Tips for Writing a Priest’s Sermon Proposal

Proposal writing is a lot like a sermon.

A recent sermon at a special Catholic Mass brought this message out loud and clear.

Let me give you some details of the event related to proposal writing.

This special mass celebrated the first communion for excited and proud 8-year-old boys. It was also a big deal for the excited and proud parents.

This Mass was also special because two former parishioners of the congregation had returned to help Communicants (those celebrating their First Communion) celebrate this important moment in their young Catholic lives.

The guests turned out to be brothers, both priests. The older brother had also achieved the exalted position of Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. If you watched the Tom Hanks movie, “Angels & Demons,” you may remember that the Cardinals were the elite group designated to select a new Pope.

Being a cardinal is a big deal in the Catholic Church.

Using these details as background, see if you can tell how they relate to proposal writing.

The pastor, when planning a celebration of the Mass, chose to do the following.

First, he had the older brother, not the Cardinal, attend Mass. The Cardinal sat in a chair facing the pulpit so that he was not facing the altar or facing the congregation. The Cardinal did not say a word during the entire process.

The pastor’s sermon addressed the congregation, reminding them how important it was to receive First Communion. He addressed parents with a message to encourage their children to consider religious life. The rest of the sermon rambled on to some other religious concepts that clearly bored the Cardinal and his brother.

All this, while reading its content from behind the pulpit. Okay, she at least she looked at the congregation when she finished a sentence or knew the next point he was going to make. He even looked at the communicants once or twice.

I assume you have already discovered the connection between the priest’s sermon and the writing of a proposal.

Point

First, the priest missed the point completely. Nothing he said related to, aroused interest in, or was vaguely remembered by what should have been his primary audience, the children.

Everything he read that day was meant to impress the cardinal and his brother.

The priest missed the point completely.

Many salespeople, business owners, and even some marketing gurus miss the point in their proposals when they focus on their products, services, profiles, pricing, and other company bragging points.

A successful proposal focuses on the wants, needs, desires, and expectations of customers. Proposals must clearly detail your ability to uniquely recognize, resolve, and satisfy the client’s situation.

Your content should reflect your understanding of what keeps your customers awake, what they see as solutions to their problems, and how they will feel when you exceed their expectations.

Focus

The priest might have managed to impress the Cardinal if he hadn’t lost his focus. In fact, he might have impressed the cardinal, his brother, the congregation, the proud parents and the communicants, if he had focused on what should have been his primary audience.

First Communion is the most important religious event for Catholic school-age children. This is your big day. It’s a great day for parents.

Every word the priest said should have related, focused, and engaged with these children.

Instead of reading to them from behind his position of power, he should have left the safety of his fortress and left the altar to walk among the children. She should have occupied, entertained and educated these very impressionable minds.

I should have spoken to them in their language, told them stories they could relate to, and done everything I could to make this a positive and memorable day.

Instead, he let his flock wander aimlessly through the pastures of abstract religious detail.

Your focus when creating a proposal should always be on the customer. Your focus should not be on your products, services, profiles, locations, or satisfied customers. Yes, they can be important as part of the proposal, but they should not be the focus of the proposal.

What you have done successfully for another client does not necessarily translate into something you can successfully do for this particular client. You need to focus on what you can do for this customer and how that will benefit your customer in a way that your competitors can’t.

Focus

The pastor had the perfect opportunity to score big points on many fronts that day.

He could have made quite a fuss about having the two former parishioners as guests on this special day. All he did was mention why these two strangers were present. He did not tie his visit to the importance of the day.

He could have had the cardinal deliver the sermon.

I guarantee you that the Cardinal would not have pronounced it in the congregation from the pulpit. He would guarantee you that he would have focused on the children and would have talked about their language.

And, the parish priest could have asked the Cardinal to administer Holy Communion to the communicants as a special honor. The pastor reserved this honor for himself.

These children see the pastor every Sunday.

Few Catholics know a cardinal.

What a missed opportunity to give these kids something to remember for the rest of their lives!

The parish priest administered Holy Communion first to the communicants.

He then invited the two brothers to help out when the kids were done.

When he had administered Holy Communion to the last communicant, the priest should have asked the congregation, at that point, to give the communicants and their parents a congratulatory round of applause. That didn’t happen.

So the question is, how do you approach your proposal writing tasks?

Do you see them as an opportunity to promote your products or services?

Do you see them as an opportunity to reveal all the great things you’ve done for other clients?

Or do you view proposals as a necessary evil to satisfy the requirements of an RFP?

His approach to proposal writing, more often than not, clearly illustrates who gives the final approval of the proposal.

If the owners or directors of the company approve the final draft, many times the focus turns to profiles, resumes and successfully completed projects.

If marketing has the last word, most of the time, the proposal can be filled with Standard Contamination. Repetitive contamination means that all of the content and graphics in the proposal are the same graphics and wording in your company’s brochures and website.

If sellers have final approval, the chances of the proposal approaching the content from a benefit orientation increase. A truly successful proposal becomes a reality when the salesperson’s oral presentation skills match his or her business writing skills.

Selling to a person or group in person or over the phone is very different from selling on paper.

That proposal needs to sell, answer questions, and reflect a highly professional image of your organization.

You can protect your professional image by bringing all of the groups mentioned above together to work through the proposal approval process.

This is the step that many small and medium-sized companies do not know how to appreciate.

Billion dollar and multi-billion dollar companies seeking government contracts do this all the time relying on the collective abilities of what they called the Blue Team.