by Vanessa Cobb

Created on: February 01, 2009

Making a living by writing proposals is as much of a challenge as achieving any other career goal, except for one thing: your service and your sale rely on the self-same capability.

Whether you are planning to operate as a paid employee, a freelancer or a full service agency, your skill in writing successful proposals can both win you contracts and deliver excellent results for your clients.

To find out whether this is the career for you, there are several steps you can take before making a firm commitment. The better your preliminary research, the more reliable your decision will prove to be in the long run.

The first and most obvious question to consider is how well you write proposals currently. Are you familiar with the structure of a good proposal? How should it vary in style and content from any other form of writing? What must it always include and where does a poor proposal tend to go badly wrong? If you have doubts about the answers to these questions, then this may not be the career for you, at least, not yet. The good news, however, is that on the market there are several excellent guides to persuasive writing persuasive and a wealth of material online that can point you in the right direction.

Assuming you understand the principles, then the next step is to practice and test your product. But where should you start?

As with all forms of writing and business, a sound piece of advice is usually to stick with what you know. Where does your experience lie? Where have you been most convincing in the past? These are the questions you need to consider when choosing your specialist area of expertise. While a good proposal writer can convince a mine owner to buy a select brand of coals, a smart one will focus on one particular niche that he or she can come to own and dominate. After all, when we have a mild need and a low budget, we approach a generalist. When it gets more serious, we want a specialist. The price may be higher, but there is no substitute for experience and depth of knowledge. So where can you demonstrate your credibility as a specialist proposal writer?

One exercise I frequently conduct with participants on my workshops is to take 60 seconds and jot down all the things you can remember selling. Students usually begin with things for which they have received money, starting with their school-day Saturday jobs, but eventually on everyone's list will appear items like holiday ideas' and broccoli to children.' If you can persuade, you can sell.

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