Completing Business Messages and Crafting Messages for Digital Channels

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Business Communication Essentials

Eighth Edition

Chapter 10

Understanding and Planning Reports and Proposals

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Learning Objectives (1 of 2)

10.1 Adapt the three-step writing process to reports and proposals.

10.2 Describe an effective process for conducting business research, explain how to evaluate the credibility of an information source, and identify the five ways to use research results.

10.3 Explain the role of secondary research and describe the two major categories of online research tools.

Learning Objectives (2 of 2)

10.4 Explain the role of primary research, and identify the two most common forms of primary research for business communication purposes.

10.5 Explain how to plan informational reports and website content.

10.6 Identify the three most common ways to organize analytical reports.

10.7 Explain how to plan proposals.

Applying the Three-Step Writing Process to Reports and Proposals

LO 10.1 Adapt the three-step writing process to reports and proposals.

In previous chapters, you learned to use the three-step writing process when developing shorter business messages; now it’s time to apply those skills to longer messages.

Categories of Typical Reports

Typical reports fall into three basic categories:

Informational reports offer data, facts, feedback, and other types of information, without analysis or recommendations.

Analytical reports offer both information and analysis, and they can also include recommendations.

Proposals present persuasive recommendations to internal or external audiences, often involving investments or purchases.

Try to view every business report as an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of your audience’s challenges and your ability to contribute to your organization’s success.

Analyzing the Situation

Compose a Statement of Purpose

State Why You’re Preparing the Report

State What You Plan to Deliver

Prepare a Work Plan for the Project

Identify Project-Related Tasks

Establish a Timeline for the Project

The complexity of many reports and the amount of work involved put a premium on carefully analyzing the situation before you begin to write. Pay special attention to your statement of purpose, which explains why you are preparing the report and what you plan to deliver in the report.

Using an infinitive phrase (to plus a verb) encourages you to take control and decide where you’re going before you begin. When you choose an infinitive phrase (to inform, to confirm, to analyze, to persuade, to recommend), you pin down your general goal in preparing the report.

In addition to considering your purpose carefully, you will also want to prepare a work plan for most reports and proposals in order to make the best use of your time. For simpler reports, the work plan can be an informal list of tasks and a simple schedule. However, if you’re preparing a lengthy report, particularly when you’re collaborating with others, you’ll want to develop a more detailed work plan.

Gathering Information

Planning Your Research

Statement of Purpose

Audience Needs

Information Needs

Obtaining the information needed for many reports and proposals requires careful planning, and you may even need to do a separate research project just to acquire the data and information you need. To stay on schedule and on budget, be sure to review both your statement of purpose and your audience’s needs so that you can prioritize your information needs and focus on the most important questions.

Selecting the Right Combination of Media and Channels

Media Requirements

Document Uses

Feedback Preferences

Media Choice

In addition to the general media selection criteria discussed in Chapter 3, consider several points for reports and proposals.

For many reports and proposals, audiences have specific media requirements, and you might not have a choice. For example, many executives review reports on their in-house intranets via an executive dashboard, which is a customized graphical representation of key performance parameters.

Consider how your audience wants to provide feedback on your report or proposal. Do they prefer to write comments on a printed document or to use commenting and markup features in software?

Will people need to search through your document frequently or update it in the future?

Your choice of media also sends a message. For instance, a routine sales report dressed up in expensive multimedia will look like a waste of valuable company resources.

Organizing Your Information

The direct approach is often used for reports because it is efficient and easy to follow. When your audience is likely to be receptive or at least open-minded, use the direct approach. Lead with a summary of your key findings, conclusions, recommendations, or proposal, whichever is relevant. This “up-front” arrangement saves time and makes the rest of the report easier to follow. For those readers who have questions or want more information, later parts of the report provide complete findings and supporting details.

However, if the audience is unsure about your credibility or is not ready to accept your main idea without first seeing some reasoning or evidence, the indirect approach is a better choice because it gives you a chance to prove your points and gradually overcome audience reservations. To enable the use of AIDA-style persuasion, unsolicited proposals in particular often use the indirect approach. Bear in mind, though, that the longer the document is, the less effective the indirect approach is likely to be.

