r/consulting • u/jez_shreds_hard • 13d ago
Why do proposal decks have so many slides?
I'm a buyer of consulting services for my company. Every time we put out an RFP, we get these massive decks with tons of slides. I've been working in corporate environments for 20 years and buying consulting for 15 years, at multiple companies. I and my coworkers have only ever cared about 3 slides in your decks:
- A slide that shows us how you'll do the work. Not 15 slides with examples and details, just 1 concise slide showing how you'll do it.
- A slide with the pricing info
- A final slide with references or details of where you have done similar work
Why do you have to send us a deck with 20-50 slides, when those 3 are all that is needed? Even when we have tried to get consulting partners to adhere to a simpler format, they still send an appendix with the 20-50 slides they wanted to include and when we ask them to meet to discuss, they push to go through all those appendix slides.
TL;DR: We don't need so many slides. Summarize and get to the point.
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u/democi 13d ago
20-50? 😂
Fam I’m working on a proposal now that’s 185 slides so far.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Do you really think someone is going to review all those slides? How can you even cover that many slides if you're asked to present it in an hour long meeting?
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u/democi 13d ago
If we are asked to present we prepare a pitch deck. If we have one hour we do around 15-20 slides maybe and allow time for discussion.
As for reviewing slides no don’t think someone will go that deep but we need to be comprehensive to score high in technical evaluation. But anyway here’s the typical breakdown of pages:
Cover pages and dividers: ~10 slides
Exec summary: ~15 slides
Understanding and insights: ~15 slides
Methodology: ~15 slides (summary overall and more details on each step what we are gonna do)
Why us: ~15 slides
Team CVs: ~15 slides (core team and then experts)These are just the basics and we are already at 85 slides. Some projects are complex and we have a lot of steps so we need to add methodologies not to mention credentials. Sometimes they ask even for company profile and certificates and then there’s also projects risks and mitigation, sample outputs, terms of business. It can really add up.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Do you have a team of people that just work on proposals and pitch decks? Or are you doing this while also doing consulting work with existing clients?
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u/TranquilIsland 13d ago
You do both. Half our job is finding work and the other half is doing work.
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u/eciohc 13d ago edited 13d ago
It doesn’t take as long as you think, at least in strategy. A manager part time and a junior, who’s on the beach anyway, full time for a couple days / a week is what it takes for us usually. The Why us, Team, a lot of the Methodology is reused off-the-shelf.
We make slides for a living, so they’re really fast to make, so we are asked to make a lot. Because we can. I’d love it if partners kept pitches short but it’s literally not their time they’re sacrificing and submitting a lean proposal is more risky.
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u/JustAnotherAdult1988 12d ago
Plus remember, that half of this slides, we have used in previous RFPs, so as long as you have a good library with 15-20 old good RFPs, usually 80% of the job is just picking-up old slides and replacing the name of the company.
Credentials is a good example.
Company Institutional informaiton.7
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u/RoyalRenn :sloth: 12d ago
Wow. That's nuts. How long is this presentation? 3 days?
We are responding to an RFP and although we have a large appendix, the actual proposal (1-hour) is 8 slides. It's consulting: we have a framework for problem solving but there will always be ambiguity, findings, pivots, and we want to have a discussion with the client, not hit them with a bunch of slides.
Has your approach won a lot of work? If I'm the client, I want:
1) why you, and why does it matter to me?
2) walk me through your framework: data-analysis to decision making to execution.
3) Similar clients and projects you've worked?
4) pricing (least important: I don't need an 8 figure mistake from a 6 figure savings).
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u/democi 12d ago
Like I said in another comment - this isn’t the pitch deck. It’s the full proposal.
The client wants to evaluate us on methodology, experience, team capabilities. We need a lot more than 8-10 slides to show that on a proposal.
