Lecture 11

Making Your Case with

Persuasive Messages and Proposals

Shafquat Rafiul Alam

BUS 251

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Learning Objectives

• Advice about persuasion

• Persuasive requests

• Ethical concerns

• Sales messages

• Proposals

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Advice About Persuasion
• Know your readers
• Values, Interests and Needs
• Gather demographic & psychographic information

• Choose and develop targeted reader benefits

• Focus on Reader Benefits (Scenario Painting)

• http://www.carnival.com/cms/fun/destination/Mexico/itinerariesB.aspx?sort=3

• Make good use of persuasive appeals

• Make it easy for readers to comply

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Know your Readers
• Formally gathered information (marketing reports, surveys, focus groups)
• Informally gathered information (study customer notes, talk with service
personnel and other employees, look at other messages that have succeeded)

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Choose Winning Reader Benefits
• These can be
• Tangible- Measurable Rewards (Saving money/ time, acquire
desired object)
• Intangible (Making lives easier, gaining prestige, more freedom)

• They can also be

• Intrinsic (automatic benefits by complying with request)
• Extrinsic (added on and more short lived)

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Use Winning Appeals
• Logic based (logos)
• Emotion based (pathos)
• Character based (ethos)

Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)

Greek Philosopher

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 Determining the Central Appeal
Three kinds:
• Logical
• appeals to the thinking mind (saving money, making money, doing a
better job, getting better use)
• Emotional
• appeals to the senses (feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing, popularity,
status)
• Character based
• uses the writer or spokesperson’s voice and projected image to win trust
and invite readers to identify with the speaker
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Make It Easy for Readers to Comply
• Don’t neglect the action part of the message.
• Make the desired action clear.
• Make the desired action as easy as possible to perform.

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Types of Persuasive Writing
• Three (3) main types of persuasive writing:
• Persuasive Requests
• Sales Messages
• Proposals

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Plan for Persuasive Requests
• Open with words that
• set up the strategy
• Determine what you want
• Figuring out your reader’s likely reaction
• Deciding upon a persuasive strategy
• Gain attention in the opening
• Present the strategy (the persuasion), using persuasive language and
you-viewpoint.
• As a logical follow-up, make the request clearly and without
negatives.
• End the message with the request or with words that recall the
appeal.
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Good Persuasive Strategy (1 of 4)
Opening

Dear Ms. McLaughlin:

I’m sure you’d agree that business communication teachers need to be

in touch with business experts in the field. Experienced professionals
like you can give teachers the realistic input that is so important to
their practical coursework.

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Good Persuasive Strategy (2 of 4)
Body

For this reason, I believe that you could make an important

contribution to the national meeting of the Association for Business
Communication, which will be held in New Orleans at the Sheraton
Hotel, October 28-31. This conference brings together about 300
business communication professors from around the US and the world
who are looking for ways to keep their teaching abreast of current
practice. Your perspective could be especially valuable to them.

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Good Persuasive Strategy (3 of 4)
Body Continued

Could you join us on Friday afternoon from 2:00 to 2:45 pm to tell us about your
work as a supervisor at Lexmark? What common writing problems do you see, and
what do you think we should be doing in the colleges to help our students avoid
them? How can we better prepare our students for writing in the workplace? Any
insights you could share on these and related topics would be much appreciated.
You would not need to prepare a formal presentation. In fact, anecdotes and
examples from your work would be preferred. You could speak for about 30
minutes, leaving 15 minutes for discussion. Since your talk would be one of several
break-out sessions, it would be attended by 30-40 people, making for a relaxed,
conversational atmosphere.
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Good Persuasive Strategy (4 of 4)
Closing

Will you please share your experiences and advice with us? By doing
so, you will help us help hundreds of business-writing students. Since I
will be compiling the final program on the 15th, please let me know by
the 10th if you can join us.
Sincerely,

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Preliminary Steps for Sales Writing
• Learn the product or service you sell.
• How it is made
• How it works
• What it will do
• Learn about the prospective customers.
• Their economic status
• Their nationalities
• Their ages etc
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 Conventional Plan of the Sales Message
• Begin with words that set up the sales presentation and gain
attention.
• Present the sales message using imagination, persuasive
language, and you-viewpoint.
• Include sufficient information to convince.
• Then drive for the sale, making it clear, and using appropriate
strength.
• Urge immediate action.
• May recall basic appeal in final words.
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Proposals
• Proposals share certain characteristics with reports
• Both require information to be carefully gathered and presented
• Visually they may seem quite similar
• Main difference compared to reports: Intentionally Persuasive
• Types of Proposals
• Internal or External
• Solicited or Unsolicited
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Proposal Format & Contents
• Format and Formality
• Ranges from small simple internal emails to complex proposals that take the
form of long reports, including prefatory pages (Title page, Letter of Transmittal,
Table of Contents, Executive Summary etc.)
• Investigate and analyse the situation/ readers properly before designing a
proposal

• Content
• Whatever the Type of Proposal, the primary goal is the same: to make a
persuasive argument
• Every element of a proposal needs to contribute to the central argument
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Proposal Format & Contents
• Evaluating a proposal:
• Desirability of the Solution

• Qualifications of the proposer

• Return on Investment

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THANK YOU

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