What Winning in Consulting Projects Might Look Like?

The legendary Basketball coach, who holds the record of winning the most NBA championships, 11 total, knows a thing or two about building great teams.

What Winning in Consulting Projects Might Look Like? The 7 Best Steps to Build Your Dream Team .

So how do you pick the best players for your team to handle your next Consulting project? Easily with our proven steps and methods discussed below.

“The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson

Here are the essential things you need to look for.

The 7 Best Steps in Finding the Right Consultant and Building Your Dream Team:

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When entering complex negotiations, BATNA and ZOPA’s concepts can provide a useful framework to structure your approach. Let’s dig a bit deeper and see how these concepts can benefit your project.

1- Identify the most promising proposals –

When you are working on a large cohort of Consulting Providers, you should focus at first on the most promising proposals to save time and energy. You can always go down your list if you are not satisfied with your first batch.

Start ranking your proposals based on your assessment of the proposals. You can use these five dimensions: objectives, deliverables, approach, experience, fit, and budget.

You should also be able to put your finger on the uncertainties in the proposals and articulate them into questions. The list of questions will be the basis for the pitch session with the most promising Consultants: an excellent opportunity to clarify the RFP if necessary, and assess the fit with your teams.

2- Avoid these pitfalls when selecting your Consulting provider –

Keep in mind that the best consultants in delivery are not always the best in sales. And vice versa. Fancy or not so fancy, appearance can be deceiving. Rather than placing too much emphasis on how consultants look on paper, give them a chance to convince you and organize a meeting where they can pitch their proposal.

3- Define your criteria and your budget –

The first step is to build a set of criteria. Start with the dimensions you had defined in the RFP and add the elements that may not be included in the RFP, such as price, cultural fit, intimacy, etc. Once you have agreed on the dimensions, start prioritizing them.

4- What value do you expect from the project?

You should agree on how much value you expect from the project, and therefore, how much you are willing to pay. The price is a major parameter in your choice. You should always make sure that your project has a positive value for money.

In that part of the process, we recommend working with the different stakeholders to get the buy-in and prepare the start of the project with a compromise.

5- Ask for a presentation –

It is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to assess the chemistry between a given Consultant and your teams on paper. When you invite Consulting Firms to pitch their proposals, you get the opportunity to sense the human element in their approach.

During the presentations, you will need to keep several points in mind:

Challenge the core proposal,
Make sure the team on the field has the right expertise,
Understand the pricing,
Assess the chemistry with your teams.

After the presentation, give the Consultants several days to revise their proposals. If you haven’t done it already, now is the right time to check the references of the Consulting Firm and the partners in charge.

6- Make your final decision –

Go back to your list of criteria with the order of priorities. Allocate a weight to each criterion, and start grading each proposal on the different dimensions. Once you are done, you can calculate an overall score.

7- Get the Stakeholders on board –

Last but not least, try to build a consensus score with the main stakeholders. Sourcing a Consulting Provider is just one requisite in the success of your project. Another requisite is to get the buy-in of the stakeholders. When building the consensus around the choice of the Consulting Firm, you are working to ease the way forward for the project and the Consulting team.

We hope that when you follow the above methods meticulously you will easily launch and execute a winning project that will deliver above the scope you set out initially.

Phil Jackson, whom we quoted, builds powerful teams that complete one another’s strengths. They win championships, and they break records. They deliver and overdeliver. Be like Phil. And have the confidence and the drive to make your next project the best one yet.

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Hélène Laffitte

Co-founder & CEO at Consulting Quest

Hélène is the author of Smart Consulting Sourcing, a step by step guide to getting the best ROI from your Consuting. You can follow @helenelaffitte on Twitter.

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Hélène Laffitte is the CEO of Consulting Quest, a Global Performance-Driven Consulting Platform and author of “Smart Consulting Sourcing”, a step by step guide to getting the best ROI from your consulting. With a blend of experience in Procurement and Consulting, Hélène is passionate about helping Companies create more value through Consulting.

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