Which one is it?
Did you know that some studies suggest our brains receive and process up to 11 million pieces of information per second?
It comes from tons of different places, including our senses, memories, and thoughts. Luckily, our brains evolved to filter and prioritize this information, allowing us to focus on what is most important or relevant at any moment.
That's how we've continued the human race for all these millennia.
But it also means that we pay LESS attention when something is complicated or requires more effort to process.
And that ^ is one of the most common problems I see when conducting proposal audits.
For example, I might read through a proposal and see three or four different ways of writing square footage – ft² or sq. ft. or sqft or SF. Sometimes, the word owner is capitalized, and a few paragraphs later, it's not.
Or, you might have the project manager referred to on a first-name basis in one place; later in the proposal, they are referred to as Ms. Last-name. It's like reintroducing a whole new person.
And while that might not seem like a big deal, it trips up our brains and slows down the reading process. You have a small window of time to get your proposal read, and if the reader's brain keeps stuttering over your discrepancies, the client is more likely to set your proposal aside and move on.
It's simple: if you confuse, you lose.
Luckily, there is a simple fix for this: develop a written style guide.
A written style guide eliminates mistakes, brings uniformity to the writing (mainly when several different people write proposals), and makes it easier for your audience to read.
If you don't yet have a written style guide for your company, I'd love to give you a copy of mine to use as a starting point.
Of course, you'll want to tweak it to suit your needs, but it does have commonly used words in our industry, formatting standards (for terms like square foot, dates, and numbers), and how to correctly write about LEED® standards.
Start using the guide across all your written copy – from social media to internal emails to proposals. Publish your written standards company-wide and train all team members to use it.
Proposals and marketing copy that are easy to read and understand win more work.
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