proposal

Week 4 Lecture Notes

· This week’s content focuses on the consulting and assessment Division’s Proposal for leadership training and development.

· Training proposals have a lot of variety in the way they are written. Sometimes they can be informal letters of agreement all the way to a formal proposal that leads to a contract.

· The important aspect of this week’s assignment is the relationship developed between the consultant and the client in terms of deep levels of understanding about the needs, desired outcomes, and other issues of concern to the client’s key stakeholders.

· There are some key ingredients for a normal framework for the value pricing proposal:

1. Situation Appraisal: This is where you summarize and reconfirm the overall and conceptual agreement concerning the situation or condition to be improved as well as a clear statement of the desired state.

2. Objectives: The outcomes expected which can be quantifiable and non-quantifiable. These should be written in terms of the impact of the training on the participants, the team, the organization’s mission, or the impact on the client’s business.

3. Metrics: How will the client evaluate and measure the success of the leadership training? What indicators will be used for this process? It is essential to get the client to commit to at least 3-5 metrics. These can be specific numbers or they can be written as more general success factors. These must come from the client through your process of interaction with them.

4. Timing: What are the phases of engagement? Use at least three phases, which typically would be assessment; intervention; follow-up. It is important to describe the start of the project, and the end of the project, and if there are progress measures along the way.

5. Accountabilities: What does the client provide (documents, access, meeting rooms, etc.) and what do you provide (facilitation, training manuals either in print or digitally, reports, etc.)? Who will you collaborate with and what is the nature of the collaboration?

6. Credentials: Why are you and/or your organization the best source for this client? This is usually well developed during the relationship-building phase, but sometimes it is important to include the credentials of the person(s) who work on the project.

7. Terms and Conditions: This is the fee, how is it to be paid and under what conditions? What expenses are covered and how will they be paid?

8. Acceptance: The sign-off by the client.

Source: Weiss, A. (2012). Million Dollar Consulting Proposals. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.