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Chapter 7
Writing Persuasive Messages and Proposals
Problem-Solving Cases
Persuasive Requests
1. As a student employee in your school’s human resources department, you’ve
attracted positive attention for the ways you’ve improved the writing on the
department’s website. As a result, the assistant director has asked you on several
occasions to critique other written material, such as news releases and university
announcements from this office. That business communication course you took
last semester must have really paid off!
Today your boss drops by your desk with a printout of an email that he’s
frowning over. “We’re not getting the participation we want in our yearly Take
Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” he complains. Handing you the email, he
says, “Here’s what we sent out this year. I think this invitation may be part of the
problem.” You read what it says:
Subject: Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day—April 23
In accordance with the national “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work
Day,” university faculty and staff are invited to bring their children who
are between 8–18 to work with them on April 23. This day will expose
children to activities that occur on a typical day at Heartland University. It
will include departmental tours, financial awareness workshops, Public
Safety fingerprinting and mug shots, visiting a residence hall, athlete
autographs, recreation center activities, and dining discounts. Faculty and
staff who would like to participate should reply to Amber Bradley at the
email address above or call 572-3384 by April 21. Please include the
following information:
Your name, department, and phone number
Number of children
Age of each child
To learn more about the national program, please visit
www.daughtersandsonstowork.org. If you would like to provide a
different learning activity for the children, please contact me
immediately.
Amber Bradley
Human Resources
572-3382
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You agree that the invitation is not very appealing, nor does it answer some of the
readers’ likely questions. Using your best problem-solving strategies for
persuasive requests, rewrite it for your boss. (Your instructor may substitute a
different campus event.)
2. As an entry-level employee for a business research firm, RetailData.com, you’ve
been assigned the task of recruiting survey participants for a report on best
practices in sales-associate management. The survey will gather information
about the companies’ key performance indicators (KPIs)—that is, such
quantitative data as sales per labor hour, downtime per associate, wages/sales
ratio, and units sold per transaction—as well as information on such additional
topics as hiring and training practices, turnover management, performance
incentives, and the use of labor management software. In short, your company
hopes to create a report that companies can use in order to “benchmark” their
retail management practices against those of others in their industry. The report
will be sold, along with many other industry reports, on RetailData.com.
Write a persuasive email that will get store managers and executives to
participate in your survey. Your email will contain a link to the Web-based
survey, so the message you are writing will not need to discuss the contents of the
survey in great detail. Instead, use the email to get readers to appreciate the
importance of the information they will be helping to generate. You can offer
them a free copy of the resulting report, and five of the participants will be
selected at random to receive one free additional report on a different business
topic. The individual responses will be shared with no one, and the data will be
presented in aggregated form so that no particular companies will be identified in
the report. The survey will run from May 6 to May 24, 2014. The report will be
finished by June 30, 2014. Add any additional material that you believe is
warranted. Remember: The more successful your invitation, the better the report
(and the better you and your company will look).
3. Assume that your business communication instructor is requiring you to
“shadow” a professional in your field for half a day so that you can use your
observations as the basis of a short report. Find someone in your field whose job
you want to learn more about and write him or her a persuasive email requesting
that you be allowed to tag along for a morning or afternoon. Do not choose
someone you know. Think carefully about the reader’s possible objections and
include the information that will make your request successful.
4. As a respected businessperson in your neighborhood, you’ve been elected to its
community council, the group that officially represents the neighborhood to the
city council. Like other community councils, yours promotes the economic
viability of the community and its quality of life in such ways as organizing
community events, deterring crime, blocking any undesirable development
projects, and raising funds to enhance the neighborhood.
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At last night’s council meeting you volunteered to use your persuasive
writing skills to get more residents to use their recycling bins. Currently, only
about 80 percent of the community recycles (the council got this figure from the
city, which, thanks to microchips in each city-provided bin and cart, can keep
track of the number of households that recycle in each neighborhood). The
community council wants to increase that percentage, not only to help the
environment and the city (which makes money by selling the recyclables it
collects) but also to benefit the community; for a limited time, the council will
receive $100 from the city for every 10 households it adds to their recycling total.
As you think about how to persuade more of your neighbors to recycle, you
consider the various reasons why they may not be recycling. Maybe there’s a way
the council can help remove those stumbling blocks.