Summary of Discussion (1 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Categories of Typical Reports

Analyzing the Situation

Gathering Information

Selecting the Right Combination of Media and Channels

Organizing Your Information

The next section will cover Supporting Your Messages with Reliable Information.

Supporting Your Messages with Reliable Information

LO 10.2 Describe an effective process for conducting business research, explain how to evaluate the credibility of an information source, and identify the five ways to use research results.

Effective research involves a lot more than simply typing a few terms into a search engine. You’ll save time and get better results by using a clear process:

Plan your research.

Locate the data and information you need.

Process the data and information you located.

Apply your findings.

Manage information efficiently.

Planning Your Research

Develop a Problem Statement

Identify Essential Information

Generate Research Questions

Start by developing a problem statement that will define the purpose of your research—the decision you need to make or the conclusion you need to reach at the end of the process. Next, identify the information you need in order to make that decision or reach that conclusion. You can then begin to generate the questions that will constitute your research. In addition, you will need to prioritize your information needs and concentrate on the most vital questions.

Avoiding Ethical Lapses

Keep an Open Mind

Respect Privacy and Identity of Participants

Document and Credit Sources

Respect Intellectual Property Rights

Don’t Distort Information from Sources

Don’t Misrepresent Your Intentions

With a prioritized list of questions, you’re just about ready to get started with your research. Before taking that step, however, it’s important to be aware that research carries some significant ethical responsibilities. To avoid ethical lapses, keep the following points in mind:

Keep an open mind so that you don’t skew the research toward answers you want or expect to see.

Respect the privacy of your research participants; don’t observe people without their consent, and don’t mislead people about the purposes of your research.

Document sources and give appropriate credit.

Respect your sources’ intellectual property rights (the ownership of unique ideas that have commercial value in the marketplace).

Don’t distort information from your sources.

Don’t misrepresent who you are and how you intend to use research results.

Locating Data and Information

Secondary Research

Books

Magazines

Newspapers

Public Websites

Primary Research

Surveys

Interviews

Observations

Experiments

The range of sources available to business researchers today is remarkable, almost overwhelming at times. If you have a question about an industry, a company, a market, a new technology, or a financial topic, the chances are good that somebody else has already researched the topic. Someone in your own company, in fact, might have already looked into the problem.

Research materials previously created for another purpose are considered secondary research. Secondary sources include magazines, newspapers, public websites, books, and other reports. Don’t let the name fool you. Start with secondary research because it can save considerable time and money for many projects. In contrast, primary research is new research done specifically for your current project. Primary sources include surveys, interviews, observations, and experiments.

Evaluating Information Sources

Reputation

Potential Bias

Purpose

Credibility

Methodology

Verification

Currency and Completeness

Logical Scrutiny

You have the responsibility to verify the quality of your sources. Therefore, ask yourself the following questions about your sources of information:

Does the source have a reputation for honesty and reliability? Try to find out how the source accepts articles and whether it has an editorial board, peer review, or fact-checking procedures.

Is the source potentially biased? To interpret an organization’s information, you need to know its point of view.

What is the purpose of the material? Was the material designed to inform others of new research, advance a political position, or promote a product?

Is the author credible? Is the author a professional journalist? An informed amateur? Merely someone with an opinion?

Where did the source get its information? Try to find out who collected the data, the methods they used, their qualifications, and their reputation.

Can you verify the material independently? Verification can uncover biases or mistakes.

Is the material current and complete? Make sure you are using the most current information available by checking the publication date of a source. Have you used the whole document or only a part of it?

Do the source’s claims stand up to scrutiny? Step back and determine whether the information makes sense.

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing Information

Once you’ve collected your secondary and primary information, the next step is transforming it into the specific content you need. This step involves quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing textual material or analyzing numerical data.

Quoting a source means you reproduce it exactly as you found it, and you either set it off with quotation marks (for shorter passages) or extract it in an indented paragraph (for longer passages). However, too much quoting creates a choppy patchwork of varying styles and gives the impression that all you’ve done is piece together the work of other people.

