Persuasive Proposal Development Guide for Engineers

Developing Proposals Winning Your Audience

Design Activities

Engineering Behaviors - Technical • Analyst • Searches strategically to identify all conditions, phenomena, and assumptions influencing the situation • Problem Solver • Examines problem setting to understand critical issues, assumptions, limitations, and solution requirements • Designer • Searches widely to determine stakeholder needs, existing solutions, and constraints on solutions • Formulates clear design goals, solutions specifications (including cost, performance, manufacturability, sustainability, social impact) and constraints that must be satisfied to yield a valuable design solution • Thinks independently, cooperatively, and creatively to identify relevant existing ideas and generate original solution ideas • Researcher • Formulates research questions that identify relevant hypotheses or other new knowledge sought

Engineering Behaviors – Professional and Interpersonal • Communicator • Prepares a message with the content, organization, format, and quality fitting the audience and purpose • Delivers a message with timeliness, credibility, and engagement that achieves desired outcomes efficiently • Leader • Facilitates and articulates a shared vision valued by targeted individuals, groups, or organizations • Self-Grower • Takes ownership for one’s own personal and professional status and growth • Seeks out mentors to support and challenge future growth and development • Achiever • Accepts responsibility and takes ownership in assignments • Maintains focus to complete tasks on time amidst multiple demands • Practitioner • Brings responsible engineering perspectives to global and societal issues

Proposals as Persuasion • Goal: persuade audiences to act in a particular way: • To fund a project (e.g. asking a granting agency such as NSF to fund your research) • To approve a project (e.g. asking a manager within your department to approve a process modification) • To accept a product (e.g. trying to win a contract for a specific job)

Elements of Persuasion • To persuade someone to decide in your favor, you need to convince them of several things: • That a need exists (research) or that you understand the need (contract) • That your proposed project meets that need • That your project is viable • That the benefits outweigh the costs • That you are capable of completing the project • Bottom Line: Do the benefits (tangible and intangible) outweigh the costs?

Expectations: Proposal Structures • Summary – brief statement of the need, the project, the benefits, and the costs • Statement of Need – an explanation of why the work needs to be done • Research proposals: Prior work, background information, gaps, impacts • Contract proposals: Review of RFP/RFB

Expectations: Proposal Structure • Statement of Need – an explanation of why the work needs to be done • Research proposals: Prior work, background information, gaps, impacts • Contract proposals: Review of RFP/RFB • Your Proposal • What can you say about the need? • What research is required to support the need?

Structure of Proposals (cont’d) • Project Description • Overview (what the project is) • Deliverables (concrete outcomes) • Justification (how it meets the need) • Benefits (why it is valuable/better) • Implementation or approach (the plan) • Schedule • Budget • Qualifications

Expectations: Deliverables • Deliverables should be… • Concrete • Measurable • Multi-stage • Final product • Substantial intermediate products leading to deliverable

Knowing Your Audience • To persuade an audience to act, you need to first analyze that audience: • Who makes the final decision? • What is the audience’s knowledge base? • Why does the audience care? What is their stake in the outcome? • What are the criteria (explicit and implicit) for decision-making? • What constrains the decision? • Is the decision merit-based or competitive? • What biases, values, predispositions, etc. does your audience have?

Building Common Ground • To reach your audience, you need to think and write on their terms: • Use your audience’s language • Explain all unfamiliar terms • Read between the lines and address the audience’s values as well as their stated needs or expectations

Knowing Your Tools • Winning proposals rely on three types of appeals: • Appeals to Logic … support your claims with the “facts” of the case • Appeals to Emotion … support your claims by connecting your work to your audience’s value or beliefs • Appeals to Credibility … support your claims by helping the audience believe you

Tips for Developing Content • Review all relevant documents from your audience • Research information to support both the need and the project description • Brainstorm all possible benefits and costs, and highlight those most important to your audience

Effective Research/Design Proposals…. • Support the need for the project with a review of the relevant literature • Provide a concrete set of deliverables in response to the need, including “sure bets” as well as “ideals” • Demonstrate a well-thought-out approach to meeting the need • Give the reader confidence in the investigators knowledge and ability • Clearly account for all spending requests

Making Your Proposal Readable • Use meaningful headings and subheadings to organize your text • Meaningless: Literature Review • Meaningful: Curriculum Planning in Engineering Since 1990 • Use lists to help highlight key information • Deliverables • Critical needs • Benefits • Use graphics to illustrate key concepts • Use tables and charts to illustrate plans • Schedule • Budget

Persuasive Proposal Development Guide for Engineers