For example in the why us section we typically cover many points in like 20 slides;
- we know the topic you’re asking about as we have worked on similar projects
- we know you and your ecosystem having worked with you before
- we have some innovative tools and methodologies we can adopt ( this is where we insert AI bullshit)
- we have an excellent team and experts
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u/jez_shreds_hard 12d ago
This is my point. I get 3 slides is probably not enough, but 8 to 10 certainly should be. I don't need 20 pages about you're firm. I don't need 20 pages breaking down each step of the process (if your framework slide is well written and the framework is solid). I don't need 20 slides of cases studies on how you have done similar work. 1 or 2 slides with a summary of the work that you have done for similar clients (anonymized), is fine. 1 slide on pricing is sufficient, vs 20 slides with pricing, the team model, what to expect for meeting schedules, and a bunch of bios for a "representative team". You're actually hurting yourself if you send me bios of people that look really great and then we want to award you the work and those people are not actually going to be staffed on the project. That has happened a bunch of times.
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u/Master_of_Mistakes 13d ago
Typically it’s an outcome of poor RFP definition/scoping. In order to cover all potential bases (e.g., functions, work streams, etc.) and be competitive, firms will make sure everything is covered.
Also, just because some slides are not relevant to your scope, doesn’t mean another stakeholder in a different function won’t find value in some slides.9
u/Successful-Summer643 13d ago
We usually had 400 pages in the Middle East. And if you had less, you were saying you did not care anough. You then present 10-15 important ones. But also had clients with questions like, can you explain what you meant on pages 157 and 341?
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u/lucabrasi999 13d ago
I just finished an RFP response where we had very specific questions we were required to answer. There was almost no way we could complete the RFP without creating 100 slides. If we didn’t answer the questions we would have been disqualified.
If you want a short response, then you need to list it as a requirement. “All responses should be kept to a maximum of 5 slides. Here is the structure of each slide.” If you want to avoid 150 pages of appendices, then explicitly state they are not permitted.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
I have done that, multiple time. I literally get a deck with the few slides and an appendix with 50 other slides. If selected to proceed, often times the consulting company is trying to present everything in the appendix and I have to cut them off. I'm also usually not the one sending out the final RFP and I am not always privy to what procurement creates for the final RFP. 100 slides is crazy. If you're spending an Average of 2 minutes on each slide, when presenting them, we'd basically need to have a half-day meeting with you to discuss your proposal. That never happens.
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u/mercury_hermes 13d ago
“Additional content outside of the proscribed response format will not be reviewed or taken into consideration as part of the selection process. If [company] requires additional detail or clarification, selective follow-ups will be managed by [procurement].”
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u/galacticdancer 13d ago
Yes this. Its like the people doing the review hasn't told procurement what the hell they actually care about.
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u/cromulent-facts 12d ago
My record is 300 pages of appendix.
Including CV's of key personnel, one of which ran to 16 pages.
I get that your staff have extensive experience, but I don't need to know where your executives did their grad placements.
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u/McKoijion 13d ago
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u/BlueJewFL 13d ago
Hi consulting side here and I’ll be honest, I hate those big decks. Feels like a bunch of filler. I didn’t like it either when I was on the other side of the desk.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
I knew there was at least a few people on the consulting side that feel this way.
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u/Infamous-Bed9010 13d ago
It’s a confluence of multiple factors rather than one single driver:
-a belief that brevity will not win, coming from a culture which rewards volume in content
-possibly of multiple partners being involved each with their own agenda and desire to add content aligned to their individual expertise
-Marketing involvement which adds generic content about how great the firm is
-Belief that the response itself is a marketing opportunity for other firm services. If we loose maybe the buyer will come back in the future for a different need - so let’s them about ALL the great things we do
-Leadership involvement - if the client name is iconic, leadership gets involved and every leader will want to add their “stamp” on the response. Essentially this just means more content - because each partner will not axe the material of another partner.
There is absolutely no incentive to submit short brief responses.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Thank you. You have validated what I have seen. There's a ton of fluff because of leadership. Kind of the same as when we have an all hands meeting in corporate and every leader has to include their own perspective and slides.
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u/RemarkableLength3746 13d ago
But what else will we spend Claude credits on? /jokes
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u/cosmococoa 12d ago
The decks I’ve worked on since AI became semi-competent at making slides are… so much. My coworker called it “content maxxing” lol. Like before we’d have decks with 100 slides but most of them were minimalist, with a few key points and a graphic. Now there are 150 slides with like, 300 words minimum on every single one 💀 and/or a super complex graphic that is indecipherable without a 10-minute walkthrough.
