1. Writing Business Reports and Proposals
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Business Communication Today 8e

2. Three-Step Writing Process
Planning
Writing
Completing
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3. Adapting to the Audience
Be sensitive to their needs
Build strong relationships
Control style and tone
To ensure your own success with reports, be sensitive to audience needs, build strong relationships with your audience, and control your style and tone.
The following four aspects of audience sensitivity apply to reports and proposals: adopting the "you" attitude, maintaining a strong sense of etiquette, emphasizing the positive, and using bias-free language. With previews, summaries, appendixes, and other elements, you can meet the needs of a diverse audience—provided you plan for these elements in advance.
Whether your report is intended for people inside or outside the company, be sure to plan how you will adapt your style and your language to reflect the image of your organization. Bear in mind that some reports can take on lives of their own, reaching a wider audience than you ever imagined and being read years after you wrote them, so choose your content and language with care.
Whether you’re writing a report or a proposal, you'll need to decide on the appropriate style and tone. Make your tone too informal, and your audience might be put off by your casual approach. Make it too formal, and you could come across as impersonal and distant, perhaps too rigid to form a strong working relationship with others. Your level of formality is closely related to your document’s format, length, and organization, as well as to your relationship with the audience.
If you know your readers reasonably well and your report is likely to meet with their approval, you can generally adopt a fairly informal tone. To make your tone more formal, use the impersonal journalism style: Emphasize objectivity, ensure that content is free from personal opinion, and build your argument on provable facts.
A more formal tone is appropriate for longer reports, especially those dealing with controversial or complex information. Also, communicating with people in other cultures often calls for more formality—for two reasons. First, the business environment outside the United States tends to be more formal in general, and that formality must be reflected in your communication. Second, the things you do to make a document informal (such as using humor and idiomatic language) tend to translate poorly or not at all from one culture to another.
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4. Composing Reports and Proposals
Type of document
Purpose of document
Structure of document
Length and depth of material
Degree of formality
Audience relationship
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5. Business Communication Today 8e
The Introduction
Report context
Subject or purpose
Main ideas
Overall tone
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6. Business Communication Today 8e
The Body Chapters
Present
Analyze
Interpret
Support
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7. Business Communication Today 8e
The Closing Section
Emphasizes main points
Summarizes benefits
Reinforces structure
Brings together action items
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8. Drafting Report Content
Accurate
Complete
Balanced
Structured
Documented
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9. Business Communication Today 8e
Report Introduction
Authorization
Problem
Purpose
Scope
Background
Sources
Methods
Definitions
Limitations
Organization
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10. Business Communication Today 8e
Report Body
Explanations
Evidence
Results
Analyses
Procedures
Methods
Criteria
Conclusions
Recommendations
Support
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11. Business Communication Today 8e
Report Closing
Conclusions
Recommendations
Action plans
Schedules
Responsibilities
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12. Business Communication Today 8e
Proposal Content
The AIDA plan
Solicited proposals
Unsolicited proposals
Introduction
Body
Conclusion
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13. Strategies for Successful Proposals
Demonstrate your knowledge
Provide concrete examples
Research the competition
Prove that your proposal is workable
Adopt a “you” attitude
Package your proposal attractively
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14. Proposal Introduction
Problem or background
Proposed solution
Scope or delimitations
Organization
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15. Business Communication Today 8e
Proposal Body
Proposed approach
Work plan
Qualifications
Detailed costs
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16. Business Communication Today 8e
Proposal Closing
Key points
Benefits and merits
Qualifications
Final decisions
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17. Consistent Perspective
Time frame
Verb tenses
Chronology
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18. Business Communication Today 8e
Guiding the Readers
Headings and subheadings
Transitional devices
Previews and reviews
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19. Technology for Reports and Proposals
Templates
Linked files
Embedded files
Electronic forms
Electronic documents
Multimedia documents
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Business Communication Today 8e