You can often maximize the impact of secondary material in your own writing by paraphrasing it, which is restating it in your own words. Paraphrasing helps you maintain a consistent tone, present information using vocabulary more familiar to your audience, and avoid the choppy feel of too many quotations. You still need to credit the originator of the information, but not with quotation marks.

Summarizing is similar to paraphrasing but presents the gist of the material in fewer words than the original. An effective summary identifies the main ideas and major support points from your source material, but leaves out most details, examples, and other information that is less critical to your audience. Like quotations and paraphrases, summaries also require complete documentation of your sources.

All three approaches require careful attention to ethics. When quoting directly, take care not to distort the original intent of the material by quoting selectively or out of context. And never succumb to plagiarism, presenting someone else's words as your own, without proper credit.

Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations

Conclusions

Interpretation of the Facts in the Report

Recommendations

Suggestions for What to Do About the Facts

After all your planning, research, and processing, you’re finally ready to apply your findings. Depending on the writing project, you may be drawing conclusions based on your results, or making recommendations.

A conclusion is a logical interpretation of the facts in your report. Reaching good conclusions based on the evidence is one of the hallmarks of innovative business leaders.

Whereas a conclusion interprets the facts, a recommendation suggests what to do about the facts. To be credible, recommendations must be practical and based on sound logical analysis. Also, when making a recommendation, be certain you have adequately described the recommended course of action so that readers aren’t left wondering what happens next.

Summary of Discussion (2 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Planning Your Research

Avoiding Ethical Lapses

Locating Data and Information

Evaluating Source Material

Summary of Discussion (3 of 9)

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing Information

Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations

The next section will cover Conducting Secondary Research.

Conducting Secondary Research

LO 10.3 Explain the role of secondary research, and describe the two major categories of online research tools.

Even if you intend to conduct primary research, start with a review of any available secondary research. Inside your company, you might be able to find a variety of reports and other documents that could help. Outside the company, business researchers can choose from a wide range of print and online resources, both in libraries and online.

Finding Information at a Library

Newspapers or Periodicals

Business Books

Membership Directories

Almanacs and Statistics

Government Publications

Databases

Public and university libraries offer an enormous array of research tools. Many of these may be unavailable through a standard web search or may be available only with a subscription. Reference librarians can direct you to the library’s many sources of business information:

Newspapers and periodicals. Libraries offer access to a wide variety of popular magazines, general business magazines, trade journals, and academic journals.

Business books. Although less timely than newspapers and periodicals, business books provide in-depth coverage of a variety of business topics.

Directories. Thousands of directories are published in print and electronic formats in the United States, and many include membership information for all kinds of professions, industries, and special-interest groups.

Almanacs and statistical resources. Almanacs are handy guides to factual and statistical information about countries, politics, the labor force, and so on.

Government publications. Information on laws, court decisions, tax questions, regulatory issues, and other governmental concerns can often be found in collections of government documents.

Electronic databases. Databases offer vast collections of computer-searchable information, often in specific areas such as business, law, science, technology, and education. Some libraries offer remote online access to some or all databases; for others, you’ll need to visit in person.

Finding Information Online

Actively Search for Existing Information

Monitor Selected Sources for New Information

The Internet can be a tremendous source of business information, provided you know where to look and how to use the tools available. Roughly speaking, the tools fall into two categories: those you can use to actively search for existing information and those you can use to monitor selected sources for new information. (Some tools can perform both functions.)

Online Search Tools (1 of 2)

(General-Purpose Search Engines)

Opportunities

Scan Millions of Websites

Search by Keyword

Rank the Results

Challenges

No Human Editors

Wide Variety of Results

Can’t Reach Deep Internet

The most familiar search tools are general-purpose search engines, such as Google and Bing, which scan millions of websites to identify individual webpages that contain a specific word or phrase and then attempt to rank the results from most useful to least useful.

For all their ease and power, conventional search engines have three primary shortcomings: (1) no human editors are involved to evaluate the quality or ranking of the search results; (2) various engines use different search techniques, so they often find different material; and (3) search engines can’t reach all the content on some websites (the hidden Internet or the deep Internet).