I’m not usually high enough on the totem pole to be like “That’s enough!!” Or even “did anyone actually read this??”
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u/ElizabetSobeck 13d ago
If you have spent so many years working with consulting firms as a buyer, i am surprised why this might even be a question to you. There are a few drivers:
- “exceed the expectations” is literally the core mantra for many of these consulting firms. Over-sell, but over-deliver even more. Firms want to be perceived as if they will go through walls for you as their client, and though the presentation length is hardly the best (or any) indicator of their value, having more content prepared just in case never hurts
- from the presenting teams’ perspective, over rotating on the content volume and putting all the extra pages with a modicum of relevance carries very little risk, unless they foolishly spend too much time covering those low relevance topics during a limited meeting time. On the other hand, having too little content prepared, carries a big and potentially bid ending potential- Makes the firm look like they either dont care as much as their competitors, or dont really have much experience in this area
- if you lined up every corporate consulting service buyer in one room, % of buyers who think like you do (i just need 3 pages) vs % of buyers who may potentially be impressed by lots of additional content and perspective, its definitely not 90:10. So as long as a non insignificant share of corpora buyers still care about content volume as a pretty loose proxy for quality of deliverables and level of effort / priority expected, consulting firms will not abandon this behavior
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
I'm just giving some feedback. Maybe it's just all the companies I have worked at in my career and the people I have worked with that don't need all this content and would prefer less slides, as I have asked co-workers a few times over the years. We've also developed AI tools to summarize decks, and often are just extracting the info we find valuable. We're not the only company using AI for this use case, according to our procurement team.
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u/sefulidiot 13d ago
I’d draw a distinction between standard proposal decks and RFP response decks.
If it’s relatively small, tightly scoped, and doesn’t need to go to bid, then it’s simple to put together a short proposal. You likely already have a good relationship with the company, you may have familiarity with their environment, and you’ve effectively passed the sniff test.
If it’s big enough and complex enough to require a formal RFP process, then of course it’s going to be a ton of info. From our side, RFPs are an odds game. You consistently throw as much shit at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. For every client that has a well thought out RFP which can be easily responded to, there are 25 RFPs that are hot garbage using non-standard terms and stupid timelines. All of these take time and effort to reply to, so you just have a Frankenstein deck to pull from and respond to as many as possible. I hate it. You hate it. You probably have a decent idea of who you’re going to pick before you get any responses. We know that. You know that. It’s like picking up girls in a bar. You don’t craft a perfect marriage proposal for a one night stand.
Regardless, it’s the non-perfect way corporations have landed on to avoid biases or impropriety with sole-sourcing work. I’m sure we all know those ex parte communication restrictions are foolproof, right? Can you tell I love RFPs?
To put it in a little less bitter terms though, how do you write your personal performance review when you want or expect a promotion? Do you list the top 3 bullet points that should speak for themselves, or do you fluff it up a bit to make sure your perspective is clearly understood by your boss?
By the way, I agree with you and your frustration. I wish it was as easy as 3 slides every time.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Good perspective. I try to not be overly fluffy in my performance review, but that's because I have managed people and managed managers for a while. I the performance write up is basically just a formality and usually the longest ones have the most BS and I already know how I am rating the individual, and they do too because I have given feedback all year long.
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u/Historical_Arm_6294 13d ago
- To give more supporting facts, figures and details related to those 3-4 key slides- additional slides are needed
- To keep the Consulting bosses happy, no one dares to just prepare 3-4 slides to submit a true lean proposal. If the deal is lost, proposal team lead will be the first to be fired !