But there’s more: The council also wants residents to sign up for the
RecycleBank Rewards Program, which rewards individuals based on how many
pounds of recyclables they produce for each pickup period. When people register
for the program at www.RecycleBank.com, the city will weigh how much those
households are recycling and then submit that information to RecycleBank, which
will award each household the appropriate reward points. The points are good for
discounts at many local stores and restaurants and at such national chains as
Dick’s Sporting Goods, CVS Pharmacy, and Bed Bath & Beyond. To get the
discounts, members go to RecycleBank.com and either print the coupons they
want or use the electronic versions when making online purchases. RecycleBank
has been proven to dramatically increase the amount of recycling that people do,
which helps keep garbage out of expensive landfills.
After creating a detailed profile of your neighborhood (real or imagined),
prepare the message or messages that will help the council achieve its recycling
goals.
5. As an employee of the _______ Company (you decide what kind), you’re in
charge of this year’s fundraising for the United Performing Arts Fund (UPAF) of
southeast Wisconsin (or for the Fine Arts Fund of Cincinnati, or for a comparable
fund in another city or region). Your company is a proud contributor to this
organization’s yearly campaign, and you want to do your best to help the
company achieve its goal of $ ____ (you decide how much) for this year.
Employees will make their contributions via the fund’s website. They
should log in using their company email address and use the password that has
been assigned to their company (you can decide what it is). This way, the
company’s total contribution can be tracked. Depending on the actual
organization you choose for this assignment, there may be different payment
options available, including automatic payroll deduction. Donors will not only be
eligible for the perks that the fund gives for each donation level; they will also be
entered into a company-sponsored drawing for prizes (you decide what would be
realistic and appealing). But of course it’s the intrinsic benefits that you’ll use for
your main persuasive effort.
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6. You work as a marketing co-op student in the office of Community Relations and
Marketing at your school. This office promotes and oversees all university-wide
charitable events. One such event is the yearly book drive on behalf of the city’s
public schools (from kindergarten/elementary schools through high schools).Your
job is to write a persuasive message to send to all students, faculty, and staff
soliciting their contributions.
You’ll need to tell them when, where, and how to donate their books.
You’ll also need to tell them what kinds of books you want and what kind of
shape these books need to be in (you’re willing to take used books if they’re in
good condition; those that aren’t good enough will be taken to a recycling center).
Think about your readers’ likely questions and about the kinds of details that
might prompt them to go to the trouble to donate. Once you’ve worked out the
logistics and your persuasive strategy, write the message.
7. You work for the state of North Dakota as the director of the Job Service Office in
your town. You help the unemployed search for work, take required employment
exams or software competency tests, write résumés and application letters, fill out
applications, prepare for interviews, and practice interview skills. You’ve read
about similar agencies in other states where local offices have a business advisory
board made up of business people in the community. You think this is just what
you need—an advisory board that informs you of trends in various industries,
gives advice on skills employers are looking for in their employees, and provides
general input regarding jobs in your community.
You decide that you are going to create such a board. You envision that
the Business Advisory Board will meet formally twice a year. Two or three times
a year, you may survey them to learn about employment trends in your
community to gather other employment information. You also would like board
members to be available informally to provide input regarding the services you
offer and how you might improve your work. You’re guessing that being a board
member would require 10–15 hours per year, and you’d like for each member to
agree to a two-year term.
Your first step in recruiting members is to think about the types of
businesses in your community: manufacturing, industry, technology, law,
medicine, finance, retail, food service, and hospitality. You’ll also need to think
about why these businesses might benefit from having a member of their staff on
your Business Advisory Board.
Prepare a letter of invitation to send to the human resources directors at
these businesses. Persuade them to recruit a representative from their company to
serve on your Business Advisory Board.
8. You work at the company headquarters for Wholesome Foods, a grocery-store
chain with over 50 stores located throughout the United States. One of your jobs
is to recruit customers for your Email Advisory Panel. Customers who join this
panel receive approximately eight surveys a year on such topics as product
selection, customer service, and the general shopping experience. Essentially, the
panel is a group of loyal Wholesome Foods customers who make it easy for you
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to get feedback that helps your stores remain competitive. For each survey they
complete, the panel members are automatically entered into a drawing for $1,000.
They do need to complete every survey in order to continue to be panel members.
Your first step in recruiting members is to include on customers’ receipts
an invitation for them to visit the company website, take a survey, and have their
names entered into a drawing for $1,000. Anyone who takes this first step then
receives an email inviting him or her to join the panel.
Write the email invitation, persuading those who have already shown
interest in the store to join the panel and become regular survey respondents.
