Analyzing the Audience

The last element of Cicero's formula is vital. You need to use words the customer will understand. And if there's a discrepancy between the language your audience uses and what you use, you should drop your own usage and mimic the audience. Your readers will understand more, feel more comfortable with your proposal, and be more likely to adopt your recommendations.
Cicero has given us the word: You must consider your audience when writing proposals. It's crucial. Ignoring or misunderstanding the audience dooms hundreds, probably thousands, of proposals to failure every year, proposals that otherwise answer the needs or solve the problems of the corporations soliciting them.
The problem is that most people write proposals under duress. And most of us, when we're feeling stressed, will do something we're confident we can do well. In the case of proposal writing, we'll create the kind of proposal that we would like to receive and we'll include the kind of content we are confident we can do pretty well. If we are technical and detaile-oriented by nature, we will create proposals that are technical and detailed. But how likely is it that the client will have the same attitudes and personality traits that we have? And even if the client does have a similar personality to ours, how likely is that he or she will be comfortable with the same language we are? Sign up for my newsletter.