How to Write Proposals, Sales Letters, and Reports

Pamela Giles, Ph.D., is a faculty member of the English Department at
the University of Saskatchewan.

More writing manual than step-by-step business communications guide, How
to Write Proposals, Sales Letters, and Reports provides good basic
instruction about the importance of planning and revising, determining
target audience, performing background research, and meeting with the
intended recipient before and during the writing process. Sawers
explains the value of the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)
concept and WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?”) for persuasive writing.
Throughout, he stresses the importance of Keeping It Simple (KISS) with
short paragraphs and bulleted lists.

The strongest section, “Sales Letters,” outlines clearly the five
components of a good sales letter: hook, statement of
problem/issue/situation, explanation of why your product/service is the
answer, customer benefit (WIIFM), and call for action. Sawers works
through a hypothetical example of a new computer company’s attempts to
attract clients, closing the section with a draft and final revision of
a sample letter. The advice in this section is practical and fairly
clear.

The sections on proposals and reports are less helpful. The range of
“Proposals” is too broad, from aspiring dancers applying for
scholarships to landscape architects trying to win tree-planting
contracts. A more effective strategy might have been to identify the two
types of proposals readers of this volume are most likely to require
(e.g., grant proposals for non-profits and unsolicited proposals for
consultants seeking contracts) and lead readers carefully through
writing proposals for these. “Reports,” squeezed into 50 pages (many
of which repeat the planning/freewriting advice presented in
“Proposals”), is simply too brief to be useful to most readers. Both
of these sections need more examples to give aspiring writers good
models to follow.

Sawers is most effective when providing anecdotal evidence based on his
personal experiences. His story about a winning proposal written on long
paper unfurled down a hallway, for example, shows exactly what is meant
by using innovation to make a proposal memorable. In general, though,
this book is too basic for experienced writers and lacks the clear
directions and examples required by beginners. It might best be
considered a supplement to more complete business communications books.