10-1
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Part II: Chapter-by-Chapter Lecture Notes & Exercises
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Teaching Suggestions
The teaching techniques for this chapter are the same as for the preceding two chapters.
Connect provides instructors with a variety of ways to customize courses, create assignments, determine
grading policies, and receive student work. One of the tools Connect offers is the ability to select and
add interactive assignments to your course. Explanations of these assignments and how they support the
learning objectives are integrated into the instructor’s manual with the relevant subject areas.
Another useful tool in Connect is “Writing Assignment,” which students can use to submit their
Learning Objectives
LO 10-1 Describe important strategies for writing any persuasive message.
LO 10-2 Write skillful persuasive requests that begin indirectly, develop convincing reasoning,
request action, and close with goodwill.
LO 10-3 Show awareness of common ethical concerns regarding sales messages.
LO 10-4 Describe the planning steps for direct mail or email sales messages.
LO 10-5 Compose sales messages that gain attention, present persuasive appeals, use appropriate
visual elements, and effectively call for action.
LO 10-6 Integrate the Internet and social media into your sales efforts.
LO 10-7 Write well-organized and persuasive proposals.
Key Terms
persuasive messages
overtly persuasive messages
indirect order
content marketing
direct order
demographic information
psychographic information
tangible rewards
intangible rewards
reader benefits
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
product benefits
added-on benefits
product features
scenario painting
logic (logos)
emotion (pathos)
character (ethos)
persuasive requests
common-ground persuasion technique
sales message
spam
permission-based email
integrated marketing communications
brand equity
social media plan
proposals
internal proposal
external proposal
solicited proposals
unsolicited proposals
requests for proposals (RFPs)
Text Summary, Lecture Outline
Slides 10-1, 10-2, 10-3
The chapter overview is presented here. The chapter will begin with advice for all kinds of persuasive
messages. A brief discussion of ethical issues in sales messages follows, then more detailed steps for
planning and composing the most common types of persuasive business messages will be provided.
Point out that everything you write on the job will have some kind of persuasive purpose, but in some
situations persuasion will be the main goal.
You do not want your reader, at any point, to think “no.” This means writing the message so that his/her
interests and values are the focus from beginning to end.
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
General Advice about Persuasion
Slides 10-4, 10-5, 10-6
According to entrepreneur and sales guru Daniel Pink, about one in nine people identify as salespeople
in the United States (based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), but the rest of us spend about 40
percent of our time “persuading, influencing, and convincing others in ways that don’t involve selling.”
Slide 10-5 highlights fundamental advice for preparing any kind of persuasive message. These points
will be discussed individually in the following slides.
Slide 10-6 highlights the importance of learning about the needs and values of one’s target audience.
Knowing your readers is always important in any kind of writing, but especially so in persuasive writing.
Before revealing this slide, ask the students to come up with some ways of finding out about readers on
their own (through both formal and informal methods).
For a fun exercise, let students use you as their target audience. Students have to find out enough about
you and the market you represent to pitch the benefits of a new video streaming service, Cinehome, to
you. They’ll want to find out enough about your demographics and the kinds of TV/movie entertainment
you like to entice you with a listing of premium shows and movies that are aimed directly at your
interests. Divide students into one to three “marketing firms” to see who can come closest to getting you
to sign up for the service. Online students can collaborate through Google Docs or a Facebook group
page and form their own firm as well.
Slides 10-7
Slide 10-7 will help students think about the range of benefits that they can highlight in any given
persuasive message. Ask them to think of examples of each of the four kinds.
Tangible benefits could mean measurable things such as saving time, money, or trouble (a product that
makes a task physically easier, for instance).
Intangible benefits could mean making the reader feel good, gain prestige, or have more freedom.
Intrinsic benefits are those that automatically come by complying with the request. This could be
something that is a part of the product being sold or the service being offered.
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Extrinsic benefits are benefits that are not the main feature, but are added on or tied to the main product
or service. They tend to be more short-lived.
One exercise you could try with the students is to have them pick an object in the room and describe its
benefits in terms of these four types. Be sure that your students understand the difference between
product features and product benefits. Saying that a certain washing machine can clean a large load of
Slide 10-8
This slide also describes a useful strategy for developing reader benefits: scenario painting. This is
writing that depicts the reader using and enjoying the benefits. Inviting readers to imagine themselves in
a specific positive situation brought about by doing as the writer asks is a powerful persuasive technique.
