Yes, this is a true story, and it was my first conversation of day today. It's been enough to amaze and amuse me all day. Somehow I thought days of screaming bosses were buried with days of managing by intimidation. I guess I was wrong! I can't help but wonder if this guy has even heard of all work being done around emotional intelligence, or employee retention. Maybe he doesn't read.

Message To The Screaming Boss...

Chances are, your employees have one foot out door. They probably even spend a part of their working day reviewing emails and job postings at places like Monster.com.

You are missing out on significant amounts of information. Why? Because nobody wants to be "the one" to tell you. What you don't know can hurt you.

Now some of you may say, that “unless you do deliver something I can scratch window with, your service is worthless.” And this is exactly how many buyers think. The buyer hires a marketing consultant and insists on creation of a huge folder, called “Marketing Plan”. “Write a marketing plan FOR me.”

Upon failing that, at end of day, regardless of how much improvement you have created in client’s condition, client remains pissed off with you because you failed to “deliver” what you promised, that is, pre-defined deliverables.

And while I am against traditional deliverables, there are some deliverables – both tangible and intangible - we have to create to keep project on tract, on time and on budget. However, I believe that deliverables should be documents to keep project on track, on time and on budget. The greatest deliverable is that as a result of working with you on that project, people at client’s company change way they think, and as a result, they can create different results.

Here is another contrarian point: If you have deliverables, clients should have them too. There must be some written documents they must produce on an ongoing basis. This creates a higher level of involvement on their parts, and makes certain that they are actually committed to successful completion of project.

********************************* ***** TANGIBLE DELIVERABLES ***** *********************************

While there are some tangible deliverables we deliver, we have to limit ourselves in what exactly we deliver.

Make sure that your deliverables do not include set number of hours of manual labour and tonnage of reports and memos to be generated. Let us take a quick look at various tangible deliverables. And next month we look at intangible deliverables.

***** THE OARR DOCUMENT ******

The OARR (Objectives, Agenda, Roles and Rules) document covers some basic guidelines for meetings with buyers. This is especially valuable for very first meeting. Nothing scary, nothing formal, it only asks prospective clients to give you a better idea of what to discuss, so you all can better prepare.

It can save you both time and undesirable misunderstanding, while helping you to stay on track. This document reinforces what you have just discussed with buyer on phone.

The OARR document sets tone for whole meeting, so you can achieve more in a shorter period of time. It also lays down your expectations regarding how you want to be treated and what exactly you want to accomplish.

Send this document to buyer and make sure you get it back signed, indicating that they agree with flow of meeting.

Ingredients of OARR Document

* Meeting location, date, starting time, finishing time

* Objectives of meeting - You clearly lay out what you want to achieve as a result of meeting, so it will become more than just empty chinwagging. You go to meet buyer to see if there is a mutually beneficial reason for two of you to work together.

* Agenda of meeting - The agenda itemises issues you want to discuss during meeting. All meeting parties must be 100% clear about what will be discussed, so they can prepare accordingly. Agenda MUST include next step, that is, who follows up and when. Do not fall for typical “let’s see what happens” stuff. Collect all information you need to craft a proposal, but only write it after buyer has made a pretty certain commitment to doing project.

* Roles - This section lays out names of people who will be involved in meeting. This section also makes certain that you never get relegated to sales managers, HR managers and other lower level people who cannot make decisions and cannot authorise budgets beyond purchase of a stale “Reduced to clear” muffin or a secondhand coffin nail.

***** PROPOSAL (COLLABORATION AGREEMENT) *****

The traditional proposal is equivalent of proposing to your future spouse after you bought rings, booked trip for honeymoon, picked doctor to deliver your baby and set up your joint bank account.

Really and truly a proposal (what a misnomer) is not about whether or not getting on plane, but about final touches of fastening your seatbelt on Concorde, and off you go.

Use your proposal as a deliverable, not as a selling document. My contention is that we must have an agreement to work together, and proposal is just a written document to solidify and document an already existing agreement.

The proposal is template for project. However, proposal is a strategic document. Look at it as departure display at airport. It only shows where plane goes from which gate, but does not deal with minute details of trip, like how many times driver changes gear, and how many time each passenger is allowed to visit toilet. However, black box tracks all those tactical manoeuvres. The proposal deals with objectives, metrics and value. It must state what to achieve, but should not talk about methodologies. The details of project are put together in concert with client’s implementing team. Remember, consulting is not done FOR clients but WITH clients.

Here are major sections of proposal

Section 1) Project Description – A short (about 150-200 words) description of project.

Section 2) Situation Appraisal - This is a short (about 150-200 words) summary that reiterates issues that brought you and your prospect together. Focus on non-obvious. This section also reminds buyer of real problem and urgency of solving it. This will assist you to start proposal on bases of prior understanding, and prospect starts nodding his/her head in agreement. So you start receiving small sequence of “yeses”.

Section 3) Objectives – This section follows situation appraisal, and moves conversation from generalities to specifics. This section outlines specific business outcomes. Unless these outcomes are achieved, there is no point in investing in change. Also, clear objectives protect you from “scope creep”.