Online Search Tools (2 of 2)

(Improve on General Search Engines)

Web Directories

Human Editors Evaluate and Classify Websites

Metasearch Engines

Format Searches for Web Directories

Multiple Search Engines

Online Databases

Offer Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers

A variety of tools overcome the weaknesses of general-purpose search engines, and you should consider one or more of them in your business research.

Web directories address the first major shortcoming of search engines by using human editors to categorize and evaluate websites.

Metacrawlers or metasearch engines address the second shortcoming of search engines by formatting your search request for multiple search engines and then telling you how many hits each engine was able to find.

Online databases address the third shortcoming of search engines by offering access to the newspapers, magazines, and journals that you're likely to need for many research projects.

Online Monitoring Tools

Automatically Monitoring Information Sources

Subscribing to Newsfeeds

Following People on Twitter

Setting Up Online Alerts

Using Specialized Monitors

One of the most powerful aspects of online research is the ability to automatically monitor selected sources for new information. The possibilities include subscribing to newsfeeds from blogs and websites, following people on Twitter and other microblogs, setting up online alerts on search engines and online databases, and using specialized monitors, such as TweetBeep, to track tweets that mention specific companies or other terms.

Search Tips

Optimize Searches

Keyword Searches

Boolean Searches

Interpret Results Carefully

Natural Language Searches

Forms-Based Searches

Search engines, web directories, and databases work in different ways, so make sure you understand how to optimize your search and interpret the results for each tool you’re using.

The most basic form of searching is a keyword search, in which the engine or database attempts to find items that include all of the words you enter. A Boolean search expands on this capability by using search operators that let you define a query with greater precision. Common operators include AND (the search must include both words before and after the AND), OR (it can include either or both words), or NOT (the search ignores items with whatever word comes after NOT).

To overcome the perceived complexity of Boolean searches, some search engines and databases offer natural language searches, which let you ask questions in normal, everyday English.

Recently, search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and AllTheWeb have implemented forms-based searches that help you create powerful queries without the need to learn any special techniques.

Using Search Tools Effectively

Think Before You Search

Read Instructions; Pay Attention to Details

Review Search/Display Options Carefully

Try a Variety of Search Terms

Vary the Number of Search Terms

Look Beyond the First Page of Results

To make the best use of any search engine or database, keep the following points in mind:

Think before you search. After you have identified what you need to know, spend a few moments thinking about where that information might be found, how it might be structured, and what terms various websites might use to describe it.

Read the instructions and pay attention to the details. A few minutes of learning can save hours of inefficient search time.

Review the search and display options carefully so you don’t misinterpret the results; some of these settings can make a huge difference in the results you see.

Try variations of your terms, such as management and managerial.

User fewer search terms to find more results; use more search terms to find fewer results.

Look beyond the first page of results. Don’t assume that the highest-ranking results are the best sources for you. For example, materials that haven’t been optimized for search engines won’t rank as highly (meaning they won’t show up in the first few pages of results), but they may be far better for your purposes.

Search technologies continue to evolve rapidly, so look for new ways to find the information you need.

Documenting Your Sources

Give the Author Proper Credit

Provide Support for the Message

Help the Audience Learn More

Documenting your sources serves three important functions:

Properly and ethically credits the person who created the original material

Shows your audience that you have sufficient support for your message

Helps readers explore your topic in more detail, if desired

Be sure to take advantage of the source documentation tools in your software, such as automatic endnote or footnote tracking.

Summary of Discussion (4 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Finding Information at a Library

Finding Information Online

Online Search Tools

Online Monitoring Tools

Search Tips

Summary of Discussion (5 of 9)

Using Search Tools Effectively

Documenting Your Sources

The next section will cover Conducting Primary Research.

Conducting Primary Research

LO 10.4 Explain the role of primary research, and identify the two most common forms of primary research for business communication purposes.

If secondary research can’t provide the information and insights you need, your next choice is to gather the information yourself with primary research. Primary research encompasses a variety of methods, from observations to experiments such as test marketing, but the two tools most commonly used for business research are surveys and interviews.