It’s a common technique in sales messages but can also be a good tool for other persuasive messages.
Slide 10-9
Here again, students have a range of appeals to choose from. All persuasive messages essentially use
some combination of these appeals, but the writer must decide which to foreground, and with what
supporting details, for any given situation.
Slide 10-10
Finally, students should be careful to devote sufficient thought to planning the action part of the
message. They need to
• make the desired action clear, and
• make it as easy as possible for the reader to perform.
10-5
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Persuasive Requests
Slides 10-11, 10-12
This and the following slides describe the procedure for and give examples of writing a persuasive
request.
Students will be asked to write persuasive requests at many points in their careers—from job search
cover letters, to fundraising messages, to letters to coworkers to prepare for meetings, to appeals for
changes in behavior in fellow employees or even friends.
In all these situations it is important to
1) determine what you want,
2) figure out your readers’ likely reactions, and
3) decide on a strategy to evoke a positive response.
Use imagination and reasoning in figuring out how to gain attention. You might want to arouse curiosity
with a question, or offer a reader benefit.
End the message in a way that will make your request memorable—emphasize a benefit to the reader or
remind him or her of an appeal you used in the body of your request.
The Opening
As with other types of indirect messages, the beginning of this type of message should set up the
explanation. But the beginnings of persuasive messages have an additional goal: to gain attention.
For example, for the beginning of a message seeking to persuade medical doctors to give you their
opinions, you might write, “What, in your opinion as a medical doctor, is the future of the private
practice of medicine?”
The Body
Following the attention-gaining opening, you present the reasoning this opening has set up. To do this,
you do more than just list points—you persuade. You use words that convince. You use the you-
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
viewpoint. And make your words travel fast, for slow-moving messages lead the reader to become
impatient.
For example, do not write it like this: “I am aware that businesspeople in your position have little free
time to give, but will you please consider accepting an assignment to the board of directors of the
Children’s Fund?”
The Close
This plan is especially effective when a long persuasion effort is needed, and it is not practical to present
it all before stating your goal.
Connect Assignment 10-1 (a-e): Persuading Employees to Drive More Safely
Summary: Businesspeople often need to write persuasive requests to gain the cooperation or approval of
people within their organization. This activity asks students to think through the best strategies to
produce an internal persuasive message, using the sample case provided.
10-1a, 10-1b
Learning Objectives: 10-01, 10-02
Difficulty: Medium
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Evaluate
10-1e
Learning Objectives: 10-01, 10-02
Difficulty: Medium
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Evaluate
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Follow-Up Activity: Using the examples and information provided in the sample case and the questions,
students can write a persuasive message to be sent to the employees of the Continental Packaging
Company.
Slide 10-13
You Make the Call
Slides 10-14, 10-15, 10-16, 10-17
Persuasive Strategy
The slides contain good illustrations of persuasive requests that follow the previous advice.
As you move through the different parts of the messages, have students discuss what strategies are being
used and how these strategies help or hurt the persuasive request. Talk about what the writer is offering
to the reader and the kinds of feelings the writer is trying to draw out of the reader. Also discuss how the
writer makes it easy for the reader to give a positive response.
Ask students: What do you think of this opening? What would you do differently?
Then comes the request—in the clear, strong form of a question. Additional questions get the reader
more interested.
The message then anticipates and overcomes likely reader objections (that the talk would be too hard to
prepare, that the speaker would be addressing too big an audience, that the atmosphere would be
daunting).
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Sales Messages
Slide 10-18
Slide 10-19
Use this slide to conduct a frank discussion about the downside of sales messages.
What ethical challenges can be made to sales messages? Have students come up with answers to this
question before revealing the answers on this slide.
Slide 10-20
You Make the Call
Encourage students to discuss these scenarios. What is the ethical choice? Is it wrong to leave out some
information when selling items? How many people would have to report a negative experience before
you felt compelled to tell that information? What about your duty to your employer—how does that
come into play?
Slide 10-21
The preliminary steps for sales writing are reviewed here.
Stress that you cannot sell a product that you do not know and have not spent time considering—its good
and bad sides, how it’s made, how it works (or doesn’t), and what it will or will not do for the reader.
Equally important, as stated before, is learning about prospective readers, or customers. You may want
to gather psychographic and demographic data.
