Till 1 / 5 A g op 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 Objective Main point, frequently including a Business writing has a different recommendation objective. The purpose of business (usually the "What" and "Why") writing is to enable good decision Important details making. The best way to meet this (How, When, How Much) objective is to use the inverted pyramid Background writing style. This is the same style that info is used in reporting. You lead with the 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. Usually, "time" is the most restricted resource for executives. Efficient communication is a critical competitive advantage. Four C's of Business Writing Clear Don't make the reader work to understand the point; it should jump off the page. Always pick the best visual elements for the class of information being delivered like: bullets, images, graphs and tables to visually highlight, condense, and aid memory Concise Use only the words and imagery needed to make the point and support the business decision Compelling Once the reader has reviewed the material, the next step should be obvious. Frequently the business decision is to - Move Forward, Halt, Reverse Course, or there is insufficient information to make a clear decision at this time. Many business decisions need a risk assessment in order to make a compelling case. Selecting an appropriate risk framework (subjective or objective) is part of making a compelling case. Complete o This is the balance to Concise. Once you have included all the information for a great business decision-stop. Don't leave out critical information that could lead to a poor decision. o . O . o 3 / 5 + A g 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 4 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 customer 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 way to stay closer to the customer to prevent being blindsided by future shifts in their processes. 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. 4 / 5 A) g 4 The Information Needed for a Business Decision Version (do this) Based on 4 months of detailed customer and competitor research, 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. Usually the thickest report will get the best grade if you are following the "How to Write for Business" guidelines. O True False When writing for business make sure you include lots of details, even if they might not be relevant. It's better to cover your bases than to leave something out True False