Example - How to Write for Business-r4 PDF

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How to Write for Business Traditional fiction writing, like telling a story or evoking emotion with a poem, is designed to transport the reader to the environment of the writer for entertainment, fantasy, or escape. The objective is communicating the story or emotion. Subtly, nuance and innuendo can be powerful creative tools. Frequently the story is communicated with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is not how to write for business! Business writing has a different Main point, frequently a objective. The purpose of business recommendation (usually the "What" and "Why") writing is to enable good decision making. The best way to meet this Important details (How, When, How Much) objective is to use the inverted pyramid style writing. This is the same style that Background is used in reporting. You lead with the info main point and add detail in the order of importance with the most important details coming first. In business writing, background information is added sparingly. Frequently it is eliminated or relegated to an appendix. Example: The following background describes a business situation that is going to be reviewed by the Board of Directors of ACME Inc. • • • • • •

ACME is a storied brand that has been around for decades 4 years ago a new competitor entered their market 2 years after that revenue and profit started declining, presumably because of the competitor The R&D manager and Marketing manager were tasked by the board to create a turnaround plan They have spent the last 6 months with their teams evaluating the situation and preparing a recommendation for the Board Today is the big day that their recommendation gets shared with the Board

Compare these 2 versions of the recommendation.

The Story Version (don’t do this for business) Dear Board Members, We have asked our R&D manager and our Marketing manager to create a turnaround plan to address our recent declines in revenue and profit. They have spent the last 6 months with their teams evaluating the situation. They first started an evaluation of the competitor’s product and found that customers preferred the size and weight of their product over ours. Because of our economy of scale we have a manufacturing cost advantage which allowed us to respond with a price reduction to maintain market share. Our competitor followed with a similar price reduction. While this ate into their margin they were able to continue to gain share. We concluded that we needed an alternate strategy rather than continuing to erode margin and lose share. Our Marketing and R&D teams spent a lot of time understanding the situation and interviewing customers. We uncovered a couple of surprises along the way. While it is clear that our customers have a slight preference for our competitor’s product we also learned that there were 2 other driving factors. First our competitor has invested heavily in service and support. This post purchase customer engagement makes converted customers extremely loyal to the competitor and requires a significant price reduction to overcome. The second, and more important, thing we learned was that many long-time customers that stopped placing orders had not switched to the competitor as we suspected. With the advent of portable laser ablation technology they implemented a new process which bypasses the process step that uses our product (and our competitor’s product) entirely saving 10% of their material cost and reducing production time by 14%. As we dug into this deeper we realized that a product redesign was not going to solve the problem. We needed to reexamine how our customers are evolving and create a new compelling solution that fits into their work flow. With that in mind we designed the Turbo Encabulator. This state of the art product eliminates 4 of their production processes and consolidates another 4 processes into a single step. The net savings to our customer is a 60% reduction in cost of sales from a combination of fewer parts and reduced production time. We estimate that we can sell our device with a 70% gross margin. It also enables us to provide a service and support contract. This contract provides both an annuity stream and a way to stay closer to the customer to prevent being blindsided by future shifts in their process. We recommend moving forward immediately with production of the Turbo Encabulator. Great story! A perfect beginning, middle and end. Ms. Phelps, your high school English teacher, would be proud. This is not how you write for business. Ask yourself, how much of this information was needed to make a business decision? Compare to the version below.

The Information Needed for a Business Decision Version (do this) Our Marketing and R&D teams recommend the immediate production of the Turbo Encabulator. This product revolutionizes our customers’ production process resulting in: •

60% reduction in the customer’s Cost of Sales

Our initial expectation to regain share was a product redesign. As we discovered our true customer needs, it became clear that any redesign would be quickly eclipsed by a process change similar to one enabled by our Turbo Encabulator recommendation. This process change entirely eliminates the need for our current product. The new process also provides a new Service and Support revenue stream and allows us to continually track our customers’ evolving needs that will prevent us from being blindsided again. ACME expects this new product line to recognize •

70% Gross Margin to ACME

We request permission to move forward immediately with the Turbo Encabulator.

Final Thoughts Clearly other details will be needed with both stories for the Board to make a decision. How much will development cost? How long will it take? What resources are needed? Etc. The information in Version 2 is action oriented. It eliminates info that is interesting but not relevant to making the current business decision. It also tries to make sure it doesn’t leave out essential information needed for a good business decision. It’s front loaded and follows the inverted pyramid. The goal is to provide all the information needed to make a good business decision; nothing more. While the more detailed backup should exist and be available to support questions, it is used only as reference material. Not as the primary business communication. If you were a reviewing Board member with limited time and lots of other decisions to make, which would you want read?...