Don�t Use That Tome of Voice With Me If You Want To Sell Me

Proposals are vital to selling success. Since most sales people are useless at asking for a deal, proposals become dealmakers and breakers. Proposals are the Cinderella of a sales call � an after-thought of corporate-speak.

A War and Peace length of drivel.

Yes, I know you have a classical education, that you�re an English major, and that you want the whole world to know it. Suck in that pride and write like you speak and you�ll cut your proposals down to an understandable, pleasurable Readers Digest sales tool.

Write for understanding and not to impress. Do this and you�ll have more of your sales proposals and marketing messages accepted.

Author, Amanda Patterson stresses this in her Writers Write Course: �Use common words that readers don�t have to interpret. Don�t write visage, countenance; write face. Don�t write tome, publication � write book.

The trick is to write the way most of us talk.

�Avoid starting your sentences with there is, there was, it is, it was, there are,� Amanda says.

Use attention-grabbing words that drive you to action. Words such as affordable, allure, crucial, danger, eager � classify as attention-grabbing words. If you�re battling to find attention-grabbing words, click here for some more words.

Readability

One of the best tools I know for assisting people get the plot sits in Microsoft Word. The Flesch Readability Score displays information about the reading level of your document, including readability scores. It rates text on a 100-point scale; the higher the score, the easier it is for people to understand your writing. It also rates your writing on a U.S. grade-school level. For example, a score of 7.0 means that a seventh grader can understand the document (I think this means a Std 6 pupil).

The tool also shows you what percentage of your document is passive (passive = weak, static writing).

According to Amanda your score (on 1 500 words) should read like this:

- Passive       2%

- Grade level  3.5 � 4.5

- Readability   80%

Hey, Amanda, that�s easy for you to say � I�ve been trying my best to reach your score up until here and this is the best I can do:

- Passive       0%

- Grade level  7.6

- Readability   63.1%

I hope the point has been made. It�s not easy to keep your writing simple and understandable. But, if you want to sell more through your proposals and marketing letters, it may be an idea to try writing like you speak.

If it gives you a 10% edge over your competitors, I think it is worth taking the shot.

Instructions on how to find the readability tool:

1.                  Click on Tools when you�re in Microsoft Word

2.                  Click on Spelling and Grammar

3.                  Click on Options

4.                  Go to the Grammar Section and tick show readability statistics

5.                  Run your spell checker until completed and see how you make out