9. The nonprofit organization you direct coordinates an annual health and wellness
fair for residents of your city. Each year, professionals from the community (e.g.,
physicians, dentists, cosmetologists, mechanics, lawyers, and social workers)
volunteer their time, services, and supplies to help the underserved in your
community. For example, dentists offer free cleanings. Physicians and nurses
offer blood pressure, immunization, and diabetes screenings and refer patients to
the town’s free clinic as needed. A social worker might provide resources to
someone in danger of losing his or her home. Someone who cannot afford car
repairs can get them at your fair and then be able to get to his or her job. The fair
provides much needed services for around 400 people each year. It’s really
heartwarming to see a community come together in this way.
As your instructor directs, write to one professional audience (e.g., a
physician, a mechanic) and persuade him or her to volunteer for this year’s fair.
10. You are an intern in the human resources department at a financial services firm.
Your boss has instructed you to send an announcement to all staff letting them
know that the staff photo will be at 5 p.m. next Wednesday after you’ve closed for
the day. The office takes a staff photo once a year. The pictures are used in
promotional material (e.g., brochures, the company webpage, Facebook).
Unfortunately, in recent years fewer people have shown up for the picture.
Last year only a quarter of the firm’s 100 employees attended. Excuses included
“I’m too busy,” “What’s in it for me?,” “have to pick my kids up from dance
lessons,” “I have to go to the gym,” “I only work until 3:00, and I’m not staying
or coming back,” and “No way. Make me.” Your boss is counting on you to write
a persuasive announcement to the employees requesting that they take the time to
show up for the photo; she hopes that everyone will be there. They don’t have to
do anything special. All they have to do is take five minutes to be part of the
picture. As you write, think about why taking such a photo might be important to
the firm and to its clients.
11. Your campus organization (you choose the organization) participates in several
community service projects each year. This year, the group has chosen to support
the Global Soap Project as one of its service activities. Your members will collect
used soap from local hotels to donate to the Project, which turns the leftover soap
into new bars of soap that are distributed to the underprivileged around the world.
Write a letter to local hotel owners to solicit their help in collecting used bar soap.
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Be sure to include details about the project and who will benefit (check out
www.globalsoap.org for details). Of course, you’ll also include information about
the organization you represent.
12. You are a student assistant at your university’s business college. You have
numerous responsibilities, including updating your college’s Facebook page.
Recently, the dean announced the creation of a new student committee that will
provide suggestions on how to enhance the facilities, increase participation in
college events, and improve morale around the college. In fact, you have heard a
lot of grumbling from students about many things related to the college, and you
are sure that once this committee is formed, there will be no shortage of ideas
from students on how to improve the college!
The dean asks you to create a Facebook post describing the new
committee and soliciting student volunteers. The committee will have 5–7
members and will meet every other Friday at noon. Write a Facebook post of no
more than 150 words persuading students to join the new committee.
13. You were afraid of this: Your health insurance company has refused to cover the
visit you made to a hospital emergency room two weeks ago. You are covered
under the company’s HMO plan, meaning that, except in emergencies, your
healthcare is covered only if you receive it from an approved provider. While the
hospital you went to does accept your insurance, the insurance company is
claiming that your situation was not an emergency and that you should have gone
to one of their doctors’ offices instead—which would have been much less
expensive. You call the insurance company to explain the facts, and the
representative advises you to state your case in a letter to the company’s claims
department. She says to be sure to include your policy number and the number of
the claim. She also advises that you request coverage for both the hospital fee and
the emergency-room doctor’s fee, since these are two different expenses.
Write the letter that will persuade the company to cover the fees of almost
$900. You’ll explain that around 8 p.m. of the day you went to the hospital, you
had come down with a terrible stomach virus—one that had been going around
and had even caused some schools to be closed (it was in the local news). The
nausea and diarrhea had been so extreme that you began to get severely
dehydrated. At almost midnight, you decided you’d better get to the hospital, so
you got your housemate to drive you there. The desk people took one look at you
and, after you threw up in the bucket you’d brought with you, had a nurse take
you to the treatment area. There you got an anti-nausea injection and two liters of
fluid. The doctor told you that he’d treated several cases like yours and that you
were right to come in. You were released at about 6 a.m., still feeling terrible but
out of danger. You also had a prescription for anti-nausea medicine that would see
you through the rest of the illness. In light of the circumstances, you don’t see
what other course you could have taken. Get the insurance company to see it your
way.
