Decide what information you need

• Refer to your objective and draw up a list of general topics

• Write these down in any random order for now

• List subtopics under these general headings

Our objective is: To update the sales department on information for customers about forthcoming products, focusing particularly on the benefits to customers.

Now you can draw up a list of general areas to cover that looks something like this:

• Description of products

• Comparisons with competitors' products

• Key benefits to customers

• Sales support

• Brochures/literature

• Supplementary information

Once you've done this, you can start to list individual topics under each of these headings. For example, under supplementary information you might include:

• Product launch dates

• Prices

• Delivery times

• Guarantees

Collect the material

There are three main sources you can go to for information:

• Material from inside your organisation (e.g. sales brochures, newsletters, regular reports, minutes of meetings, other people's reports)

• Publicly available material (from books, directories, the press, trade associations, government departments, competitors)

• Information you get from talking to people (customers, experts, suppliers)

Collate the information

So you've gathered together all your books and brochures, reports and interview notes. Start by putting all your research material in a pile on one side of the desk. Write a summary of each point you want to include on a separate slip of paper, with a note of where to find the information in full. You don’t need to write down the details, just the main points. This stage can be speeded up if you make notes on a word processor, since you just print everything out and then cut up the paper so that each main point is on a separate slip. You’ll have dozens of scraps of paper on your desk. These scraps hold all the information you need for your report.

If you are producing a regular report, you can jot down notes on slips of paper, or small index cards, all the time. If you do this for, say, a monthly departmental report, it makes the job of writing it really quick. When the time comes to produce the report, you just pull out all your bits of paper from your drawer or box, and there's your information, ready-made.

Sort it into groups

Organise these slips of paper into logical groups, usu­ally between four and a dozen of them. At this stage, the groups you put the information into needn't relate to the final structure of the report.