• Psychographic—What do they read? What websites do they go to? How do they think? What do
they care about? What scares them? What do they worry about?
• Demographic—What are their ages and genders? What is their income level? Where do they
live?
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
In large businesses, much of the information about prospects is gathered by marketing research
departments. Invite your students to discuss market-research techniques that they are familiar with.
Slide 10-22
The Central Appeal
Determining sales appeals is the subject of this slide. Ask students to generate examples of each kind of
appeal.
Character-based appeals invite compliance based on the authority and personality of the spokesperson—
such as a celebrity, professional, or projected image of the company. Ask students: What qualities
establish someone as a voice of authority in a persuasive appeal?
Slide 10-23
The Package Pieces
Here you can call attention to the various pieces that make up many of today’s professionally prepared
sales messages. The text shows some examples of message pieces. These are generally known in
advertising as direct-mail packages.
You can also think about special components of the main message. For example, if you are writing a
letter, will it be individually addressed (most sales letters are mass produced), or will it have an
impersonal salutation (Dear Homeowner)? Will you use any kind of attention device, such as color,
lines, diagrams, boxes, and cartoons? A logo? A photograph? A special font or layout for the text?
Slide 10-24
Conventional Plan
With your preliminary thinking done, you are ready to write. Various patterns may be used, but there is a
conventional order.
The Opening
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
The opening has one basic requirement—to gain attention. If it does not, the message has failed. If it is a
letter, it goes into a wastebasket. If it’s an email, it is deleted.
How you gain attention is a part of your creative effort, so use your imagination.
One often-used plan is to begin with a statement or question that introduces a need that the product will
satisfy. Examples:
• “Here is a proven best-seller—and with a 12 percent greater markup!” or
• “Can you use an employee who not only works free of charge but also pays you for the privilege
of serving your clientele 24 hours a day?”
An emotional appeal might well begin with words that describe an emotional reward the product or
service will provide. For example:
Story beginnings sometimes are used:
One currently popular technique for email selling is to begin with the main benefit or result.
Content
The sales message follows.
The structure of this part will vary with your imagination. But it will present your product or service
using the reader-based appeals you have selected.
Remember that the you-viewpoint is extremely important in sales writing and should be used
throughout. Compare these examples:
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Much of this information can be supplied by other enclosures. But be careful that you do not shift too
much of the sales presentation to the enclosures. As a general rule, the letter should carry your basic
sales message. The enclosures present the supporting details.
The Close (drive for action)
After you have convinced the reader, you drive for the sale. How you do this depends on your chosen
strategy.
A milder drive may fit your plan better: “Won’t you make a generous donation today?”
For good results, you may choose to take the reader through the motions: “Just check your preferences
on the enclosed stamped and addressed order form. Then drop it in the mail today.”
Postscripts (P.S. messages) sometimes are a planned part of the sales letter. They can be used effectively
to urge action, to reemphasize a major appeal, to invite attention to enclosures, or serve any other
Connect Assignment 10-2 (a-e): Enjoying the SkyLounge Club
Summary: Students will practice their understanding of creating persuasive appeals and sales messages
by crafting an email to persuade readers to purchase a trial membership to the SkyLounge Club.
10-2a, 10-2c
Learning Objectives: 10-01, 10-05
Difficulty: Hard
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Evaluate
10-2b, 10-2d, 10-2e
Learning Objectives: 10-01, 10-05
Difficulty: Medium
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Evaluate
10–12
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Slides 10-25, 10-26, 10-27, 10-28, 10-29, 10-30, 10-31, 10-32, 10-33
The slides present three sample sales messages that follow the advice in this chapter. Help students see
Teaching Ideas
A fun homework assignment for this section is to ask students to write a sales letter selling themselves as
if they were products. This is helpful brainstorming for the job search. Ask them to use all three types of
appeals, benefits, and strong calls to action. You could also ask them to write dating profiles using these
current with the culture in order to effectively persuade. That culture may be popular culture, current
business culture, or a particular organization’s culture. Magazines such as Fast Company are excellent
ways to help students catch up with business culture. Consider assigning reading as part of the course.
Multimedia Selling
Slide 10-34
This slide highlights the importance of having an integrated marketing strategy.
Refer students back to the Communication Matters feature “Are Sales Letters Becoming Extinct?”
Ask: Are you surprised that direct mail still outperforms digital channels in response rates? Why do you
think it still does so well in today’s digital age?