Conducting Surveys (1 of 2)

Provide Clear Instructions

Ask for Information People Can Remember

Keep Questionnaires Short and Easy to Use

Formulate Easy-to-Analyze Questions

Surveys can provide invaluable insights, but only if they are reliable (would produce identical results if repeated) and valid (actually measure what they are designed to measure). To develop an effective survey questionnaire, follow these tips:

Provide clear instructions. Respondents need to know exactly how to fill out your questionnaire.

Don’t ask for information that people can’t be expected to remember. For instance, a question such as “How many times did you go grocery shopping last year” will generate unreliable answers.

Keep the questionnaire short and easy to answer. Don’t make any individual questions difficult to answer, and don’t expect people to give you more than 10 or 15 minutes of their time.

Whenever possible, formulate questions to provide answers that are easy to analyze. Numbers and facts are easier to summarize than opinions, for instance.

Conducting Surveys (2 of 2)

Avoid Asking Leading Questions

Avoid Using Ambiguous Descriptors

Avoid Asking Compound Questions

Obtain a Representative Sample

Avoid leading questions that could bias your survey. If you ask, “Do you prefer that we stay open in the evenings for customer convenience?” you’ll no doubt get a “yes.” Instead, ask, “What time of day do you normally do your shopping?”

Avoid ambiguous descriptors, such as “often” or “frequently.” Such things mean different things to different people.

Avoid compound questions such as “Do you read books and magazines?”

When selecting people to participate in a survey, the most critical task is getting a representative sample of the entire population in question. A good handbook on survey research will help you select the right people for your survey, including selecting enough people to have a statistically valid survey.

Conducting Interviews

The Questions You Ask

Open-Ended Style

Closed-Ended Style

The Way You Ask Questions

Question Sequence

Potential Answers

Like surveys, interviews require careful planning to get the best results. The types of questions you ask and the way you ask them influence the answers you receive.

Ask open-ended questions to invite an expert to offer opinions, insights, and information, such as “Why do you believe that South America represents a better opportunity than Europe for this product line?”

Ask closed questions to elicit a specific answer, such as yes or no. Note that including too many closed questions in an interview makes the experience feel more like a simple survey and does not take full advantage of the interview setting.

Think carefully about question sequence and the potential answers so you can arrange them in an order that helps uncover layers of information. Also, consider providing each subject with a list of questions at least a day or two before the interviews. If you want to record interviews, ask ahead of time; never record without permission.

Summary of Discussion (6 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Conducting Surveys

Conducting Interviews

The next section will cover Planning Informational Reports.

Planning Informational Reports

LO 10.5 Explain how to plan informational reports and website content.

Informational reports provide the feedback that employees, managers, and others need in order to make decisions, take action, and respond to changes.

Classifying Informational Reports

Monitor and Control Operations

Demonstrate Compliance

Implement Policies and Procedures

Document Progress

Informational reports can be grouped into four general categories:

Reports to monitor and control operations. Managers rely on a wide range of reports to see how well their companies are functioning. Plans establish expectations and guidelines to direct future action. Among the most important of these are business plans, which summarize a proposed business venture and the company’s goals and plans. Operating reports provide feedback on a wide variety of an organization’s functions, including sales, inventories, expenses, shipments, and so on. Personal activity reports provide information regarding an individual’s experiences during sales calls, industry conferences, and other activities.

Reports to implement policies and procedures. Policy reports range from brief descriptions of business procedures to manuals that run dozens or hundreds of pages. Position papers (aka, white papers) outline an organization’s official position on issues that affect the company’s success.

Reports to demonstrate compliance. Businesses are required to submit a variety of compliance reports, from tax returns to reports describing the proper handling of hazardous materials.

Reports to document progress. Supervisors, investors, and customers frequently expect to be informed of the progress of projects and other activities. Progress reports range from simple updates in memo form to comprehensive status reports.

Organizing Informational Reports

Topical Organization

Comparison

Importance

Sequence

Chronology

Geography

Category

Most informational reports use a topical organization, arranging material in one of the following ways:

Comparison. Use this pattern to show similarities and differences or advantages and disadvantages between two or more entities.

