Page 70 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

CHAPTER 5

Why Must I Master

Report Writing?

Our friend Jeffrey Kotz, whom you met in Chapter 3, holds a Master’s
degree in marketing communication and has considerable experience in
marketing and research analytics. He recently shared a story with us that
highlights the need to master report writing. A few years ago, Jeff created
a report for a client. The client, a national restaurant chain, sent a senior
vice president (SVP) to represent the firm’s needs to Jeff’s employer, a mid-
sized marketing research firm. The SVP asked Jeff and his colleagues to
conduct a menu evaluation study. Being a customer-centric organization,
the marketing research team conducted a large-scale study of customers,
and then developed a report that provided an objective assessment of the
restaurant’s menu.
As instructed, the team presented a series of recommendations for
improving the restaurant chain’s menu, based upon the objective assess-
ment. Although the report accomplished the goals provided to the
research team, the client ultimately trashed the report. Why? Because the
SVP failed to consider the ultimate audience for the report—the franchise
owners, who did not want an objective assessment of their restaurants’
menu. Given the franchise contract, they could do nothing with that
information. They wanted to know how they could capitalize on the cur-
rent menu to beat their competition. As Jeff put it, “We had much of the
information that the franchise owners wanted, but because we were not
told about the audience up front, we didn’t include relevant information
in the report.”
1
The moral of this story should be quite clear—when you don’t know
your audience, it is difficult to give the audience what it wants, and your
chances of success go down. Further, before writing one word of a busi-
ness report, you must consider who will be the audience for the report.