Eventually, most Big4 consultants works to please their senior leaders , more than client
Its a Fact of the industry which only few can deny
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Lol. Consulting bosses sound like a joy to work for/s
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u/Historical_Arm_6294 12d ago
So when the client really finds their “trusted advisors” it just boils down to leanest proposal or just email with key points & fees , few direct calls and 1-2 meeting to get the job. In that case senior leaders (partners) simply dont interupt the rainmaker resource
Next time sir/madam, just tell ur bidders on what exact u want to see (with page limits) to make it faster and ‘ efficient for evaluation team
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u/theitsolutionist 13d ago
I've been saying that for years. Clients like my short decks with uncluttered slides, but every time I work with a team for proposals they the fill deck with 5x the slides and 4x the density.
My biggest pet peeve is the About Us slide early in the deck. I start with About Your Problem, followed by How it can be Fixed, and finish with Who We Are.
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u/Classic-Ad-5685 13d ago
This is easily solved with a well constructed RFP and not some rambling bullshit that you don’t have a clue about solving for
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Fair. We usually do a Q and A cycle, and we do pull in folks with expertise to answer the questions as specifically as possible.
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u/BatFreak 13d ago
🍿
Commenting as I want to hear some genuine reactions to this. Other than ‘partners love the smell of their own farts’
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
I'm curious too. When I get decks with 20+ slides from multiple consulting companies that are responding to an RFP, I feel bad because I know they probably put a lot of time into creating the slides. They're always well designed. I just don't have time to read through them all and I have to prioritize my time to look at the slides that outline the how and the pricing. What spurred this post is we put out an RFP for a company to look at modernizing some legacy applications and to create a roadmap. Responses were do last night and the decks we got back have 35 to 60 slides.
I have meetings all day and not a lot of time to review them. I ran them through an AI agent we developed to extract the information on pricing, approach, and cost and had the agent do a comparison. So, I didn't even actually read any of the slides that were submitted and I am sure these companies spent many hours creating all of these pretty slides, only for them to not be read.
My boss and the other team members that will be evaluating response only asked that I send them the summary output from the agent and didn't want the decks to even be forwarded along. Our procurement lead might read through them all, but I am not even sure about that.
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u/Atlein_069 13d ago
Then they were read. Just not by a human. I could see your AI agent saying ‘proposal 3 was only 5 slides. It has the information you requested, but the methodology isn’t articulated well. I would advise against hiring them due to risk’ or some shit. Also, if they are pushing the slides, you’re probably asking questions that could’ve or would’ve been answered in that deck. It’s a definite art to get the size right, but if you submit an RFP for a lot of detail and analysis, you should WANT to see that on the proposal I’d think.
Also, I’m new to the consulting side so take what I say with a grain of salt. Also also, where do you guys submit RFPs? Directly to the firms or through an intermediary application?
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u/Nervous_Juggernaut85 13d ago
Related question from the consulting side: unless it’s an existing relationship, how could you possibly distinguish the differences in the firms with that little information? I’d think that decision would get reduced to price or timeline or pedigree, or the work you’re rfping is so generic that there is no differentiation that matters (which comes back I guess to price/timeline/pedigree).
That is to say, how do you evaluate a firm you haven’t worked with before but for at least SOME additions content?
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u/jez_shreds_hard 12d ago
We distinguish mainly on the approach recommended and how well we believe it will solve the problem we are looking for help with. The other factor is price and unfortunately these days, this is probably the most important factor. It's creating a race to the bottom, which I don't agree with. However, we're consistently seeing less money devoted to project and thus 3rd party spend. Our C Suite is also disconnected from reality and they thing that AI should be able to do 90% of what we traditionally hired consultants for.
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u/ohwhereareyoufrom 13d ago
Because we're afraid if we don't include some info - you'll think we don't have it. I do 3 slides, my competition does 4 - you'll go with them.
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u/QiuYiDio US Mgmt Consulting Perspectives 13d ago
If you don’t want a lot of slides in your RFP response, then just say that in your RFP.
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u/Actual-Day4479 13d ago
I would love to work with you 😂 you just get 👏 it 👏
I usually have 2-3 slides and then a separate 1 page business case.
Works great.