Importance. Build from the least to most important; or start with the most important and progress to the least important.

Sequence. A process or procedure can be arranged sequentially, discussing steps or stages in the order in which they occur.

Chronology. When investigating a chain of events, organize the study according to what happened in January, in February, and so on.

Geography. If location is important, organize the study according to geography, perhaps by regions of the world or areas of a city.

Category. If asked to review several distinct aspects of a subject, look at one category at a time—such as sales, profit, cost, or investment.

Organizing Website Content

Special Considerations

Web Readers Are Demanding

Reading Online Can Be Difficult

Medium Is Nonlinear

Medium Is Multidimensional

Websites Are Multipurpose

Most of what you have already learned about informational reports applies to website writing, but the online environment requires some special considerations:

Web readers are demanding. Most visitors won’t bother to dig for information. They scan navigation buttons, headings, images, and hyperlinks, looking for possibilities. If nothing looks promising, they’re gone.

Reading online can be difficult. For most people, reading on a computer monitor is more difficult than reading from the printed page. In fact, studies show that reading speeds are about 25 percent slower on a monitor than on paper.

The web is a nonlinear, multidimensional medium. Readers of online material move around in any order they please; there often is no beginning, middle, or end. As a web writer, you need to anticipate the various paths your readers will want to follow and make sure you provide the right hyperlinks in the right places.

In addition, many websites perform more than one communication function; therefore, they are multipurpose. Each individual purpose must be defined carefully, then integrated into an overall statement of purpose for the entire website.

Information Architecture

Consider a Mobile-First Approach

Plan Site Structure and Navigation

Let Your Readers Be in Control through Links

Clear, Simple Language for Titles and Links

Common Website Conventions

Help Readers Absorb Information

Many websites are intended for multiple audiences. Website designers use the term information architecture to describe the structural and navigational flow of all parts of a website. This architecture enables multiple audiences to enter and explore the site. To organize your site effectively, keep the following in mind:

If you know that a sizable percentage of your target audience will access your site with mobile devices, take a mobile-first approach: design the site to work with tablets and smartphones, then make sure it functions on conventional computer screens, too.

Plan your site structure and navigation before you write.

Let your readers be in control by creating links and pathways that let them explore on their own.

Follow the convention used by most business websites such as “About Us” and “Contact Us” links

Help online readers scan and absorb information by breaking it into self-contained, easily readable chunks that are linked together logically.

Summary of Discussion (7 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Classifying Informational Reports

Organizing Informational Reports

Organizing Website Content

Information Architecture

The next section will cover Planning Analytical Reports.

Planning Analytical Reports (1 of 2)

LO 10.6 Identify the three most common ways to organize analytical reports.

The purpose of analytical reports is to analyze, to understand, or to explain; in other words, to think through a problem or opportunity, explain how it will affect an organization, and recommend how the organization should respond. In many cases, you’ll be expected to make a recommendation based on your analysis.

Planning Analytical Reports (2 of 2)

Assessing Opportunities

Solving Business Problems

Supporting Decision Making

Typical analytical reports fall into three basic categories:

Reports to assess opportunities. Every business opportunity carries some degree of risk and requires a variety of decisions and actions in order to capitalize on the opportunity. You can use analytical reports to assess both risk and required decisions and actions. For instance, market analysis reports are used to judge the likelihood of success for new products or sales. Due diligence reports examine the financial aspects of a proposed decision, such as acquiring another company.

Reports to solve problems. Managers often assign troubleshooting reports when they need to understand why something isn’t working properly and how to fix it. A variation, the failure analysis report, studies events that happened in the past, with the hope of learning how to avoid similar failures in the future.

Reports to support decisions. Feasibility reports explore potential ramifications of a decision that managers are considering. Justification reports explain a decision that has already been made.

