As a maintenance engineering manager, you may need to develop a business proposal. Here are three features that will increase its chance of success.
If you’re a maintenance engineer in a leadership position, it’s increasingly likely that you’ll have to put together a business proposal to justify major purchases or investments. This can be a major challenge.
Leading business management publication Harvard Business Review, for example, surveyed 100 managers from a range of professions including engineering and software development about their experiences of creating and promoting a business case. The findings revealed that most struggled to get buy-in – and lack of confidence in selling ideas made some reluctant to even try.
Harvard Business Review also reported studies showing that senior executives are often less receptive to ideas from other parts of their organisation not because the proposal lacks merit but because they don’t see how it will bolster business performance.
How do you buck this trend and produce a compelling proposal that secures the support you need? Start by ensuring your business case includes these three features.
A clearly defined strategy
You need to demonstrate that your proposal aligns with your organisation’s corporate strategy – and therefore it will contribute to the business’s success.
Brian de Haaff is the founder and CEO of software development firm Aha! He has drawn on his experience of pitching proposals to senior leaders to create a checklist of seven guiding principles that help others to ensure their business case is convincing.
These seven principles are:
- Define the opportunity
What is the problem you will solve?
- Assess what makes you unique
Describe how the company is well equipped to solve that problem
- Describe your approach
How will you be able to solve the problem in a new way?
- Estimate the cost
Draw on past product investments to ground your figures
- Project the return
Show the value of what you will get back
- Analyse the risks
Make sure you think them through, from every angle
- Share open questions
Feedback is important to enable you to improve your ideas
“What makes the opportunity unique and think critically about its viability”
Brian de Haaff, founder and CEO, Aha!
By going through this process, you are maximising the chances that you’ll succeed, says de Haaff. “You are advocating for something new, so you need to take the time to research what makes the opportunity unique and think critically about its viability,” he explains.
He’s confident about the results: “You may not get a blank cheque – but I bet you will be closer to getting an emphatic ‘yes.’”
Language that business leaders understand
“You’ve got to communicate why you’re doing it”
Richard Jeffers, Managing Director, RS Industria
As well as making sure that your proposal aligns with corporate strategy, think carefully about how you talk through your plan. “You have to be clear from the outset about what you want to do,” says Richard Jeffers, Managing Director for RS Industria at RS Group. “Communication skills are absolutely critical because you’ve got to communicate why you’re doing it.”
In his experience, Jeffers adds, maintenance engineers tend to approach business leaders in the wrong way. They focus, for instance, on what needs to be done rather than explaining the consequences for the business if a course of action is not pursued.
Instead of asking for more planned downtime and being told that the company cannot afford the lost production time, maintenance engineers should take the opposite approach: outline the losses associated with an unexpected breakdown and unplanned downtime. Then present your proposal as the solution. “You need to talk about risk as well as the value of what you want to do,” says Jeffers.
Remember that the key decision makers probably won’t be from a maintenance engineering background. This meaning reining in unnecessary technical information that they may not understand and adopting the language of the boardroom in its place. What does your audience need to know? What will encourage them to buy-in to your proposal?
This may not be easy. “Maintenance engineers are not always well versed in the language of business,” admits Jeffers. He’s been on a learning curve himself having gone through the business planning process at a senior level numerous times during his career.
“Turn your business plan into a conversation about risk”
Richard Jeffers, Managing Director, RS Industria
“Corporate governance is all about managing risk, and the minute you turn your business plan into a conversation about risk, then you’re voicing all the buzzwords that the corporate functions are there to manage.
“Next you talk about money, or value as it’s known in polite company. The value of mitigating risk is additional time in production, which can be translated into additional product inventory or a reduction in overtime.”
Present your proposal in terms that the C-suite understand and it makes winning their support much easier.
A persuasive story
Careful consideration of your language extends to the written proposal as well as how you present it.
Again, this can be a challenge for maintenance engineers. “Generally, engineers are not good at persuasive writing, they are good with facts and figures,” observes Penny Taylor, leader of the Writing Effective Business Proposals course at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
“You have to make the numbers tell story”
Penny Taylor, leader of the Writing Effective Business Proposals course, Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Yet delivering a business plan also means delivering a compelling and relatable story to the decision makers that you’re addressing. “I often hear engineers I am working with say, ‘I expect the numbers to speak for themselves’ and they don’t appreciate that you have to make the numbers tell story,” Taylor continues.
“Being able to write a compelling business proposal is a key skill for engineers who need to get resources to support the developments they are working on.”