A weekend conversation about social media and the value PR brings to the table got me thinking about our industry’s value cascade — how we transmit value to clients and employers under the best scenarios, vs some less-than-best variants. Here’s what I think it looks like on the consulting side:

Ideally, we deliver expertise, which drives the formation of custom strategies. These strategies, combined with access, deliver results and value.

If we lack any one of the three legs of the proverbial stool, we can still make things work, albeit with different approaches.

I’m sometimes asked how to put together winning proposals, either as part of counsel given to clients or water-cooler conversations with colleagues launching their own consulting careers. While best practices are going to vary a bit from industry to industry, the following outline wins work if executed strongly.

Talk to PR and marketing agency types, and you’ll hear all manner of moans and groans over Requests For Propopsals (RFPs) or their lesser-seen siblings, the Request For Information (RFI) or Request For Quote (RFQ).

Why? Well, part of it is just Pollyanna-ish thinking about how business comes in the door — a surprising number of agencies grow their practices through purely organic networking and word-of-mouth marketing. This isn’t a bad move (more on that in another post), but it’s hard to be known by all the right people all the time. Now and then, a great piece of work will come up and you’re going to have to walk through the beauty pageant just like everyone else.

But the other reason agencies sometimes shy away from competitive bids is a little more basic: There are a lot of unreasonable, unclear or otherwise undesirable RFPs out there. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

Ongoing employee development gets a polite nod — if that — at most small to mid-sized PR agencies. And that’s a shame, since it’s one of the highest ROI activities agency owners can engage in, along with systemic business development.

While I haven’t worked at endless agencies in my career, a couple of them have been deeply committed to employee development. Additionally, I did a stint at Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc., a company generally regarded in the construction industry as the leader in terms of employee development. All of which is a long-winded way of saying: I’ve got opinions.

We constantly hear from clients that they want the people in the interview to be the ones doing the work. For a small shop, that’s a huge advantage because small shops generally have a greater percentage of senior folks as a portion of their overall staff.

But before you get to do the work, you have to win them over. Herewith (c’mon, where else but my blog can I get away with a word like that?), some rules we follow religiously that tend to break the conventional wisdom…