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

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.

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.

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 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. 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 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 Web-based 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 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 post-workout 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 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 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.)

 

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.

 

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.
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 team-building 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 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 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 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.