14. Your school has a Center for Community Engagement that recruits organizations
who have service opportunities for students and recruits students to volunteer at
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those places. Until now, the participating organizations, along with their Web
addresses (if they have websites), have simply been listed on a page on the
center’s website. But your supervisor at the center has something more
persuasive, attractive, and uniform in mind: He wants to replace the list of
organizations with an Online Volunteer Directory that will provide links to Webbased profiles of the organizations. He asks you, his trusty student assistant, to
prepare the directory.
Each profile should include the name of and contact information for the
organization, its purpose/mission/key activities, an appealing photo or two, and
any additional information that students would need in order to understand what
the organization does and why they should volunteer for it. Prepare the first entry
for the online directory to show to your boss. If he likes it, you’ll use it as a model
for all the other profiles in the directory. So find a local organization that uses
student volunteers on a regular basis, gather all the information you can about the
purpose and activities of the organization (you may need to speak with someone
at the organization), figure out why students should volunteer (what exactly are
the volunteer opportunities, and what are the benefits of volunteering?), and
prepare a nicely formatted, nicely written profile of the organization that will
persuade students to volunteer.
Keep in mind that you’re writing this message as something of a
spokesperson for the organization and also that your entry will appear on the
website of a university office. So avoid attention-getters like “Do you like free
beer?” Some levity may be appropriate, but your entry should still be professional
in its contents and appearance.
15. You were recently hired in the training and development department for an
accounting firm with offices throughout the country. As in all professions,
accountants must communicate clearly, concisely, and correctly with their
audiences. Recently, though, the manager for your local office has been receiving
complaints about emails your accountants and other staff are sending. Emails
appear to be written quickly and are often incomplete, making a number of
exchanges necessary for the audience to understand the message. In addition, they
appear poorly edited. One client received an email where the accountant typed
“principle” rather than “principal.” All staff in your office have been made aware
of the issue, but no one seems inclined to do anything about it. Many cite a lack of
time as a reason for not writing well, but because you know these people to be
extremely professional, you also wonder if individuals think they communicate
better than they do or do not know how to write any better than they already are.
The complaints are still coming.
Your boss suggested you develop some training opportunities to
encourage good business writing. You developed a series of four workshops on
business writing for employees at your local office, and now you need to sell the
employees on the need to attend them. Create a flyer promoting the series. Think
about the times and days you’ll offer the workshops and the topics you’ll cover.
While the flyer is certainly informative, remember that these are very busy people
who might not think they need to attend. You need to persuade them to attend
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using positive and encouraging language in your flyer and focusing on reader
benefits.
Sales
16. As a member of the management team of the Summerdale Swim and Tennis
Club, you’ve just attended a strategizing session in which the team generated
ideas for increasing memberships. Your boss presented data about current
memberships broken down by demographic categories. One group that stood out
for its low number of memberships was older adults. “We’re doing well attracting
young adults with kids,” your boss says, “but we’re not attracting enough senior
citizens. In fact, our data show that many members let their memberships lapse
once their kids reach their teenage years.” The team decides that one strategy to
remedy this problem will be to send a letter to those aged 50 and over who have
let their club membership lapse. You’ve been assigned the task of creating this
mailing.
Studying the websites of several swim and tennis clubs and using realistic
facts as well as your imagination, write the letter that will persuade these former
members to rejoin. Consider carefully how to turn features of the club into
benefits for your readers. (Your instructor may require you to create certain
additional pieces for this mailing, or may change the organization.) Alternative
assignment: Write the letter for prospects aged 50 and over who have never been
members of the club. Assume that you’re using a list of AARP (American
Association of Retired Persons) members in your area to identify these prospects.
17. You’re the secretary of a service organization on campus. To raise money for
your activities, your members put together and sell exam-week care packages for
parents to buy for their kids at the end of the term. When exams begin, your
organization delivers the packages. It’s time to write this year’s sales letter for
these packages. Inventing reasonable details about the organization and the
packages, considering what would appeal to the parents, and anticipating the
information you will need from them, write the letter (and order form) that will
get them to purchase a care package. The student needs to live in a residence hall
in order to be eligible.
18. You are the director of social media and online marketing for Fit-ology, a
company that designs online fitness and nutrition plans for customers. As part of
customers’ online fitness programs, you encourage (but don’t require) them to
purchase your nutritional shakes. With 210 calories, 2 grams of fat, 21 grams of
carbs, 29 grams of protein, and 25 flavors, they are a great meal substitute or postworkout snack. The problem is that sales of the shakes have declined each month
for the last six months. In truth, you haven’t really promoted them because you
have been rolling out new fitness plans and redeveloping your interactive website.
