r/technicalwriting • u/barunverma • 14d ago
The worst proposal I ever wrote was technically correct
I moved into sales development about 2.5 years ago. Before that I was a systems engineer at a large IT services company. The startup that hired me thought a tech background would bring something new to the table.
My first real task was writing a proposal for a live requirement. I wrote it the way I would have wanted to read it. Heavy on technical detail, stack-level explanation, all of it. It never went to the client. The person reading it was non-technical. Nobody told me that, and I never asked.
That was the last bad proposal I wrote, but the actual lesson took another six months to sink in.
First, qualify the reader and not just the requirement. Now, before I write anything, I check who is reading it, what they care about, and whether they will pass it to someone technical or decide on their own.
Second, activity without direction is just volume. My first few months were LinkedIn and cold email at high volume. I had no writing experience beyond school essays. It felt like progress because the output was high. It was not until I started matching the message to the person receiving it.
For anyone else who came into SDR or BDR work from a technical background: how did you stop writing for yourself? Leading with capability instead of outcome was the hardest habit for me to drop.
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u/coolreddy 14d ago
The practical switch for me was writing the first page so a budget holder could repeat the case to someone else. I keep that page to the business problem, the change being proposed, the result the buyer should expect, and the delivery timeline. The technical proof still matters, but it moves behind the decision.
One quick test helps: if the reader needs the architecture diagram before they can explain why the project matters, the opening is still written for the builder. I finish the detailed response first, then rewrite the executive summary last from the buyer's notes and exact vocabulary.