Business Management ABCs

Procurement Skills – A Simple Way to Write a Senior Management Proposal

It can be tempting when writing a proposal for senior management to try and show them how clever you are. Your proposal then becomes bogged down with impenetrable prose that means little or nothing to them with the inevitable result that management miss the essential point of what you are trying to say and so give your proposal insufficient attention. You need to keep it simple to be effective. Here’s how.

1.No jargon. Over time people in your profession have come up with short hand ways to describe terms that are familiar to everyone in that profession. They are a good way of speeding up communication between peers but do little to convince others. If they don’t understand you they are likely to miss your crucial message and so dismiss your proposal without due consideration. The burden is on you to make your prose understandable to everyone so inspect your proposal closely for terms or acronyms that are not used in everyday life.

2.Appeal to emotions. Our brains operate with two independent systems. One handles the rational side of what we do and think. It is the one responsible for analysing data and looking into the future. The other system looks after our emotional side; it is instinctive and works at the level of pleasure and pain. Often it is the emotional system that makes decisions even when we are convinced we have used logic and analysis. So use this and make sure your proposal appeals to emotions. Paint a picture with words that describes how your proposal will impact the things that are important to them – things such as how to make money, how to save money or how to reduce risk.

3.Get to the core. This isn’t the same as making it simple. The core is the essence of your proposal – what is left once you have stripped away everything that is not relevant to your core idea. Usually you can describe the core of your idea in one sentence. Think about proverbs such as “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” This single sentence conveys a lot of information about the core idea of valuing what you currently have and not risking losing it by pursuing what may appear to be a better but unattainable outcome.

4.Make it credible. This is often done by citing facts and the more the better. The downside is that it starts to distract from the core of your idea and works more for the rational side of the brain and not the emotional side. Instead think of how you might phrase things so that people can test your idea for themselves using their own experiences. For example, in the debate between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980 Reagan didn’t use lots of statistics to prove his point. Instead he asked people to ask themselves whether they felt better off now than four years ago – something everyone could test for themselves which added credibility to his argument.

5.Tell a story. Telling stories has been the mechanism for thousands of years to pass on learning to the next generation. Story telling can also be useful in business when you are trying to get your point across. Find analogous situations from the past or from other industries and use them to show what the problem was, what solution was used and what the ending was. Relate to your proposition.

Do you want to learn more about gaining procurement skills?

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Steve Carter is an experienced procurement practitioner and published author and runs online training and coaching courses.