a long proposal then you may have to put their resumes together so that the people who are investing in the project that your team is really qualified then come into management when you propose a project that will involve more than about 4 people you increase the persuasiveness of your proposal by describing the management structure of your group if you have more than 4 people then you have to tell your management structure in the group who will lead and what will be your role and your proposal will be more persuasive this is basically because proposal readers know that even qualified people cannot work effectively if their activities are not coordinated anybody whether they are qualified or unqualified if they want to work in a team then they need their activities and they need some kind of focus to who will do what task lastly come into costs one of the most important considerations where as far as the acceptance of your proposal is concerned when you propose something you are asking the readers to invest resources usually time and money as I have said repeatedly naturally you need to tell them how much the project will cost in some proposals you may demonstrate the reasonableness of the proposal by also calculating the savings that will result from your project if you feel that the proposal is going to be very cost effective and it will actually save your readers some money then you calculate that saving and show how the project will be so reasonable that it actually saves them some money so in this lecture basically you learnt about the different varieties we looked at the proposal reader as an investor and we talked about the different questions that they are likely to ask we looked at the superstructure of proposals and looked at the different topics that were relevant to a proposal which included the introduction the problem the objectives product, method, resources schedule, management and cost if you have any queries please feel free to email the address is englishatvu.edu.pk until next time Allah Hafiz