Add Consulting Proposal Autograph with airSlate SignNow

Signature consulting proposal

so welcome to consulting business school and this week we're going to be talking about client proposals presentations because that is what a lot of people have been asking for so that's coming right up [Music] okay so one of the really important parts of your consulting business is be to be able to write really high class winning proposals now depending on your consulting journey how new you are the relationships you have with your clients you could be very lucky like i am with a lot of my clients where it's non-competitive so basically they'll say rob can your team help me with x y and z and we're really just putting a proposal together to clarify exactly what we're going to do how long it's going to take how long it's going to cost et cetera but we still have to compete for work as well so particularly for larger projects companies will very often go to tender and they'll ask a number of different consulting companies to put in a proposal so regardless of whether you're new to consulting or you've been at it a long time you have to write proposals now those long-term relationships with long-standing clients it can be fairly easy to write a proposal for new clients where hey you don't really know their business and b you've really got to show you know your capability and expertise and set yourself apart from the others that requires a lot more depth in the proposal and it's that sort of proposal that we're going to be talking about today and if you're wondering how long it takes to write a proposal you know a lot of i know a lot of consultants they try to boilerpate boilerplate their proposals so they try to have kind of standard formats and you know they almost just client change the client name and away they go and it i don't like that because it's pretty obvious it's just a templated proposal and particularly for the sort of work that we do in my consulting businesses is very much tailored it's very much customized and so we need a very detailed a specific proposal it's not to say you can't draw on you know all of the ones that you've done before in terms of the framework but there's a fair amount of work to go into it people often ask me how long does it take you to write a proposal rob i don't know how many proposals i've written um i would think about 4 000 over the years i'm not kidding probably about 4 000 proposals i don't write a lot of them now a lot of the other guys in the business do them but i proof all of the proposals that go out of the business so how long does it take me to write a proposal okay it's going to vary depending on the sort of business you're pitching for and the size of projects and all the rest of it but as a rough guide i work on about 100 000 a day proposal writing now what does that mean so if i'm writing a proposal that's valued at a hundred thousand dollars it's going to take me about a day to write it a full working day so a fifty thousand dollar proposal probably half a day um it's pretty hard to write a proposal in under half a day regardless how small it is um so at least half a day and then you know a million dollar proposal is going to take me ten days to write it's a hundred thousand a day it's just a rough ballpark figure that's the amount of effort that you have to put into a proposal there's a lot that goes into it particularly if you're in a competitive environment so let's run through some of the really essential parts of your proposal first though what's the aim of it the aim of your proposal is to actually win you that client work and from the perspective of the client what are they looking for they're looking for trust and confidence in your ability they want value for money and they need help in deciding why they should pick you over the other consulting businesses so never forget that when you're putting that proposal together look at it through the client's eyes is it going to help them differentiate you from all of the other proposals that they're getting and let's step through the key components then to help you do that so first of all i always like to start proposals with a background section and that is basically our understanding of the business the client business what their particular needs are it's demonstrating that hey we've listened you know usually at this point we've had a discussion at least a couple of discussions with the client we may have visited their premises so we're playing back to them that hey we understand your business and we understand what your issues are so that's really important you need to be able to get the client to understand that you understand their business now the next section executive summary you might put that at the front depending on your on your particular sort of framework but the executive summary should be ideally on a page your proposal here's the problem you know this is this is the key issue this is how we're going to fix it this will be the outcome that we'll get for you this is how long it'll take this is how much it'll cost so particularly for complex proposals always think that someone more senior in the organization than you have already met might be the decision maker so that proposal has got to stand up in its own right you may be presenting it to your client but they may not be the decision maker so somebody else is going to read it cold so that executive summary is really important read that one page you know yep these guys get it they're going to you know deliver this outcome which is really great this is the time frame and the cost so the executive summary is really important now we get into uh the sort of meat of the proposal and first of all the objective and scope so again you will have discussed this with the client what their particular issues are what is the outcome that they want you to help them achieve so you want a very clear objective unambiguous we're going to help you you know fix this particular problem so that this happens we're going to help you save you know 10 on whatever we're going to help you implement a certain system so a very clear objective this is what you're going to get for your money then the scope and this is really important because people who are new to consulting will get scope creep and what does that mean it means if it's not clearly defined there's a misunderstanding between you and the client and you can end up being asked to do things which you haven't really quoted on so the scope is really important for both parties so the client knows exactly what they're getting the you know the scope of work quite literally and you know what you're working on i also very often put in out of scope so for example we we're generally working in supply chain and logistics it might be a proposal to design a warehouse and you know it the scope might be we're going to come up with the materials handling solution we're going to come up with a footprint for the warehouse we're going to tell you how high the warehouse is going to be we're going to tell you how many people will need to work in it out of scope might be the warehouse management system the it system that runs it you know depending on the client need you have to be very specific about what's in and what's out so you know clear communication really really important the next thing and you'll hear you know various sort of consulting jargon about this people talk about the deliverables it's a horrible word i know um but basically as the client what are you going to deliver to me okay so you could call it deliverables outcomes benefits so i'm going to pay a certain amount of money for this objective with this scope what am i going to get at the end so to go back to my warehouse design example you will have a detailed design that you can take to the architects to have your building design and a specification list to go to all the materials handling companies to show you exactly what to buy and how it's all to be laid out and an estimated operating cost of the warehouse for example in your particular sphere maybe you're consulting on it it will be the deliverable will be this system will be implemented it will be up and running and your staff will know how to operate it and we'll have maintenance in place you know whatever it is so very clear deliverables so you can see how we're setting that up now here's the objective here's the scope here's the deliverables you know i know what i'm getting it's really really important you can then actually start to go into the approach this is how we're going to do the work now for larger projects