To encourage Fit-ology customers to purchase the shakes, you’ll email
them an offer of 20 percent off their next shake order with a minimum purchase
of a 30-serving supply (current price: $120 or $4/shake; you do the math to figure
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out the sale price) and throw in four free shake packets. To get the discount,
they’ll need to use the promotional code Fit-Shake when they submit their online
order. Tell them where/how they can make their purchase, reacquaint them with
the shake, and give them a reason to act now. (You can assume that legal
language about not combining this offer with any other offer, not using the offer
to pay for taxes and processing/shipping charges, and a few other caveats will be
typed in small print at the bottom of the letter. You can also assume a disclaimer
regarding food allergies and weight-loss guarantees.)
19. Like other large restaurant chains, Tasty Treats has a customer rewards club.
Customers who join the Tasty Treats Tasters’ Club can take advantage of the
company’s deal of the day just by signing up on the company’s website and
having a coupon sent to their email inbox. Customers can print the coupon or just
present the coupon and bar code on their phone when they pay for their food. In
addition, club members receive special coupons to use at any time, and twice a
year they are eligible for drawings for large prizes (e.g., trips, electronics).
Throughout the year, club members are also eligible for random prize drawings
for free meals or company merchandise.
Lately, some of the chain’s franchisees have been grumbling that they are
not getting enough business through this program. So your boss, marketing
director of Tasty Treats Corporation, directs you to write two messages—one for
the company website and one for Facebook—persuading readers to go to your
website and become members of the Tasty Treats Tasters’ Club. To encourage
them to sign up, you may want to provide an incentive.
Carefully consider the persuasive, logistical, and visual elements to
include and then write the message.
20. Choose a type of catalog- and online-based company that sells products you’re
familiar with—for example, home furnishings, medical/herbal products, auto
parts/accessories—and write a sales letter to past customers who haven’t bought
from you in a while. You’ll offer them 20 percent off their next order, with no
minimum purchase required. (To get the discount, they’ll need to use the
promotional code 16652A.) Tell them where/how they can make their purchase,
reacquaint them with your appealing products, and give them a reason to act now.
(You can assume that legal language about not combining this offer with any
other offer, not using the offer to pay for taxes and processing/shipping charges,
and a few other caveats will be typed in small print at the bottom of the letter.)
21. You work in the Employee Relations Department at Mayfaire Clinic. Two years
ago, the clinic was dealing with such a high volume of patient communication that
it couldn’t keep up. Some of the communication was, of course, essential (e.g., a
patient talking to a nurse about symptoms), but other communication (e.g.,
reordering contact lenses for patients, sending bills in the mail and processing
payments, or checking on a patient’s test results) was causing a backlog and
taking employees’ time away from patients who needed them. The clinic’s
solution was to develop MyMayfaire.com, a website where patients could order
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contacts, pay bills, check test results, schedule appointments, update their contact
information, update insurance information, and receive their health profiles from
their annual exams. It seemed like an ideal solution except for one thing—few
people signed up for it.
You think the patient response is slow for a few reasons: People are wary
of having their health information available online, they think the process for
signing up will take too much time, or they may have missed previous letters
informing them of the MyMayfaire.com option. You’ve looked at previous
mailings sent to patients and determined that they were not very persuasive (you
didn’t write them). You decide you will create a well-written persuasive message
to get people to sign up. Write a persuasive letter to patients, selling them on the
idea of using MyMayfaire.com.
22. Finding housing in your university town is complicated. There are so many
landlords and rental opportunities that it’s hard for students to know their best
options. In addition, many students have never signed a lease or may not know
their rights as tenants.
You and three other students decide to start a business. You are going to
create an ad-supported online service listing the rental options and providing
advice on signing leases, security deposits, and other issues tenants may face. Not
only will you be listing properties, but you’ll also let students rate properties and
give feedback on landlords, rental agencies, and the rental units themselves.
You’ll sell ads for $25 per month and automatically bill the advertiser’s account
unless he or she cancels the ad.
You will target advertisers from businesses throughout your community
that serve the student population, but you also think that landlords and rental
agencies might benefit from buying ad space. Even though you know some
landlords and properties are likely to get poor ratings (student rentals are
notorious for their poor condition), you still want to write them a message that
will try to persuade them to purchase ad space on your site. But in planning your
message to this audience, you will need to think carefully about why landlords
and rental agencies would still want to advertise on your site if your readers might
give them bad ratings.
