The Seven Cardinal Sins of Proposal Writing | BTalk
By Phil Dobbie | July 4, 2010
BNET Australia Contributors
Aussie Rules
Biography
BNET Australia Contributors
Brian Haverty is editorial director for CBS Interactive Australia and is responsible for the company's BNET and ZDNet Australia sites.
Robert Gerrish is a coach, author and professional speaker and the founder of Flying Solo, an Australian online community for solo business owners.
Melissa Lourenco is the HR manager for CBS Interactive in Australia.
Chris Golis is the author of The Humm Handbook: Lifting Your Level of Emotional Intelligence. He runs seminars and workshops on EQ.
Suzi Dafnis is Community Director of the Australian Businesswomen's Network.
Yvonne Adele helps organisations build a culture of ideas by teaching people at all levels to access their untapped creative thinking skills.
Loading...
Robyn Haydon
(Episode 530; 16 minutes 07) What’s your attitude to writing business proposals? Are you making the mistake of rushing out as many documents as possible and suffering a low strike-rate as a consequence.
Robyn Haydon from Winning Words says this is a common mistake made by companies, who simply tweak previous pitch documents to be in with a chance with other clients. The danger of this approach is not just that you don’t get the business, but that your off-the-mark approach will mean you don’t get a chance to pitch next time.
It’s one of seven common mistakes we discuss in today’s BTalk:
- Bidding for anything that moves.
- Ignoring the competition
- Not being strong enough on the reasons why the customer should choose you
- Diving straight in the middle
- Cobbling it together at the last minute.
- Cutting and pasting
- Claims that lack evidence to prove they are true
The other common mistake is having lots of people writing sections, with no-one editing it down in to a cohesive document. This was a subject I discussed recently with Robyn in the BTalk episode “Writing the Perfect Business Pitch“.