this is quite important because the client wants to see that you've got an approach a methodology that you've done this before that there's some logic about how you're going to do this work it's no good me going to a client for example and say hey i'm going to charge you 30 000 to design this warehouse and uh you know they have no idea kind of what's being included and how we're going to go through the whole process so we go through quite a bit of detail there could be eight or nine pages of that saying you know we're going to take your product information we're going to analyze it this way and we're going to you know make sure that we can deal with fluctuations in product throughput and all that kind of stuff for your particular business for your consulting you'll know what those are so you need to go through step by step this is how we're going to do it why do you go through all that detail do you think a couple of reasons one it's really good for you to be able to map out exactly how you're going to do it so you've got a bit of a blueprint to follow but more so for the client they can actually see the level of detail that you're getting into it's going to give them confidence that you know what you're doing if all you're doing is saying you know here's the price and kind of don't worry about it we'll get it done there's not a lot of meat there there's not a lot of detail for them to have confidence in in the fact you know what you're doing so a little bit more is better than too little um you know so for example i've just put a proposal together for looking at a distribution network for a client it ran to about 100 powerpoint pages now the key is the decision maker doesn't have to read at all because we got the background we've got the executive summary we've got a very clear contents page they can flick through it but those who want the detail they can go through the detail it's there okay so that's the approach you then want to outline the team so who's going to be working with the client um so in the early days it's probably just you but if you're more established you might have a team of people depending on the complexity of the project so you want to be showing a page certainly of the team structure how how you're going to interface with the client team what you're going to do what you expect the client team to do and then i would put a cv just a one page of each of your team members and of course those cvs have got to be really relevant they've got to show that they have all those people have done what the client's asking for before many times so that's the team then you want to put in your fees and look we've got other videos on fee structures but generally with consulting it's either going to be a fixed fee so most of our projects are like that we do a very detailed project plan we work out all of the resources and so on that have to go into the work and we come up with a fixed fee some we are we basically call a timer materials basis so if there's any travel costs and paying for time you know that kind of thing it's basically hourly rates or daily rates those are the two most common ways of paying for consulting services occasionally we'll be asked to be rewarded on a fee for results so that's the third way so if the project is focused for example on saving money in a particular area the client might say okay we'll give you x percent of the savings if you deliver the savings so that's probably three ways of of putting your fees in fixed fee variable sort of day rate hourly rate or fees on results okay the fees what next case studies now this is really difficult if you're just starting out but you need to demonstrate to the client that you've done this before and you've done it very effectively and that you've got happy clients so you might have a sort of series of one pages you know for for client x we've done exactly what you're asking for this is how we went about it this is the result for client y we've done exactly what you've you've looked for now that's that's a challenge obviously when you're starting out um you know you're going to have to build up those references and those cut those case studies but on another video we talk about how you can do that i think i've called it fake fake it until you make it you can kind of talk about things that you did in other roles before you got into consulting so that's the case studies and then finally terms and conditions very important so particularly with you know the sort of consulting that we do for large corporates they want to know that we've got certain insurance policies so we have to stipulate that we've got professional indemnity insurance that we've got public liability insurance we've carried 10 million dollars of cover of one 20 million dollars a cover of the other really important to have professional insurance as a consultant you might be putting in your payment terms you might want to put in things like um what if they offer one of your consultants a job you know all of these sort of things go into the terms and conditions so there we go that is what goes into a consulting proposal or a presentation the only difference i would say between a pres a proposal you're just going to hand in and a presentation is that the presentation is probably going to be a little bit less wordy because you're going to be talking to it and you don't want to just be reading it so it's going to be a little bit more summarized the written proposal is going to be a lot more wordy and particularly for government departments and large organizations where their procurement department is managing the tender because they may actually prescribe the format in which you have to submit your your proposal so and they can be very very lengthy so let's just recap what's the purpose of the proposal and why is it so important it's through that that you're going to build trust and confidence within the client that you can do the job it's there that you're going to demonstrate the value that you can deliver for the fees that you've proposed and you're going to help the client decide why you as opposed to the others and the key steps if you looked at the contents page of that proposal you're going to have a background an executive summary you're going to have objective and scope you're going to have the deliverables or outcomes you're going to show the approach you're going to show the team and their cvs you're going to show the fee structure broken down you're going to show case studies and you're going to show time and material oh sorry not time materials um t's and c's terms and conditions so there you go writing good proposals is an essential part of being a consultant so it's not the most fun part um i have to say i quite like writing some of them because it actually um allows you to sort of show a bit of creativity and flair in terms of how you're going to do the work but good proposal writing is an absolutely essential part of being a consultant and one of the kpis that you really need to track in a consulting business is the success rate of your proposals so of the of 100 proposals that you submit how many did you win so i think ours are currently running at about 60 so of course there's a secret to that you don't bid on the ones that you have that you're very confident that you will not win for whatever reason maybe you don't have the skills maybe you haven't worked in that particular industry maybe haven't worked in that country before so be very careful about the clients that you pick there's another video on that um but when you're putting forward your proposal you ought to be aiming for at least a 50 success rate if you're down around 30 percent 40 percent have a very good look at what you're doing with your proposals because you're missing the mark are you demonstrating value are you differentiating your approach above others are you instilling trust and confidence in the client through what you've put in your proposal aim for at least 50 success rate on your proposals so there you go proposal riding one of the joys of being a consultant but a very very important part uh if you've got any questions on that do put your questions in down below i'd love to hear those and provide some feedback if you're new to the channel uh why not think about subscribing there's that bell down there as well if you hit the bell you'll be notified every time we have a new video coming out and they generally come out on a tuesday evening so thanks for watching anything else you'd like to know about consulting let me know in the comment comments below see you soon [Music] [Music] you