23. Your upscale clothing store—part of a national chain— recently moved from a
location downtown to one in an affluent suburb north of town. You’d like for
those customers who patronized your store in its previous location to continue to
shop with you. Write all the local customers for whom you have mailing
addresses and invite them to visit you at your new location. You can offer them a
limited-time-only coupon to sweeten the invitation—but your message should
also remind them of why they like to shop at your store. Plus, your new location
has some benefits: The store is bigger, and it’s in a nicer area with other appealing
businesses around. Think of the verbal and visual contents that will entice your
customers to continue to shop with you and prepare this persuasive mailing.
(Your instructor may allow you to choose a different kind of store.)
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24. You’re part of the management team of a business that manufactures and sells
ceiling fans. Even though your operation is small, your fans are popular, and you
sell them online to customers across the United States. Unfortunately, the tight
economy has taken its toll on your business; sales are down considerably, even
though it’s summer. In response, the management team has decided that they will
purchase a promising email distribution list and send an email sales message to all
those on the list.
You’ve been put in charge of drafting a sample message, which the team
will discuss at its next meeting. Create an email message to sell your company’s
fans. What is distinctive about your products? Why should readers spend their
limited discretionary money on a ceiling fan? Study the websites of various fan
sellers to generate the details that will make your message persuasive. Should you
use any visuals in your message? Links to additional information? Carefully think
through the whole selling effort. You think you’ll design the message in Word
and save it as a PDF to show how the email will actually look once your IT
person prepares it for delivery. (Your instructor may allow you to use a different
product for this case.)
25. You’re part of the marketing communications team for US Airways, a major
airline that flies to airports all over the world. Periodically, you send the members
of your frequent-flyers program “upselling” emails that are intended to get these
people to enroll or re-enroll in your more exclusive, costly programs. You’ve
been assigned the task of designing the latest message intended to promote the
Airways Crowne Club, a for-fee service (involving both an initial fee and a
monthly fee) whose subscribers are allowed access to a comfortable, quiet lounge
at over 50 airports around the world. This sales campaign will offer an extra
month at no charge to those who purchase or renew a one-year Crowne Club
membership within a certain period and use the designated promo code. In
addition, 10 percent of their purchase will be donated to a worthy foundation.
Study the websites of various airlines and various foundations to generate
the contents for your message. Think carefully about what information to include
in the message and what links to provide. (At your instructor’s discretion, you
may plan an upselling sales message for a different company’s current
customers.)
Proposals
26. Find the call for nominations for a campus-wide faculty award at your school and,
thinking of it as a type of RFP, respond with your “proposal”: a letter persuading
the selection committee to choose your nominee as the winner. Be careful to study
the criteria for the award and to provide convincing evidence that your nominee
meets these criteria. In addition to collecting your memories of the nominee, be
sure to learn all you can about his or her accomplishments from the school or
faculty member’s own website or from other Internet resources.
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27. You are a store manager at a discount clothing retailer in the southern U.S. The
clothing retailer, Stacey’s, has a corporate office in each state where there are
satellite retail locations: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Each month store managers are required to
attend a store managers’ meeting at the Stacey’s corporate offices in their state.
The managers drive an average of 100 miles to reach the monthly store meetings;
some drive as many as 175 miles.
The meetings are important to Stacey’s because they allow managers from
different stores to interact, share ideas, and build community. Additionally, the
monthly meetings allow the corporate team to show store managers new products
and highlight features of the inventory that will be arriving in the next month.
Unfortunately, you’ve noticed that while you are away at the managers’ meetings,
sales in your store are down an average of 10 percent each day of your absence.
You feel that traveling to the meetings not only cuts into your own productivity
but also costs the company a significant amount of money.
Since you recognize the importance of meeting with other managers and
having a good connection to corporate, you would like the company to implement
a monthly managers’ video Web conference and biannual meetings at each state’s
headquarters in place of the monthly face-to-face meetings. You decide to
research three viable options for video Web conferencing and submit a proposal
for your idea to your boss in Birmingham, AL.
28. As the lead communications specialist at Littleton Advertising and Creative
Services, you and your team are tired of the amount of editing you need to do
whenever someone submits material to your department for publication in the
company newsletter, press releases, annual report, and website. You’re pretty sure
that the routine correspondence that doesn’t come through your department for
editing could use some help as well. There is no consistency in formatting,
punctuation, and mechanics. You’ve seen as many variations in capitalization,
number use, and abbreviations as there are people in the company. And it’s not
only the writing that is not consistent. People use several variations of the
company’s logo in their work.
