Author: Anna-Rosa le Roux
As psychologists in consulting, whether you are positioned internal to a company, running your own practice or working as associates within a consulting company, we are all ‘burdened’ with the creative or laborious task to market and secure our services through proposals.
The engagement meeting as first step in proposal writing
The proposal is a formal vehicle for conversation with the client. In the proposal we differentiate ourselves from our competitors and establish our unique value proposition. We specify what we offer (solution) at what price, to address the client’s very specific needs. In the proposal we need to communicate and demonstrate that we are confident and capable to deliver the services that we say we do, thus an important document positioning ourselves and setting the client at ease.
The Process
The first step in writing proposals is to listen very carefully to the client explaining their need and then to pose critical questions to firstly aid understanding, but also to guide the client towards further insight and clarification. I think back to Edgar Schein who said that every interaction with the client needs to be one where the client experiences value and gets something more than the previous engagement. The consulting process therefore already starts at the proposal writing stage and specifically at the engagement meeting.
Some initial considerations and questions
In this section I highlight some themes that might be helpful to consider if you are privileged to meet with the client before writing the proposal. I also include some real life commentary from seasoned consultants when I interviewed them on this topic:
- Understanding expectations – This concept refers to the clarification of exactly what the expectations are, as well as the likely process to be followed.
“ … it is an understanding of what the client wants, it is an understanding of where the client comes from, it is understanding of his own needs as he expresses them – and what we are going to do to ensure that we deliver against expectations, and educating the client in terms of our methodology.”
- Agree on high level outputs – This concept refers to the agreement of high-level deliverables pertaining to the project.
“ … what is the end product going to look like”
- Budgeting and resourcing – This concept refers to the importance of sufficient funding and resources to be available to carry out the intervention successfully.
“Most of the time the interventions fail, not because they are not good, but because you under-cost them”
- Client maturity – This concept refers mainly to the ability of the client to understand and embrace the solution at a holistic, integrated, strategic level.
“That is why you would judge a client and then define their solution just based on what they can handle”.
- Stakeholder readiness – This concept refers to the ability of the client to embrace change and must be taken into account prior to commencing the project.
“ … the people that are mature and ready for it, will work with you, and go through the process as and when required. The people that are not ready will put up a lot of resistance, because they do not see the need for the change”.
- Leadership supports the proposal/ change – In any initiative it is important that the different levels of leadership in the organisation understand, buy in and visibly support the change initiatives.
“ … either they (the leadership of the organisation) are not there, or do not take on the role successfully. They need to visibly show their support through communication to the various stakeholders”.
At the initial engagement meeting we thus aim to understand the client’s needs, the process to be followed, and the outputs that they require. Consideration also needs to be given to organisational enablers such as level of support, stakeholder readiness, budgeting and client maturity.
Feel free to comment below or send me an email at: anna-rosa@jvrafrica.co.za
