CHAPTER 1
Understanding Generic Structure Logic
Like most people, I like stories, so let me begin by telling you a very short story—after which I’ll ask you several questions.
Paula was hungry. After she entered and ordered a pastrami sandwich, it was served to her quickly. She left the waitress a big tip.
Where was Paula?
What did she eat?
Who made the sandwich?
Who took the order?
Who served the sandwich?
Why did Paula leave a big tip?
How is it that you could answer those questions rather easily even though nothing in the story explicitly provides the information necessary for your answers? Because you have a schema for the concept of “restaurant.”
Schemas are knowledge structures that you have built and stored in your memory as patterns, as analytical frameworks. Schemas represent generic concepts such as restaurant or airplane or house. Each schema has “slots” that exist in a network of relations. Your schema for restaurant may have slots for “ordering,” “eating,” “tipping,” and “paying.” Your schema for house may contain slots for “family room,” “kitchen,” “living room,” and “bathroom.” A slot for “home office” is also possible, but probably not for “boardroom” or “conference room,” since such spaces typically are not found in residences. Therefore, you don’t expect to find a boardroom or a conference room in someone’s house.
You also have schemas for different kinds of texts, and these schemas create expectations. In a novel, for example, you expect character and plot and setting. In a particular type of novel, such as a spy novel, you may expect that the hero will be betrayed and captured, only to escape and triumph. In a eulogy, you expect some account of the deceased person’s character and accomplishments; in a personal letter, some account of your friend’s life and feelings; in a sermon, some moral based on a religious belief. If the sermon consisted solely of an analysis of price-earnings ratios or bills of materials or various strategies for penetrating new markets, your expectations would be denied, and you’d be suspicious of the speaker’s competence and reliability, maybe even his or her sanity.
Proposals and other business documents also carry with them schemas and sets of expectations. If I asked you to submit a proposal to me, I’d be surprised if the document contained findings, conclusions, and recommendations. These are slots I’d expect in a report, not a proposal.1 Potential clients like me, then, have certain expectations, and as a writer, you’re at some risk if you don’t meet those expectations. If your reader is in a proposal-reading situation, you’d better deliver a document that fits your reader’s proposal schema, not the schema for a report or a eulogy or a novel.
Your schema for a proposal also has slots, and those slots make up what I call a proposal’s generic structure. No matter how different one proposal may be from another, something generic makes them both proposals, and that something is their generic structure.
The Slots in a Proposal’s Generic Structure
Most of your proposal opportunities exist because I, your potential client, have an unsolved problem or an unrealized opportunity. Therefore, your primary task is to convince me, both logically and psychologically, that you can help me address my problem or opportunity and, in competitive situations, that you’ll do so better than anyone else.
Your entire proposal needs to communicate that message in one seamless argument (which may happen to be divided into sections or even volumes for my convenience). Your argument is suggested by the following propositions, each of which is preceded by the proposal slot that contains it. (See Figure 1.1.)
Situation. This is our understanding of your problem or opportunity.
Objectives. Given that problem or opportunity, these are our objectives for addressing it.
Methods. Given those objectives, these are our methods for achieving them.
Qualifications. Given those methods, these are our qualifications for performing them.
Costs (or Fees). Given those qualifications and methods, this is how much it will cost.
Benefits. Given our efforts and their associated costs, these are the benefits or value you will receive.
FIGURE 1.1 The generic structure of proposals
Slots Speaking to Slots
Although the preceding statements might suggest that your proposal’s argument flows only one way—from top to bottom—the argument should be so tight that the logic also can flow from bottom to top:
These are the benefits or value you will receive
considering the costs you will incur
given our qualifications
for performing these methods
that will achieve your objectives
and therefore improve your situation.
Now, I’ve never seen a proposal organized that way, but however the proposal is organized, every generic structure slot needs to “speak” to all the others. No slot exists in isolation: Each contributes to your communicating the proposal’s primary message. In later chapters, I’ll show you specific techniques for assuring that each slot in your proposal speaks to every other one.
Slots Are Not Necessarily Sections
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been referring to OBJECTIVES, METHODS, BENEFITS, and so on, as “slots,” even though many proposals might designate those parts of the proposal by using section headings of the same name.2 I’ve been calling these elements slots rather than sections because in any given proposal it is possible that:
No slot could be used as a section heading. That’s the case if you don’t use headings in your document or if your headings are different from the slot names. The situation slot could be called “Background” or “Business Issues” or “Our Understanding of Your Situation.” The methods slot could be named “Approach” or “Methodology” or “Study Strategy.”
Two or more slots could be combined into one section. You could combine SITUATION and OBJECTIVES into one section. Or OBJECTIVES and METHODS.