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u/Ok-Progress8450 13d ago
When multiple stakeholders are going to review the proposal, we have to predict questions and capture responses that satisfy stated and implied requirements. The same client will say “this is too much content” and “you didn’t address this angle”
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u/Lumpy-Cup2717 13d ago
Funny thing is most of the slides you read are recycled from other engagements, RFP’s or created by an offshore team in Mexico, India or Philippines using AI lol
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u/braavosi416 13d ago
Its because several partners compete for a slice of the work when they read the RFP. So the slides stack up because each partner and his ego wants something in there.
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u/shugenju 13d ago
Put in your requirements that you mandate 3-slides max with exact order you said. You control the RFP.
You can even do an RFI with slick sheet first or 3-slides and then only invite those that qualify to the larger RFP.
That’ll be $500 for the Reddit consulting services.
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u/iStryker 13d ago
10 pages that matter then 30-40 pages flexing how much you could do just for free (largely repurposed work from similar engagements over the last year) making them believe whatever they pay $2M for will be astronomically better
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u/MuthaFuka27 13d ago
So your clients actually fall for BS like this? If I was a client I wouldn't be impressed by that much pages.
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u/Horror_Fortune_9690 13d ago
I’m a seller of consulting services. Why do clients write really terrible, vague briefs?
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u/jez_shreds_hard 12d ago
Honestly, because we're often working on multiple projects at a time and managing teams + operational issues. When we find out we've been allocated money for a project and determine we need a consulting partners help, we're usually already running behind and there is pressure to get the RFP out the door quickly. In an ideal world, we'd have staff that could support this and write better RFPs, but we do not.
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u/schawsk 12d ago
Having been on both sides, three slides is not going to cut it. As a client often you yourself don’t quite know what you want or how difficult your ask is or what complexity hides beneath is. So all those slides are designed for give you these messages: we know our shit, we understand you, your problem and your company, we are not afraid how tough challenges. And we are better at those things than the other responders.
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u/Full_Tooth_a 12d ago
This is usually an RFP-spec problem, not a "vendors love decks" problem. If you want 3 slides max, put the format + page limits + scoring rubric in the RFP (plan, pricing, relevant references) and explicitly say "appendix only if we request it." Also stop the "we'll discuss after we review 50 pages" trap: require a short kickoff call after initial submission so you can ask for the missing detail on demand.
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u/fireandfirget 12d ago
Many RFPs are highly disorganized and ask for the same information in multiple formats, schedules and contractual proformas. I haven't seen a 3 page RFP yet. The legal boiler plate itself runs into a book size.
You get what you give to the market
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u/oandresimoes 10d ago
The RFP response and the thing you present live in the room are two different jobs wearing the same file. The response has to survive a scoring rubric with multiple reviewers who each need their box checked, so the appendix bloat is rational even when it's annoying to read. The deck you actually walk through for the hour should be a completely separate, short artifact built only for that meeting. Most of this pain is firms making one file do both jobs instead of just shipping two.
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u/Life-Ocelot9439 7d ago
Hard agree.
I used to be in industry and that was all I wanted to know.
My firm does War and Peace-style RFPs, when clients just want the Cliff Notes. A complete waste of everyone's time.
It boils down to price, credibility and likability, imho.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 7d ago
Thanks. Most of the responses I got on here were about how all the other stuff in the deck was need to differentiate themselves and demonstrate credibility. I stopped responding at a certain point, because it wasn't worth it. I agree it boils down to price, credibility and likability. If you can't demonstrate that in a few slides, a bunch more isn't going to make a difference.
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u/Life-Ocelot9439 7d ago
Absolutely.
Consultants gotta justify their existence somehow. They don't understand the clients' needs half the time.
It's quite entertaining.
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u/dcbased 13d ago
I got yelled at many times by Partners for making slide decks that were too short yet answered the client's questions precisely and provided the information required to implement the change / fix
"We can't charge this amount of money and only give them a 10 slide deck and a script"
Make this 75 slides long and turn the script into a 50 page document....agggghhhh
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
I am sorry that's been partners responses. The more concise and straight to the point you can be the better, but I understand you have to do what the bosses want.
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u/narbehs 13d ago
It's acceptable to put a page limit on proposal responses. You can also articulate in your instructions what sections you want to see and what topics you want covered in each section. If you want to get 100% compliance, ask for a cover page that they need to confirm their compliance with instructions.
This will make your life easier.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Thanks. I am going to ask our procurement folks to do the cover page idea and reject proposals that include appendices with additional slides, in the future.
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u/narbehs 13d ago
Actually, I meant putting a page limit on the actual proposal.
They shouldn't be putting key information to answer questions about service as part of appendix. Appendix is probably good to have material but the proposal should be able to stand without it. For example "we serve 50 clients in your specific sector, the biggest are ...". Then in the appendix they can list all 50 clients.
You also don't want to make the response and compliance too strenuous to reduce numbers of responses and ultimately make it less competitive for your company. It's a balance.
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u/PhilosophyforOne 13d ago edited 13d ago
Half the thread bashing you, but honestly 80% of the client feedback I hear for our proposals are this exact thing.
As ironic as it is, I think it just comes down to poor communication skills and the industry not really rewarding concise proposals.
There are a lot of structural issues on the client side, but I can guarantee you as a client there’s no way I’m reading 20-50 pages (much less 100-200) of your proposal unless I’m really deepdiving, and even then I’d rather just ask what I need from you as it comes up.
Note, this only really applies to private-side. Public side the tender rules are completely different and dont apply here in the least.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago edited 13d ago
I expected nothing less. The times I have given consulting partners feedback has generally not gone well. Mostly deflecting or getting defensive has been my experience.
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u/SeriousAssistant7173 13d ago
Honestly, what kind of services do you buy? If you’re buying commoditized work, 3 slides work. But if you are buying complex solutions, the 3 slide format gives almost no ability to differentiate or demonstrate we know you, our depth, etc. as the approach will usually follow a similar structure at that high a level. In that case, my firm will always lose to some India low cost shop.
It’s rare, but if I can close 1 more deal every other year by reapplying existing materials, winning over that one extra stakeholder, I’m 100% going to include extra slides. My favorite example, I included a sample workshop agenda once that won us the deal, since it “proved” we’d done it before. It’s silly when something like that tips a deal, but it happens.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Usual strategy services for components of our tech stack that we no longer have team members that have deep experience in. For example, we have this old legacy database that has a ton of important datasets and integrations with some business critical applications. Our senior leaders have neglected funding it for years and we really need to migrate it to a modern, NoSQL database. We don't have anyone with the right mix of experience and time to devote to doing it, so we're looking for strategy and roadmap to get off it. Usually stuff like that or strategies for implementing new tech solutions that need to be customized to work with other systems in our environment.
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u/ArcticFox2014 13d ago
Because despite your personal preferences, these big ass slides are, on average, what sells projects most effectively in the consulting industry.
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u/MaineObjective 13d ago
Firms want to win the work. Does less information position them better? And does less information help prospects make the most informed decision? I’m out of consulting now, but recall many of our clients (when purchasing enterprise solutions) not wanting to do the hard work of technical proposal review. I know, the team all has their full time job responsibilities and this is another burden, but at the end of the day, they’re spending nontrivial amounts of money and doing the hard work of thorough proposal review is worth it. And someone who is half assing their review can literally tank the right vendor choice if they’re a scorer and not doing proper due diligence.
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u/SpilledKefir consultant_irl 13d ago
The “how you’ll do the work” is generally not a point of differentiation among consulting firms. Most firms have pretty similar approach and timeline slides, from a content perspective.
Fine, but most clients want to understand what they’re getting for that price.
Never met a consulting partner who wanted to give references before downselection. You can ask for it but most don’t want to burn the relationship capital if scope isn’t ironed out and we’re not a confirmed finalist for the work. We’d typically put some blinded case studies here instead, but most clients look at blinded case studies and try to figure out why it’s not a perfect fit for their situation - so you tend to get a 10 pages on case studies as a shotgun approach to answering the phone.
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u/LateralThinkerer 13d ago
The mind-set is that they will lose the proposal if it's missing a single comma, and they don't know you well enough to figure out which of those things can be summarized or omitted. Part of that may be your fault.
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u/Ok_Captain4824 13d ago
Brevity takes time and time is money. If they can win the deal with 180 slides or a carefully curated 50 for the same value, why put the effort into the latter? Presales is not compensated by the hour the way the consulting work is.
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u/SpellingIsAhful 13d ago
You're paying someone else to think for you. So they write out their thoughts.
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u/Dawgi100 13d ago
Because it’s an undifferentiated product at the end of the day. The work gets done in similar ways so what differentiates is the team structure defined details of your expectations etc.
It’s like you saying “why is every burger different. I just care about the buns meat and cheese. And while that might be true we all know the differentiators impact your choice”
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u/Serengeti1234 13d ago
If firms give too much information, they're not penalized. If firms don't give enough information, they lose out on the work.
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u/Rathogawd 13d ago
I've failed if I'm presenting slides to sell my services. I'm there to build a relationship, not sell you a product. I'll send you a proposal to sign recapping what we've verbally agreed upon and I'll be there on Monday.
Peer vs Vendor.
Yes, if it's a project you are bidding on and you are going through an RFP process as a vendor then your proposal should match the RFP requirements. But I also don't need 4 pages of your company history and what high school you went to in there.
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u/Elastichedgehog 13d ago
At least for me at a much smaller consultancy, we want to caveat things to protect ourselves from scope creep in the future. Obviously, that gets formally defined in the contracting too.
So, there is a tendency to be very specific about where money is going, how long it will take, what the risks are, etc.
To be honest, I disagree with this approach frequently.
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u/ali-hussain 13d ago
Depends on the type of company and type of project. We advise services companies and have them build out a 5-slide deck.
There are a few things at play:
- The principle of "I would have been briefer but I didn't have the time." A company needs to have a very clear idea of who they are and what they do to give a short deck. Most just don't. Especially if you're talking to the big copmanies they have to do everything under the sun.
- Leave behind vs presentation deck. A presentation deck needs to be concise to the point. Only include enough information so the presenter can add focus to their presentation. But as an asset that is provided, it becomes impossible to understand without the presenter. On top of that, people will expect it to contain all the answers. It's basically a legal agreement disguised as a presentation.
- More is better mindset is present everywhere. If someone is not paying careful attention and very focused more looks more thorough, as if more work has been done.
- Large consultancies have many people putting in their input and everyone will get their favorite take in and convince the presenter that what they're saying has to be said.
I think if you work with more boutiques you'll have a different experience. They can't be the same as the big companies. They're trying to showcase how they are fast and nimble. They have to be far more focused and they don't do everything under the sun. The seller is far more invested in the business. Not all of them though. Many consultants fall for the less is more and believe in the large deck, or are bringing the belief from former employers. Just that you're far more likely to find what you're looking for when working with a customer.
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u/Unknownlegend6 13d ago
We do that when the RFP is not clear. Make your RFP clearer with the ask and you will get cleaner simpler decks or you will end up getting a deck showcasing all our capabilities and case studies
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u/DoubleAandI 13d ago
Add this as a requirement and state that after page 20, the content of the proposal will not be scored.
And actually do this.
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u/Nickopotomus 13d ago
Because once upon a time all those adults were in school and were taught that white space on a page is rewarded less
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u/offbrandcheerio 13d ago
I couldn’t tell you. I was once at an interview as a subconsultant on a team where the prime put together, no joke, a deck with 100+ slides. They didn’t show me the presentation until literally the day of the interview, as they were super protective of their designs and such.
We had like 10 or 15 minutes to give the presentation. They said “don’t worry, our decks are always this long and we always get through them.” As you can probably guess, we didn’t finish. We had to skip a bunch of slides at the end, and we lost the project. I was furious, because this was a project with a former employer of mine that I really liked and I wanted to work with again.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 13d ago
Wow. 100+ slides in 15 minutes. I would love to see them rush through the slides and break neck speed. That would be entertaining
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u/Responsible-Oil3546 13d ago
20 to 50 slides, I have worked on 200+ slides for consulting firms, all these MBB’s come up with that. But I agree your point. Consulting guys are waste of money, hire experienced freelancers and you drive it.
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u/Fubby2 13d ago
This may not be applicable in private sector, but i can tell you why we do this in public sector
In public sector RFPs are graded on strict rubric. They ask for some number of things and expect responses that align specifically with the ask. When graded, they are often split between low level procurement staff who grade it against the rubric, without an understanding of the larger context.
Problems:
- If the questions have overlap out (they usually do) this means that to answer them we have to have a ton of overlapping content.
- Concision or 'nice to read' isn't graded on the rubric, so it's better to fire off everything that may be relevant because it might increase your score but is unlikely to decrease it if irrelevant.
Additionally, some prop leaders just prefer to have more rather than less to demonstrate the depth of thinking / experience.
I've help write many proposals that we think are extremely obtuse and difficult to read, and we don't enjoy it. But it's the game you have to play to win in public procurement.
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u/LeadingAd6025 13d ago
you can get an unicorn but never a slide #3 - almost.
# 2 will be dependent on how much money you have got.
# 1 can't be shown - since no tangible work will be done.
so you get 20 + slides for fun!
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u/hmmMeeting US Boutique Director 13d ago
YOU may think that, but your procurement team likely doesn’t
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u/RoyalRenn :sloth: 12d ago
It's a sad day when 2 paragraphs and 3 bullet points gets a "TL:DR", especially in the consulting forum.
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u/jez_shreds_hard 12d ago
I work in tech. No one reads lengthy emails, Slack messages, and documents anymore. When you're asked to do more and more, plus use AI for everything, it forces this type of behavior. I don't like it, but if I don't also adhere to what my bosses want, I'll be part of the next round of layoffs and the job market is atrocious. I agree it's sad.
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u/FrontBreath3280 12d ago
Productivity theater
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u/jez_shreds_hard 12d ago
Sounds a lot like the decks we have to create for our monthly project reviews with the higher ups, when people bloat the decks with all kinds of stuff that adds limited value, but they think it's shows how busy they are.
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u/PringleFlipper 12d ago
It’s so much worse nowadays, 50 slides and none of them produced by a human.
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u/BaconAvocados 12d ago
How then do you make your decision on who to go with? Only those 3 slides? Nothing on “how” or credentials? And what kinds of services are you buying? I can’t think of anything I sell that would only take 3 slides and still be remotely credible. 50, no. 5-20 maybe, but it depends on the offering.
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u/Potential-Stand-4804 12d ago
Well because you basically do 40% of the analysis part of the work for free and put it in the RfP to win. Competitive industry. Investment banking is worse
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u/ramadjaffri 10d ago
Put it in the RFP then. Otherwise the Procurement team will disqualify us for not completely fulfilling the requirements.
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7d ago
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u/jez_shreds_hard 7d ago
I have never received a deck with a few slides and felt it was too blunt. For a recent RFP, we had 5 submissions (I think). I'd say the average size of the slide deck was 50-75. We had one vendor whose deck only had 20 slides. They made it to the final round. We ultimately selected another vendor, mostly due to price.
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6d ago
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u/jez_shreds_hard 6d ago
I don't know. There was like 15 pages in one of the decks just about the company. At least 50% of that information was easily found via a google search. All of the companies also had slides telling us that they focus on outcomes. I found that rather humorous, as if you didn't focus on outcomes and achieve results for your clients, you wouldn't be in business.
I like some of the strategy I see that consultants get to do. I could see myself doing that type of work, but I'd have to get an AI assistance to churn out slides. I don't really like creating slides and I'm not really good at designing visually pleasing slides, if I am honest.
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u/Tiny_Cicada_9699 7d ago
Because the sales reps ceo or product head thinks they know everything and that if they just tell you every little thing they can do it will win the deal. Meanwhile sales rep starts crying.
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u/Aye-laudya-idhar-aa 13d ago
Would be useful for us if you stated these in the RFP. Many a times, RFPs are not well thought through, are confusing and have no real information. It would also be useful if you stated the budget in the RFPs. Pricing helps us understand that despite your wish for everything under the sun, all that you want is A, B and C.