The Fourteen-Page Proposal

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the subject is a document that gets written late at night, with great care, by someone who will never hear back.

Two firms are asked to name a price,
Both sit up late, both take advice.
One sends a book of fourteen pages,
One sends a page that names the stages.
By Friday, one has heard no word.
Whose paper spoke? And who was heard?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, all together now, was equally good. Both were asked by the same buyer, in the same week, to put something in writing.

The first firm treated the request as an examination, which is what most of us do, and answered it with effort. Fourteen pages. Three of them on the firm's history, its values and its people, with photographs. Two on the methodology, which was genuinely rather clever. Then the work itself, described thoroughly, then three options set out in a table, then, on page twelve, the price. It went out at half past eleven at night as an attachment, with a covering line saying they hoped it was useful and looked forward to hearing her thoughts.

She opened it on a train, on a telephone, between two other things. Scrolled. Company history. Scrolled. Values. Scrolled, faster now, looking for the only two facts she needed on a train, which were what it cost and what happened next. She did not find them quickly, put the telephone away, and thought: I'll look at this properly at my desk. She never did. What she eventually sent, three weeks later, was the sentence that has closed more good businesses than any recession: Thanks so much, we're going to hold off for now.

And note the second thing that killed it, which nobody in that firm ever saw. She had to show it to a partner who had not been on the call. He read the first page, which was about the sellers, and formed his entire opinion from it, because that is what first pages are for.

The second firm sent one page, in the body of the message with a copy attached, at four in the afternoon.

The top of it was her own problem in her own words, taken down from the call: the invoicing takes two days a month and the errors are costing us customers. Then what they would do, in three stages, with a date against each. Then the price, plainly, in one line, and directly beneath it what was not included, which is the sentence buyers trust most and sellers write least. Then the next step: if this looks right, say so and we'll start on the third; if you'd rather talk it through, I'm free Tuesday morning.

She read the whole thing standing up. She forwarded it to the partner, who read the whole thing too, because it was one page and the first line was about their own company rather than somebody else's founding story. They said yes on the Tuesday.

The second firm had not worked less hard, mark you. They had done exactly the same thinking. They had simply not charged the buyer for reading it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A proposal is not a document. It is a decision aid. Its whole job is to let a busy person, and usually a busier person behind them, decide yes or no without needing you in the room. Everything in it that does not serve that decision is not thoroughness, it is a tax you have charged your customer for the privilege of buying from you.

The buyer is looking for four things, in this order, and nothing else: do you understand my problem, what exactly will you do, what does it cost, and what happens next. Answer those four on one page and you have written a proposal. Bury them behind your history and your methodology and you have written a brochure, and brochures are not decided upon, they are filed.

Two habits worth breaking. Do not open with yourself: the about page lesson applies twice as hard here, because the reader gave you their problem an hour ago and wants to know you were listening. And do not hide the number: your proposal is a price behind a form all over again, only this time you have made a specific person hunt for it while standing on a train.

Then write for the person who was not on the call. There is nearly always one, they are usually senior, and they will read your first paragraph and nothing else. If that paragraph names their problem and their number, you have an advocate. If it names your founding year, you have a polite refusal coming in three weeks.

Three questions, and open the last proposal you sent while you answer them:

1. How far down is the price? Count the scrolls. Anything past the first screen is a decision you have deferred and a reader you have tired. Put the number where a person can find it in four seconds, with what it excludes directly underneath.
2. Whose words open it? Read your first two sentences. If they are about you, rewrite them using the buyer's own phrasing from the call, the actual sentences they used about the actual trouble. Nothing you can write about yourself will ever persuade like being quoted accurately.
3. What is the next step, and does it have a date? Not "let me know your thoughts", which asks the buyer to invent the process. Name the thing that happens, name the day, and name what you need from them to make it happen. A proposal that does not ask for a decision will not receive one.

The Answer to the Riddle

Whose paper spoke?

The one page, because it was the only one of the two that was actually read, and a document not read is not a weak argument, it is no argument at all. The fourteen pages were better work, in a sense: more thought, more care, more evening given up. All of it addressed to a woman on a train with ninety seconds, and none of it arranged for her. Her silence was never a judgement on the firm. It was a judgement on the first page.

The verse:

Fourteen pages, nobly wrought,
Are fourteen pages no one sought.
Name the trouble, name the sum,
And name the day you'd have them come.

Until next time. Go and cut your standard proposal to one page this week, and send the next one before five in the afternoon rather than at midnight.

P.S. Keep the fourteen pages, mind. Every one of them is useful somewhere: the methodology on your site, the history in your about page, the options in the conversation. What they are not is the thing you hand to a person who is trying to decide. Detail is for the curious. The decision wants a page.

Also in the archive: The Man Who Was Not There, Four Sides at the Horse Fair and The Demonstration.