To employees outside your department, these issues may seem trivial, but
you recognize the importance of writing and formatting standards to
communicating and promoting your company’s brand. This means that your
clients should have a reasonable expectation that every document they receive
from your company, from routine correspondence to material on the website, will
look and sound as though it came from the same company. You know that it’s
your and your staff’s job to edit written materials before publishing them, but you
also think that the employees who write them could be more consistent. After all,
how hard is it for someone to use a round bullet instead of a square bullet?
Furthermore, it is reasonable to expect that everyone in your department have
some consistency in their initial drafts so that your final editing and revising are
not so time consuming. Plus, you worry that the documents you don’t see (e.g.,
letters, emails) may not be written or edited as well as they could be and want
employees to be empowered to write well independently of your editing.
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You think an online corporate style guide housed on Littleton’s intranet is
your answer and decide to propose to your CEO that Littleton have one. You and
your team will develop and implement it. Because this is summer, it’s your slow
time anyway, so you have the time to create it. In your proposal, make the case
for creating and using a style guide, include a timeline for developing it, and
propose a plan for implementing the style guide at your company. An Internet
search for corporate style guides will help you gather information for your
proposal.
29. Due to staffing changes, the morale at your company has dropped to an all-time
low. Employees are not excited about going to work, and it’s beginning to show
in productivity rates: As a whole, sales are down 9 percent from last quarter.
You serve on the company’s Quality Circle, which recently met to
brainstorm ideas for improving morale. The group agreed that everyone needs a
little more fun. Toward that end, they decided that the company should sponsor a
team-building activity each quarter for the next three quarters. Taking your
suggestion, they also decided that the first such activity should be a poker
tournament, to be hosted onsite after hours for employees and their significant
others.
You were chosen to draft a proposal that would sell the team-building
idea, and the idea of a poker tournament in particular, to your boss/company
owner. You have a lot of logistics to work out. You’ll first need to see what kinds
of rules govern gambling in your state; those will determine what form the
“betting” will take. In light of the company’s financial situation, you’ll also figure
out how to keep the costs under control. The Quality Circle proposed soliciting
donations from local businesses (gift cards, coupons, and products) to use as
prizes, with the company buying a top prize to go to the overall winner of the
evening. Do the additional research you need to do to plan the event.
You’ll also want to find creditable sources about the benefits of teambuilding activities in general. When you’ve got all the information you need, write
up your ideas in a well-written, persuasive proposal that the Quality Circle—and
your boss—will like. (With your instructor’s permission, choose a different kind
of teambuilding event.)
30. You work as an instructional designer at Britten Dental, a large dental franchise
with 30 locations and over 500 full- and part-time employees in five states. Your
job is to develop and create online learning, training, and continuing education
opportunities for Britten’s employees.
You love almost everything about your job—your fun co- workers, the
interesting work, using your creative and technical abilities . . . everything! What
you do not love, though, is that because of your highly social office and the
number of meetings you attend to work with content experts in developing
training materials, it’s sometimes difficult to get your work done. Some days all
you need is to carve out some quiet time and space to work, but that is not likely
to happen in your busy office. Someone always needs you, and it’s convenient for
them to stop by your desk for help or for a quick chat. It’s also hard to be working
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intently on a project and then leave at your most inspired moment to attend a
meeting.
Upon visiting the Instructional Design Professionals group on LinkedIn,
you notice how many instructional designers work full or part time from home;
you think this might just be what you need. You could structure your work week
to be at the office two days a week for meetings and other face-to-face contact
and then spend three days a week working from home to do your instructional
design work. Of course, you would be available by phone or email at home, but
you would have more control over interruptions with phone and email than you
would with interruptions at the office.
Before you take your idea to your supervisor, you prepare a proposal. To
write the proposal, you research the advantages and disadvantages of working
from home; figure out the equipment you would need; estimate the cost of setting
up a work office in your home and convince Britten to pay for it; and determine
any other costs your employer might incur. Address why this is a good idea not
just for you but for Britten Dental as well. Be sure your proposal adequately
addresses any resistance your supervisor might have.
31. You were recently hired to be the assistant manager for True Springs Bakery, a
provider of 100 percent organic baked goods. You are in charge of making the
schedule, ordering supplies, and keeping the shop in good running order when the
manager is not there. Business is doing very well, but you have noticed that some
of the bakery’s practices are a little “old fashioned.” For example, the cash
register is one of the few that you have seen that is not electronic, and many
customers have complained that you do not accept credit cards.
