Compliance and Responsiveness
February 22, 2023
Storyboards and Mockups
February 22, 2023
Style is the sum of the choices that writers make; tone is the impact on the reader. Style choices heavily influence whether your proposals help you win competitive business.
Style and tone are often confused. Style is the cause, and tone is the effect.
Writers’ and speakers’ style choices are implicit, whether intentional or accidental, conscious or unconscious. Your style choices include the type of document or presentation planned; medium; word choice; sentence, paragraph, and document length and organization; page and document design; emphatic devices; use and type of graphics; and the environment where the presentation is made or the document read.
Tone reflects your attitude toward the customer. Tone refers to the feeling or impression that is conveyed by the speaker or writer. Tone is a product of style.
Presenters and writers make numerous style choices. Some choices apply to both presentations and documents. Some are unique, but all should convey a business-like tone. The choices listed are representative, not exhaustive.
Document and presentation styles are often categorized as formal and informal. Formal documents and presentations, such as technical reports, technical presentations, and contracts, are primarily written to inform—to objectively convey information.
Informal documents and presentations, such as email, personal letters, trip reports, and most memos, are generally written for people that the writer knows or feels comfortable with. Informal documents are often informative, friendly, subjective, casual, and personal.
The distinction between formal and informal styles is blurred in sales communications that are meant to persuade. While sales presentations need to be logical, factual, informative, and deliberate (formal characteristics), they also need to be positive, informative, non-threatening, and supportive (informal characteristics). While a seller seeks to convey an objective tone, customers rarely expect sellers to be objective.
The acceptability of text messages, tweets, and other informal social media depends upon the receiver and is rapidly evolving. One customer might find them insulting and too public while another might see them as efficient, direct, and more credible than messages via more conventional mediums.
Never excuse or confuse bad writing with style. In the end, good sales communications are clear, persuasive, informative, supportive, well-organized, and concise. Poor sales communications are vague, confusing, unconvincing, chaotic, and wordy.
Presentation style choices • Appearance • Length & timing • Organization • Room set-up • Visual aids • Voice tone & inflection • Word choice Document style choices: • Graphics • Length • Medium • Organization • Page and document design • Sentence structure • Word choice
Desirable business document tone: • Accessible • Clear • Courteous • Customer-focused • Friendly • Helpful • Honest • Informative • Personal • Persuasive • Polite • Sincere:
