Proposal setting

This practice may orient us in shaping together with the potential partners, from now on organization, the most suitable collaboration to create impact for all as planetary societies

Business development can be understood as conversation: it’s about shaping partner engagements by asking the right questions and listening carefully.

Ideally, we would be collaborative and curious to genuinely enjoy connecting with potential partners and be committed to understanding their needs. There’s always an opportunity of reshaping many of our partners’ organizations, unlocking their creative potential and creating value with them for planetary societies.

In this roles it’s important to be business-minded, professional and creatively represent the collective, remain calm under pressure while juggling multiple conversations.

Uncovering needs and the brief

• What is the organizational history, current context, goals and strategy?

• What are the organizational needs?

• What’s the contact person background, current context, goals and biases?

• What does the contact person say she wants?

• What does she needs (not necessarily expressed)? How can you test if you are right about them?

• What is she asking us?

• What deliverable/s does she expects to get at the end of the project?

• What kind of impact is she expecting to make with the project?

• What are the timings, start point, end point, key milestones, etc. of the project?

• What are her available resources for the project?

• How would she evaluate the success of the project?

• What are the relevant examples she has as a reference for our project?

• Why us? Why is she considering our collective for the project?

Check an example of the outcome of how this might look like, based on the project we did for Catlabs.

Crafting the proposal

To start with it usually helps doing a quick round, e.g. in 30-60min, of the project canvas.

Some verbs to continuously balance as the crafting goes on might be:

• Align project goals with emerging trends in the collective and elsewhere, looking for ways to integrate it with what the organization is asking

• Search for the fit between the project skills & competence requirements and the people in the collective or friends

• Explore methodological approaches to structure the project (agile design process, sprints facilitation, etc.)

• Explore tasks we could do in the project

• Search for the key content elements and red threads of the project

• Search for key creative tensions of the project (aka paradoxes), both content and context wise

• Check again with the partner that you are understanding properly the situation, and why is problematic enough to act upon

See a proposal presentation template or a shorter template.

Pricing

To put a price on things is a conversation about value, and value is contextual. Some contextual factors that we might balance in proposing a price are:

• What’s the value that we will create with the organization for their business or activity, their mission, etc.

• The type and time volume (in days) of listed activities planned to be carried

  • As a reference, our average day rate is 245 EUR, XES proposes 200 EUR, for some international clients we charged 500EUR or 800 EUR, and for workshops we have charged up to 1000 EUR.

• The offerings and deliverables we are promising

• How much we asked for similar projects on the past

• The organization financial muscle, what sort of projects are they used to hire, what's their yearly budget, etc.

• How much is asked for similar projects in our industrial context

• How much would core members ask (advise process to at least two)

• Your percentage in case the project gets in, based on this rough guide:

  • 1000 EUR 10% 100 EUR

  • 5000 EUR 7% 350 EUR

  • 10000 EUR 7% 700 EUR

  • 25000 EUR 10% 1.750 EUR

  • 40000 EUR 5% 2000 EUR

  • 80000 EUR 3% 2.400 EUR

• Potential gains for our collective from completing the work

Negotiating

To close deals is as many parts of the proposal setting process a highly cultural thing and also influenced by personal styles. Some people might never question a price; others will take it as irresponsible to not do so. Some aspects to consider about our counterparts in the negotiation process are:

• Negotiating goal: Contract or relationship?

• Negotiating attitude: Win-Lose or Win-Win?

• Personal style: Informal or formal?

• Communication: Direct or indirect?

• Sensitivity to time: High or low?

• Emotionalism: High or low?

• Form of agreement: General or specific?

• Building an agreement: From general to specific or vice versa?

• Team organization: One leader or group consensus?

• Risk taking: High or low?

Not all deals go smooth, so let’s tap on our shared wisdom and ask each other on an advice process if needed.