Citing Sources in Business Proposals

It is essential for your integrity and the credibility of your work to credit supporting information sources. Your goals are to credit the original work’s creator and to make it possible for your audience to find the sources to learn more. Citing available secondary research also shows you are not wasting your reader’s time with the supporting claims you make in your proposals.

Business writers usually cite with hyperlinks

UConn’s business librarian notes that “there is no ‘official’ style for citing business sources.”^[1]  This lack of a defined style is even more common in documents like business proposals, where the audience is managers rather than academic researchers.

Since business readers consume most content electronically, hyperlinks and descriptive language about the link are how most writers cite sources. However, this approach has three challenges when building a persuasive argument.

1. When a reader clicks a hyperlink to determine the credibility of a source, they take themselves away from the narrative flow of the argument you worked so hard to build!
2. Hyperlinks often do not carry any information about the creation date of the content. Given that part of a business proposal’s argument is “why now,” it is vital to show that you are using reasonably current information to support your hypotheses.
3. Hyperlinks may not be equally accessible to all due to paywalls or other licensing restrictions. For example, the direct hyperlinks for the databases you access through the UConn library include a UConn login code that otherwise makes them unavailable. If all you provide is hyperlinks, and your reader can’t access them, they can’t feel confident that what you’ve claimed is what was said in the supporting content.

So for crucial persuasive business documents, go beyond hyperlinks to provide footnotes and a complete list of supporting resources. This keeps your reader in the flow of your argument while still providing confidence that you have done your homework and supported your hypotheses with available and appropriate secondary research. It will also reduce your reader’s transaction costs to dig more deeply should they choose.

Provide references either inline or as footnotes

Where you specifically include evidence about a market or customer insight that you drew from a source—including yourself as an expert source– provide a reference to that source either with an inline hyperlink or as a footnote. I find that footnotes are less intrusive and offer more flexibility than inline cites, but that is a bit of a style choice.

That reference should be as deep-linked or deep-referenced as possible: i.e., to the specific web page, report section, or page versus just the site homepage or the article source. You can link directly, or, given that you are providing your reader with a complete list of your references, you can also give the reader just enough abbreviated information to find it in your supporting resources list.

Here is an example of options for citing a market size drawn from a BCC Research article, using an inline cite or a footnote:

• • BCC Research estimates the global market for internet of things (IoT) sensors was $10.9 billion in 2021 (BCC Research, April 2022, Summary and Highlights)
  • BCC Research estimates the global market for internet of things (IoT) sensors was $10.9 billion in 2021.¹
    • ¹ BCC Research, April 2022 “Sensors: Technologies and Global Markets”, Summary and Highlights.

Here is an example of options for citing a consumer insight from a subject matter expert referenced in a news article:

• • Ethan Brown, Impossible Foods CEO, noted that consumers were choosing more comfort foods during the pandemic instead of prioritizing healthy options (WSJ April 2022)
  • Ethan Brown, Impossible Foods CEO, noted that consumers were choosing more comfort foods during the pandemic instead of prioritizing healthy options. ²
    • ² As quoted in WSJ, April 2022, “Beyond Meat Hit by Slower Supermarket Sales of Plant-Based Food.” Brown also noted that consumers reduced grocery shopping trips during the pandemic, reducing the effectiveness of in-store sampling promotions. Competitors also cited concerns about the customer experience, including taste, price, and degree of processing, as issues.

Citing yourself and your work as sources

When using your expertise to support your claims, provide supporting materials that provide relevant biographical information to explain why you are a credible subject matter expert. This is very common in business proposals! I find it beneficial to briefly let your reader know this up front and then provide relevant biographic information in an appendix.

Examples:

• (at the end of the executive summary) This proposal is informed by ten years of industry experience in this market. For further information on my experience, see Appendix… (where you provide some resume information)
• (at the end of the executive summary) My experience as a user in this market and my frustrations with my options inform this proposal. For further information on my experience, see Appendix …. (where you provide some information about your use of different products/ services in the market to allow your reader to see the relationship between your experience and your description of your target sketch persona)

You can also use inline references or footnotes to point your readers to more detail in your original supporting work. As you refine your argument’s persuasive flow, you will select which details to include and which to make available as supporting materials. This reference approach helps connect the two locations.

As an example of a vital product feature to emphasize in a new product for a particular target persona:

• • I believe that “Ava” will prioritize natural ingredients when choosing her everyday moisturizer because she associates them with two critical benefits to her: protecting the environment and being gentler on her skin. ³
    • ³ See Appendix 1 for my complete sketch persona of Ava and Appendix 2 for my full feature-benefit matrix. 

Provide a list of supporting resources as endnotes

At the end of your proposal, provide a list of supporting resources that thoroughly cites the information sources you used to build your argument. If this were an academic paper, we would call this a bibliography. It shows the full scope of your secondary research–and is also a helpful resource as you build your argument!

For each resource, provide as a minimum:

• The date published, or if the content does not provide a date, the date found online
• the author, and the authoring organization if a specific author is not referenced or the authoring organization is a source of credibility
• the title of the source
• a direct hyperlink or other information that allows the reader to find the specific data source or an authoritative reference to it.

Consider organizing your resources by section of your proposal (like chapters in a book) rather than alphabetically by author (which is the norm for academic papers). This is more useful for your reader to get a sense of how you are supporting each thesis. Imagine that you set down your work on a proposal for six weeks and then had to pick it up again quickly. How would you refresh yourself on your sources?

Here are two examples, one from a library report and one from a web search:

• • BCC Research, April 2022 “Sensors: Technologies and Global Markets”
  • “Beyond Meat Hit by Slower Supermarket Sales of Plant-Based Food” Jesse Newman, Wall Street Journal, Feb 25, 2022

For More Information

• Edward Lim, UConn Business Subject Guide — Citing Business Sources (last accessed Feb 15 ,2023)