You have mentioned your concerns to the manager, but she quickly
dismisses the idea of upgrading the technology because she believes it would be
too expensive. However, you were recently looking through a consumer
technology magazine and saw an advertisement for a product called “Square”
(www.squareup.com). Square allows you to accept credit cards by attaching a
small swipe device to your smartphone. The device is affordable, and you can
accept credit cards wherever you take your smartphone. Most of the bakery’s
employees own smart phones and are technologically savvy. This sounds like an
excellent opportunity to upgrade the technology at the bakery without making a
major financial investment.
Write a proposal to your manager outlining why you think investing in 5–
6 Square devices would be beneficial for the bakery. Use information from the
website to strengthen your proposal.
32. You were recently hired as assistant manager at one of the four branch offices of a
regional, privately owned insurance company. As you get to know the business’s
operations, you realize that the company has no sexual harassment policy. You
mention this fact to your boss, the branch manager, and she agrees that this is a
problem. The company was an all-male operation (except for secretaries) for
many years, but several female agents—and even one female manager, your
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boss—have been hired over the last 10 years or so, and the company is now about
12 percent female. An official sexual harassment policy is overdue.
“Our founder, Sam Jenkins, is a pretty old-fashioned businessman,
though,” she says. “He likes to think that we’re one big happy family, and he may
worry that adopting a sexual harassment policy will offend some of the employees
and hint that there are problems where there are none.” Together, she and you
decide to write a carefully prepared proposal to Jenkins and his HR director that
will convince them to adopt a sexual harassment policy. You’ll do sufficient
research on the topic to be able to provide convincing reasons for this move.
You’ll also prepare the policy that you want the company to adopt and offer
suggestions for its implementation.
33. As director of corporate communications and public relations for C. J. Erlanger, a
popular plumbing and heating company in a large metropolitan area, you think the
time has come to create a more formal, robust corporate philanthropy program.
Your company is a good community citizen; it already gives time, money, and
supplies on a random basis to charities that request help. But that’s the problem:
These donations are random, and it’s hard to use random acts of kindness as a
basis for compelling publicity for your company.
You decide to write a proposal in which you (1) convince the owners of
the benefits of a better organized corporate philanthropy program and (2) propose
the type of program that you think the company should create Research the
benefits of corporate philanthropy programs, think carefully about the logistics of
your plan, and do any additional planning that will enable you to decide exactly
what you want to propose and why. Then write the proposal. Send it as an email
attachment to VP Jean Carpenter, who is interested in your idea and has agreed to
share it with the other four company executives. Invent any additional details that
will not significantly alter the challenge before you. Be sure your readers can see
the connections between what you are proposing and its potential company
benefits.
34. You have just returned from a national sales professionals conference, where you
learned that many companies are using Facebook in innovative ways to attract
readers and generate fans. In addition to having appealing profiles and ads, the
most popular sites host chats (interactive commenting that takes place within a
designated time period), conduct polls, hold events, and provide other extras that
engage readers and get them to spread the good word about the site to their
friends.
In contrast, your company, an up-and-coming seller of athletic wear,
currently has only a simple Facebook profile page that it updates now and then
with news of special offers. You described to the sales VP, your boss, what you
learned at the conference, and he’s definitely interested. Research the possibilities
that make sense for your company and write a proposal to your boss in which you
recommend additional ways to leverage your company’s Facebook page. Your
boss want the full argument spelled out so that he’ll clearly understand what
you’re proposing, the reasons why, and the effort it will take to implement and
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maintain your proposed strategies. He also wants to be able to explain your ideas
to the other executives and sales staff as needed.
35. You work for the _____ company (you decide what kind) as a (you decide what
position). You want to take an online course on ______ (you decide what topic)
and have the company cover the cost. You’ve run the idea past your supervisor,
who is basically supportive but will need to get the OK from his/her boss. For this
you’ll need to make your case persuasively and in writing.
Write an email proposal to your supervisor requesting that the company
cover the cost of the course. Convince the decision maker that the course is worth
the money. Be sure to tie it to your current or likely future job responsibilities and
explain how the company will benefit. Remember to think of the major objections
your readers might have and be sure to account for these as you build your
argument. To ensure that your proposal has a sufficient level of detail, you may
want to do some research on a few colleges’ online course offerings for relevant
classes.
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