Slide 10-35
Multimedia Selling
Even if you aren’t planning on becoming a marketing professional, you need to be aware of your
company’s multimedia marketing efforts because you may be called on to help supply information, post
material, or add links to your communications to connect them with other efforts.
10–13
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Exhibits 10-4, 10-5, and 10-6 show different kinds of communications and how they provide links to
Slides 10-36, 10-37, 10-38, 10-39
Content Marketing Benefits
A fairly new sales strategy that companies are now employing is called content marketing. As defined by
the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on
creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined
audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Ask students: What is the key thing to remember when creating content marketing in order to drive
sales? (There must be a connection between the free content and the company—either via a bio, a
Twitter handle, a URL, etc.)
Can you think of examples of content marketing that have drawn your attention or maybe even
converted you into a customer?
Which of the four kinds of social media outlets do you think is most useful for marketing? Are there
other ones that you’d add to this list as essential places for businesses to have a footprint?
In the good example: “five reasons” title catches the eye, first line immediately engages the reader,
writer talks to the reader in a personal and entertaining style and provides useful tips, photos add interest.
Something students should come away with is that good content marketing comes down to having good
content—good writing and good visual interest.
Connect Assignment 10-3: Using Social Media for Promotional Purposes
Summary: This click-and-drag activity will test students’ understanding of terms and tools in the world
of multimedia selling.
Learning Objective: 10-06
Difficulty: Easy
10–14
Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Understand
Slide 10-40
You Make the Call
Let students discuss their opinions on this issue of employees posting work-related material on social
media. You might also want to direct students to the From the Tech Desk feature on “Rogue Marketing:
Proposals
Slides 10-41, 10-42
Use this and the next slide to point out the important similarities and differences between reports and
proposals. Like reports, proposals are based on research and can range widely in format, length, and
formality. They can also be directly or indirectly organized. But unlike reports, proposals are overtly
persuasive.
Slide 10-43
Proposal Topics
Most proposals have some version of these parts, presented in roughly this order. These proposal
elements have become common because they answer proposal readers’ likely questions. Still, variations
on and combinations of these abound, so be sure to adapt this list of possible topics to your particular
situation.
Writer’s purpose (shows understanding of reader’s need)
Background (contextualizes the problem and proposed solution)
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Particulars (covers any costs, delivery information, etc.)
Evidence of ability to deliver (establishes writer’s ability to carry out what is proposed)
Concluding comments (stresses taking action on the proposal)
When creating any proposal—long or short, formal or informal, internal or external, solicited or
unsolicited—consider the three main criteria that readers of business proposals bring to the evaluation
process:
• Desirability of the solution (Do we need this? Will it solve our problem?)
• Qualifications of the proposer (Can the author or his/her company really deliver?)
• Return on investment (Will the benefits of adopting the proposal outweigh the costs?)
Connect Assignment 10-4 (a-e): Proposing a Company Purchase
Summary: Whether seeking grant money, trying to land a contract, or requesting approval from the boss,
10-4a
Learning Objectives: 10-01, 10-07
Difficulty: Hard
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Evaluate
10-4b, 10-4c
Learning Objective: 10-07
Difficulty: Easy
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Understand
10-4d
Learning Objective: 10-07
Difficulty: Hard
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Understand
10-4e
Learning Objectives: 10-01, 10-07
Difficulty: Medium
AACSB: Communication
Blooms: Evaluate
Follow-Up Activity: Students can use the information provided in the case (and their imaginations) to
draft the needs and benefits parts of the proposal in clear and concise language.
Slides 10-44, 10-45, 10-46, 10-47
Here is a sample solicited proposal. As the slide notes say, you might point out that the writer of this
proposal chose economy (saving money) as the primary appeal. Other writers might have chosen having
a more harmonious workplace or some other goal as the primary reader benefit. It’s up to the writer to
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Chapter 10: Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
choose the appeal that will enable him/her to create the best argument—and then to follow through with
the details that will support that argument.
Slides 10-48, 10-49
These slides show the more indirect approach taken by an unsolicited proposal. After analyzing how the
writer grabs and maintains the readers’ interest in the introduction, see if students can anticipate a logical
structure for the rest of this proposal. Slide 10-49 provides one logical plan.
Ask students what this writer has done well in the opening.
Slide 10-50
Whatever you’re writing—whether a proposal, request, sales message, content-marketing post, tweet, or