Understanding the Challenges of Writing Analytical Reports

More than Delivering Information

Compelling, Persuasive Message

Added Responsibility for Outcomes

Writing analytical reports presents a greater challenge than writing informational reports, for three reasons. First, you are doing more than simply delivering information—you are also analyzing a situation and presenting your conclusions. Second, when your analysis is complete, you need to present your thinking in a compelling and persuasive manner. Third, analytical reports often convince other people to make significant financial and personnel decisions, and these reports carry the added responsibility of the consequences of such decisions.

Focusing on Conclusions

Advantages

Direct Approach

Presents Main Idea

Disadvantages

Ignores Questions

Potential for Oversimplification

When writing for audiences that are likely to accept your conclusions—either because they have asked you to perform an analysis or they trust your judgment—consider using the direct approach by focusing immediately on your conclusions.

This structure communicates the main idea quickly, but it does present some risks. Even if audiences trust your judgment, they may have questions about your data or methods. Moreover, starting with a conclusion may create the impression that you have oversimplified the situation. To give readers the opportunity to explore the thinking behind your conclusion, support that conclusion with solid reasoning and evidence.

Focusing on Recommendations

Establish the Need for Action

Introduce Benefits and Potential Risks

List the Steps (Recommendations)

Explain Each Step More Fully

Summarize Your Recommendations

When structuring a report around recommendations, use the direct approach. Then unfold your recommendations using a series of five steps:

Establish the need for action in the introduction, generally by briefly describing the problem or opportunity.

Introduce the benefit that can be achieved, along with any potential risks.

List the steps (recommendations) required to achieve the benefit, using action verbs for emphasis.

Explain each step more fully, giving details on procedures, costs, and benefits.

Summarize your recommendations.

Focusing on Logical Arguments

When readers are potentially skeptical or hostile, consider using the indirect approach to build logically toward your conclusions or recommendations. If you guide readers along a rational path toward the answer, they are more likely to accept it when they encounter it.

The two most common logical approaches are as follows:

The 2 + 2 = 4 approach, in which you convince readers by demonstrating that everything adds up to your conclusion.

The yardstick approach, in which you use a number of criteria to decide, which option to select from two or more possibilities.

Analytical Report Focusing on Logical Arguments

Summary of Discussion (8 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

Planning Analytical Reports

Understanding the Challenges of Writing Analytical Reports

Focusing on Conclusions

Focusing on Recommendations

Focusing on Logical Arguments

The next section will cover Planning Proposals.

Planning Proposals

LO 10.7 Explain how to plan proposals.

Proposals can be grouped into two general categories.

Structuring Proposals

Solicited Proposal

Expected

Strict Instructions

Unsolicited Proposal

Unexpected

More Flexibility

The most significant factor in planning a proposal is whether the recipient has asked you to submit a proposal. Solicited proposals are generally prepared at the request of external parties that require a product or a service, but they may also be requested by such internal sources as management or the board of directors.

Some organizations prepare a formal invitation to bid on their contracts, called a request for proposals (RFP), which includes instructions that specify exactly the type of work to be performed or products to be delivered, along with budgets, deadlines, and other requirements. Other companies then respond to the RFP by preparing proposals that show how they would meet those needs.

Unsolicited proposals offer more flexibility but a completely different sort of challenge because recipients aren’t expecting to receive them. In fact, your audience may not be aware of the problem or opportunity you are addressing; so before you can propose a solution, you might first need to convince your readers that a problem or an opportunity exists. Consequently, the indirect approach is often the wise choice for unsolicited proposals.

Regardless of its format and structure, a good proposal explains what a project or course of action will involve, how much it will cost, and how the recipient and his or her organization will benefit.

General Categories of Proposals

Internal Proposals

Request Decisions from Managers in the Organization

External Proposals

Request Decisions from Parties Outside the Organization

Internal proposals request decisions from managers within the organization. External proposals request decisions from parties outside the organization. For example, investment proposals request funding from outside investors, grant proposals request funds from government agencies and other sponsoring organizations, and sales proposals present solutions for potential customers and request purchase decisions.

Internal Proposal (cont.)

Summary of Discussion (9 of 9)

In this section, we discussed the following:

General Categories of Proposals

Structuring Proposals

This concludes our discussion of Chapter 10: Understanding and Planning Reports and Proposals.