The Cicero Principle: How to Avoid Talking to Yourself in Print 77 . . . speak my words. The last element of Cicero's formula is vital. You need to use words that you are confident the customer will understand. And if there's a discrep- ancy between the language your audience uses and what you use, you should drop your own usage and mimic the audience. Your readers will understand more, feel more comfortable with your proposal, and be more likely to adopt your recommendations. People get confused when they see more than two or three unfamil- iar acronyms or pieces of jargon in a page of text. But they almost never tell you they're confused. They just wrinkle their forehead, shake their heads, and pull back. What they're thinking is, "This doesn't make sense. I don't understand this. These people are trying to snow me with a lot of techno-babble." And when customers think those kinds of thoughts, they become very reluctant to open their wallets. Salespeople and proposal writers, in my experience, almost always overestimate the customer's level of understanding. We become so used to our own jargon that we find it easier to communicate that way than in everyday English. That's a big mistake and often results in delaying behavior. The customer wants one more demo, another presentation, needs another couple of weeks to consider the offers, and so on. What that often means is they don't understand. Analyzing the Audience Cicero has given us the word: You must consider your audience when writing proposals. It's crucial. Ignoring or misunderstanding them dooms hundreds, probably thousands, of proposals to failure every year, proposals that otherwise answer the needs or solve the problems of the businesses soliciting them. As Cicero has indicated, then, to write a winning proposal, you need to consider three key factors about the audience: 1. Personality type ("think my thoughts") Detail oriented Pragmatic Consensus-oriented Visionary 2. Level of expertise ("speak my words") Expert Informed American Management Association www.amanet.org