In this post, the IRPdelft team 2019 shares its experiences about the acquisition of projects, the group and the first training.
Acquisition
A critical part of IRP’s success is the acquisition of five interesting projects in India. To prepare ourselves thoroughly for this process, we started off with a one-day acquisition training from field experts and previous team members. They taught us how to make a good pitch, find the right contact persons and how to do cold calls. We found the training inspirational and wanted to start right away!
Our team is divided into a couple of acquisition shifts and we make sure that everyone calls a set amount of companies each week. Since the projects are sometimes really complicated, we arrange face-to-face meetings to discuss potential collaboration. In the meantime, we have visited many companies and discussed some very interesting project challenges. In order to keep everyone motivated and updated, we always share a selfie before entering the meeting! We are on the right track, but there is still a lot of work to do before we have the signed contracts! Hopefully in our next blog, we can tell you more about the progress of our projects.
Team spirit
IRPdelft is a team effort and team spirit is therefore extremely important. The best way to create a pleasant atmosphere is, of course, to visit the most beautiful area of the Netherlands together: the Achterhoek. We spent one weekend in a cute cabin and enjoyed ourselves with games, food, drinks, more food and, as the highlight, we went skeet shooting. The weather was amazing and it was nice getting to know each other.
Another important ingredient that has improved our team bonding is the group training we had from a psychologist. The training was led by a very professional and experienced woman, Caro Nieuwenhuis. She shared a lot of insights and compelling metaphors on personality and group work. We got to know each other a bit better at a personal level and this is definitely going to help us in the coming few months!
Project partner
We have also set up an official partnership with an Italian student initiative called Mondo Internazionale. They will assist us in understanding the ins and outs of the Indian market. India has a really inspiring, but also a quite different, culture from Europe. We believe a good understanding of the underlying values, beliefs and expectations of Indian culture and how they manifest themselves in work is essential for our projects to succeed. Mondo Internazionale will definitely help us on this.
Consultancy trainings
Our next blog will be about our experiences of consultancy training at Bain, McKinsey and BCG. We already visited Bain last week and the other consultants are scheduled over the next few weeks. The training will be very helpful. We will learn how to structure and write a proposal, how to approach a research project and how to present our findings.
We will come back to you with an update in April to keep you informed about our IRP experience!
Read also our first blog IRPdelft goes India
Do you have a question or comment about this article?
delta@tudelft.nl
Comments are closed.