Words

Dewar’s scotch is running an ad on TV that presents the following quote (which they attribute to one Tommy Dewar):

“The less a person has to say, the more words they’ll use to say it.”

It seems to me this is often the case with content within proposals, and especially within executive summaries. I certainly see my share (and I’d guess many of those of you reading this will have as well) of executive summaries that are long, rambling and without any apparent key message or even the remotest of plots. It’s as if the person creating these documents thinks if the content is long enough they’ll eventually stumble onto some sort of message. Or perhaps they’re just trying to lull the reviewers to sleep (and I’ve no doubt their submissions succeed in doing that!).

I do see crisp, concise exec sums that have a clear message and tell a compelling story (and I hope many of you have as well). My experience is that these are created by individuals who have a solid grasp of the customer’s concerns/issues, have a clearly defined position for their offering and know why they are submitting a response. They know what they want to say and they say it… in as few words as possible, rather than the other way around.

This article was written by BJ on 16 October, 2006 and filed under Word play & writing. If you found it useful, you can with others. To receive automatic updates, subscribe to The Proposal Guys via RSS or Email.

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