Drafting a Business Proposal for Your Workplace
Points t0 Submitting an external tool Available after Aug 31 at 12am
Evaluate
Please read the following to prepare for completing the activity.
Bovée, C. L., & Thill, J. V. (2018). Business communication today (14th ed.). Pearson.
Chapter 15: Writing and Completing Reports and Proposals
Lagerwerf, L., & Bossers, E. (2002). Assessing business proposals: Genre conventions and audience response in document design. (Links to an external site.) Journal of Business Communication, 39(4), 437-460.
Films Media Group. (2007). Advanced sales techniques: Challenge no. 6: Writing a great proposal. (Links to an external site.) (1:51 minutes). This video is closed captioned.
For this assignment, you are writing an ungraded draft of a formal proposal for your workplace which will be reviewed by your instructor. You have or will very soon receive feedback on an earlier draft from your classmates. You should use that feedback as you write this draft or your final draft next week. In this ungraded assignment, you will refine your thinking in order to draft a full proposal on something realistic that you can support with credible information for a specific audience and context.
Your initial audience for this proposal is your immediate supervisor, but it’s entirely possible that your supervisor will forward the proposal up the chain of command and may also ask you to develop a presentation for the C-Suite if he or she thinks your plan is worthy of further consideration. (In fact, in Module 8 you will adapt your proposal for a persuasive presentation to the executives or to senior management).
For this rough draft, write at least the introduction; body; conclusions and recommendations; and references sections. (A full example of a report and proposal format can be found in Chapter 15 of Bovée and Thill).
Be sure to include the business situation and context – your organization and/or unit, the name and title of your audience, and the specifics of the workplace opportunity or issue. You will add the other elements in Module 7 when you revise the proposal for final submission and grading. Your rough draft should be at least 4 or 5 double-spaced pages and include a minimum of three sources to support your proposal.
While you will use secondary sources to support your proposal, also include any existing data at your workplace and explain any “next steps” for additional primary research that might be needed to support your proposal. In addition, consider how you will assess the results of your proposed action. Your proposal will identify the positive outcomes on your organization, so your manager will want to know how you plan to assess the outcomes you identify.
NOTE: Whenever appropriate, include a visual element in your proposal. You should do so if you believe your proposal would be more effective with a chart, graph, illustration, or other visual aid, given the subject matter and the needs of your audience.
Submission Instructions
Your paper should be submitted as a Word document (.doc, .docx or .rtf) file and adhere to the following guidelines:
Include a title page with your name, the paper title, and the course name.
It paper should be 4-5 pages in length (not including the title and the reference pages).
Your paper should be double-spaced, in an appropriate font, with a font size between 10 and 12 point.
The margins should not exceed 1″ on all sides.
Follow this naming convention for your file before submitting it: LastnameFirstinitialModulenumber-Assignmentnumber. For example: DoeJM6-3.
Document all sources according to APA Style. (Links to an external site.) Follow APA guidelines for formatting, (Links to an external site.) including the title and reference page.
Compose your work using a word processor (or other software as appropriate) and save it frequently to your computer. Be sure to check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors before you upload it. When you are ready to submit your work, click “Browse My Computer” and find your file. Once you have located your file, click “Open” and, if successful, the file name will appear under the Attached files heading. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Submit.”
Evaluation
This Evaluate activity is not graded, although the Proposal Assignment Grading Rubric Preview the documentwill be used to provide you with comments needed for revision.
This assignment uses TurnItIn.
References
Outcomes RubricPreview the document
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