Proposal Writing

Hello,

In my experience at McKinsey, consultants are the ones who put together a proposal. As fellow experts have pointed out here, most of the time you will be working on proposals will be when you are on the beach/bench, i.e. you are not actively staffed on a client project. Sometimes this will happen quite early in your tenure (junior consultants sometimes take a little while to get staffed initially).

You might also help out with proposals while on a full-time case as a form of networking and building your reputation within the firm. For instance, if you are looking to go up for promotion or gain more work experience within a specific practice, you may volunteer to help some of the partners with their proposals to develop a stronger relationship with them. Generally there will be email blasts sent out asking if any consultants are available to work on particular proposals, and you can then reply and say yes.

If you are on a full-time chargeable client project and there are ongoing upsell/cross sell discussions, you could be involved in supporting or leading the proposals depending on your level. Express your interest for this early with the line manager/Partner on the client.

Most people get pulled for this type of work while they are on the bench or in between projects. 

Having said this, not all types of career tracks in Consulting get involved in proposal writing.

But overall, there are plenty of opportunities to be part of this in Consulting and being savvy in the sales process is important should you be on that career track for promotion.

Hey there,

For consultants with a lower tenure, working on proposals is classic beach work, the type of work that you do while you are in between engagements.

For EM-level and higher proposals can become more part of their daily lives that they have to juggle while being staffed on an engagement. However, most of the time they get to work on proposals exclusively.

The bulk of proposal work in McK is done by consultants, with the typical support of

• data analysts
• designers
• presentation specialists

Cheers,

Florian

Yes and no!

It's highly likely that you'll be pulled into proposal writing at some point. That said, some people (those always staffed on projects - i.e. multi-year digital transformations - will not).

I personally was put onto 4 proposal writings in the span of 2 years. These always occured when I was “on the beach/bench”.

Thanks for your answer. I got it