One slot could be split into two or more sections. METHODS could be divided among “Approach,” “Workplan,” and “Deliverables.” QUALIFICATIONS could be split among “Project Organization,” “Qualifications,” “References,” and “Résumés.”
All Slots Should Be Filled or Accounted For
Every proposal you write or present contains six slots, but these slots are not necessarily organized into corresponding sections or presented in predetermined or fixed order. Nevertheless, whether they are combined, split, or not named at all, each slot should be filled or accounted for. On some occasions, you don’t have to fill slots in the proposal document or presentation because they’ve already been “filled” in prior discussions with me, your potential client, and therefore accounted for during the proposal process. We all know that proposal development itself is often only one part of the selling process, and actions, good or bad, that occur before the actual document is submitted affect the proposal’s content, organization, tone, and the like.
If before you submit the proposal you have already convinced me that you thoroughly understand my problem or opportunity, you’ve already filled much of the situation slot and may not need to fill it (or fill it very much) in the proposal. If you and your team previously have done a good deal of commendable work for me, you’ve filled much of the qualifications slot, and loading the document with résumés and references may be not only unnecessary but strategically unwise and perhaps even annoying. Remember, there are no rules, only strategies. And effective strategies are driven by the specifics of the situation, by the context of the selling process.
By understanding the schema for house, you know what kind of rooms can exist in a house; therefore, you expect rooms such as a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. You also have some sense of the relationship among those rooms and, to some degree, their placement. For example, in a two-story house, you would expect a first-floor kitchen; in a two-story house with only one bath, you might expect a second-floor bathroom; in a house with more than one bath, you would not be surprised to find the second one adjoined to a master bedroom. Similarly, by understanding generic structure—the schema for proposals—you understand an important logical element of proposals. You know that proposals, to be proposals, also have certain kinds of rooms or slots, and you know the relationship among those rooms. You know, for example, that one slot explains the problem or opportunity, another explains a method for addressing the problem or capitalizing on the opportunity, and yet another argues the benefits of doing so. Throughout much of this book, I will build upon the concept of generic structure. In fact, the next two chapters focus on the three proposal slots—SITUATION, OBJECTIVES, and BENEFITS—that make up what I call “the baseline logic.”
CHAPTER 1 REVIEW
Understanding Generic Structure Logic
1. All proposals have the same generic structure, which contains the following six slots:
Situation: What is the problem or opportunity?
Objectives: Given that problem or opportunity, what are your objectives for solving or realizing it?
Methods: Given those objectives, how will you achieve them?
Qualifications: Given those methods, how are you qualified to perform them?
Costs: Given the methods and qualifications, how much will it cost?
Benefits: Given those costs, what benefits and/or value will accrue?
2. Generic structure is not a matter of organization. That is, a proposal is not necessarily sequenced according to the slots as they are ordered above.
3. The slots do not necessarily correspond to sections. One section could contain two or more slots. A single slot could be distributed among two or more sections.
4. The extent to which the slots should be filled in the proposal presentation or document depends upon how much they were filled in preproposal meetings or prior working relationships.
WORK SESSION 1: Proposal Opportunity at the ABC Company, a Division of Consolidated Industries
See Figure 1.2 for the instructions for this chapter’s work session.
To: You, The Reader
From: Your Potential Client
Subject: Work Session 1
Before I take you to the next chapter, I need to introduce you to this first of 10 work sessions that will help you think about and apply the concepts discussed throughout this book.
Fortunately, you won’t have to do the work; the work sessions take you through the paces. You only have to pretend to watch yourself work and think about what you’re doing. It won’t be this simple in the real world, but understanding these work sessions will make it far easier.
Each of the work sessions is based on the ABC Case in Appendix A, which you should read for this session. Please do not be concerned if the case relates to a business situation unfamiliar to you. Understanding the technical aspects of the case’s situation is not a prerequisite to understanding the strategies used in subsequent work sessions to prepare a winning proposal. In subsequent chapters, I will refer to the work sessions and the proposal that gets written piece by piece throughout them. So don’t skip these sessions! To internalize this book’s concepts, you need to read the work sessions in order.
You might not always agree with the analyses in the work sessions or with what “you” decide to include or not include in the proposal. In fact, I encourage you to disagree, to consider other alternatives, perhaps even better strategies. But please, let’s not debate the technical aspects of the case. I’ve simplified it somewhat for the purpose of this book, which is to discuss proposal strategy and development rather than the technical aspects of the ABC situation.
Remember, there is no Right Answer, no rules, only some possible guidelines and a set of possible alternatives at every juncture. Some alternatives may be better than others, depending on your analysis of the specific selling situation, its history, its magnitude and importance, your relationship with the buying committee and your competition, and other situational factors discussed throughout this book.