A Guide to Professional Consulting - Part Two

This lecture describes how you can be included to receive RFP's from private and public sector organizations and what important things are required to be done in order to have a shot at winning the engagement. Key steps in the proposal submission process are discussed along with a discussion on what the actual formal bid process usually looks like.

This lecture provides tips on building the initial SOW - an integral component to any proposal effort.

This lecture discusses the art form known as proposal writing. It discusses what clients are looking for in a proposal response and what the layout of and your content in a proposal should include. It discusses such sections as "Our Understanding of Your Requirements", "Our Project Team", "Our Project Approach", "Project Pricing", etc.

If you want to create a professional marketing presentation and be able to have it viewed by your client prospect by video, this lecture shows you how you can create this professional video using Microsoft PowerPoint. It will view with audio and any "animations" you wish to include. Just upload it to YouTube and send it to your client in an e-mail or use it in front of a client on a screen when presenting to him/her. This adds another level of professional and smoothness to your consulting toolkit when trying to secure an engagement.

The team lead usually meets or has a phone call or phone calls with the client acceptor after the engagement has been awarded to finalize the terms for the project. This includes discussion and agreement on start dates for each of the resources, finalization of consulting rates and expense terms, client locations the consultants will work at, a High Level Project Plan if required for "Phase Zero", any modifications of deliverable terms and dates for the engagement, etc. With these sorts of items agreed to, an engagement letter is written and signed and agreed to by all relevant parties.

This lecture walks the student through an example of a Client Engagement Letter. Please note that under the Resource tab on the previous lecture, you can download this template example in .pdf format. Best wishes, - Dan

Even though a proposal has been written, and submitted by the consulting team and it has been approved by the client to commence with the project; the proposal, if it has any complexity to it often has assumptions built into it that need to be further understood or defined prior to finalizing the terms and total project costs, particularly in a "fixed bid" situation. This is often addressed by a project "Phase Zero" stage where key consulting team leaders go to the client location and begin investigating what needs to be done with a view to further defining the final project scope. A high level project plan for "Phase Zero" is usually created with the client's assistance prior to the engagement letter being signed and it becomes and addendum to the proposal and the signed engagement letter.

It is not always easy as a consultant to get paid by your client. The tips provided in this lecture will help you to minimize the occurrences of this and the impacts of this on you financially.

The Confidentiality Agreement or Non-Disclosure Agreement is often used between a client and a consultant prior to an engagement being undertaken, although there are times when it is used after an engagement has commenced. Often, in order to write a proposal that truly addresses the work that a client needs completed, a client will request that an "NDA" be signed before disclosure of client proprietary information is made available to the consultant. Reciprocally, the consultant may request that an NDA be signed prior to a proposal being written in order to protect his/her own proprietary information such as methodologies, tools to be used on the engagement, etc.

This is a template downloadable example of a Confidentiality - Non-Disclosure Agreement

If your new consulting venture will involve you providing services for others where they would be booking for and paying for your time on a daily or an hourly or fraction thereof basis, then you may want to consider making a small investment and obtain the Acuity System for your website or Blog site. The Acuity Scheduling System allows you to:

• Set your terms for various types of projects you might wish to undertake for others
• To have your purchasers then schedule your available time to assist them
• They can view your calendar to see your available times (you can block out your calendar for time you want to keep for yourself)
• It ties in directly to PayPal (credit card purchases accepted as well) where you can define how they pay you. Up front, portion up front, on completion, etc.
• These purchase records and histories of work you have done for people are exportable to accounting packages or are downloadable.
• Your clients can even setup login accounts of their own with you.

This is a professional level product - and I looked at over 20 or so before selecting and now recommending this one which I use on my site and have implemented elsewhere as well.

This lecture discusses a number of general strategies you should consider employing to protect your computer against both the threats of hacking and importation of viruses.