What Is a Consulting Brief?
A consulting brief is a scoping document that captures the essential elements of a consulting engagement: the client's situation, the problem to be solved, the proposed approach, the deliverables, the timeline, and the commercial terms. It is typically created during the sales or pre-engagement phase to ensure both the consultant and the client have aligned expectations before work begins.
The consulting brief sits between an initial sales conversation and a formal contract. It provides enough detail to establish trust and shared understanding while remaining flexible enough to iterate as both parties refine their understanding of the work.
Why You Need a Consulting Brief
Every consulting engagement starts with a shared fiction: that both parties understand what is being delivered and for what price. Without a written brief, that shared fiction rests on memory and assumption. When it collapses — and it will — you have a dispute about scope, expectations, and fees.
The consulting brief protects you from:
- Scope creep: When clients assume "everything related to X is included"
- Unclear success criteria: When neither side agrees on what a successful outcome looks like
- Fee disputes: When work is performed that was never agreed upon or priced
- Stakeholder misalignment: When different people in the client organization have different expectations
Key Sections of a Consulting Brief
1. Client Context
Describe the client's business, industry, size, and competitive position. Include the specific business context that has prompted this engagement. This section establishes the consultant's understanding of the client's situation and demonstrates that the engagement is tailored to their specific needs.
2. Problem Statement
Articulate the specific problem or opportunity the client is facing in clear, business-outcome terms. "Reduce customer churn from 8% to 5% within 12 months" is better than "improve customer retention." The more specific the problem statement, the more focused the consulting approach will be.
3. Objectives and Success Metrics
Define one to three primary objectives for the engagement. For each, identify how success will be measured. If possible, establish baseline metrics against which the impact of the consulting work can be assessed. This creates accountability on both sides.
4. Scope and Out-of-Scope
Be exhaustive here. List everything the engagement includes and everything it explicitly does not. The out-of-scope list is often more valuable than the in-scope list because it preempts the most common additional requests. Use concrete examples: "This engagement includes two stakeholder workshops; additional workshops are billed separately."
5. Approach and Methodology
Describe the general approach the consultant will take to address the problem. This does not need to be a detailed project plan but should provide enough transparency that the client understands the process. Clients who understand the methodology are more likely to engage constructively with the process.
6. Deliverables and Timeline
List each deliverable with a description and a due date. Break long engagements into phases with milestones. This creates checkpoints that allow both parties to assess progress and course-correct if needed. Include a high-level project schedule with key dates and dependencies.
7. Consultant Credentials and Team
Briefly describe the consultant's relevant experience and the team that will be assigned to the engagement. Clients hire consultants for expertise and track record. This section builds confidence by demonstrating that the right people will be doing the work.
8. Commercial Terms
State the total fee or fee range, the billing structure (fixed, T&M, or retainer), the payment schedule, and any expenses policy. Be explicit about what is included in the fee and what constitutes additional charges. This section prevents the most common source of consulting disputes.
9. Assumptions and Dependencies
List any assumptions the engagement plan is based on, such as timely feedback from the client, access to specific data or systems, or participation of key stakeholders. Also note external dependencies that could affect the timeline.
Sample Scenario
> Scenario: A mid-sized e-commerce company engaged a operations consultant to reduce its fulfillment error rate from 3.5% to below 1% over four months. The consulting brief specified: a diagnostic phase (two weeks), a root cause analysis workshop (one day), a recommended process changes document (deliverable), an implementation roadmap (deliverable), and two onsite implementation visits. The scope excluded ongoing management of the fulfillment process post-implementation. The total fee was $28,000, billed in three installments tied to phase completion. Key assumptions: client would provide warehouse access, data exports, and a dedicated internal project manager.
Related Templates
- Strategy Brief Template — For strategic consulting engagements requiring business case development
- Client Brief Template — For ongoing client relationships
- Project Brief Template — For project-scoped consulting work
Get Started
Stop running consulting engagements on handshake agreements. Download Eonebill's free consulting brief template, use it to scope every engagement with precision, and protect your practice from scope creep and fee disputes.
How to Write a Consulting Brief
A consulting brief defines the scope of an engagement before the consultant begins billable work. Start with the current-state diagnosis: what is happening today that the client wants to change, supported by whatever data has been collected. State the desired future-state in measurable terms: what does success look like 90 days, 6 months, and 12 months after the engagement ends. Define the scope precisely — what is included in the engagement and what is explicitly excluded. List the deliverables with format, audience, and review cycles. Specify the consultant access requirements: which executives must be available, which systems must be accessible, which documents must be shared. Identify the engagement owner on the client side and the lead consultant on the firm side. Set the timeline with phase gates and the budget with milestone payment triggers. A well-scoped consulting brief prevents the single largest source of consulting friction: scope creep that the consultant absorbs as unbilled time or that the client interprets as failure to deliver.
Common Mistakes in Consulting Briefs
The most frequent failures: vague problem definition that lets every consulting recommendation hit the brief; missing stakeholder map, so the consultant is surprised mid-engagement by a veto from a stakeholder nobody mentioned; no decision rights matrix, so recommendations get studied to death; scope creep allowance with no change-order mechanism; unrealistic timeline that compresses the diagnosis phase; and budget structured as a fixed fee for an open-ended scope, which creates incentive misalignment from day one.
Industry-Specific Consulting Brief Examples
For a digital-transformation engagement, prioritize the current-state technology inventory, the change-management capacity, and the integration-architecture constraints. For an M&A integration engagement, prioritize the day-one operational requirements, the cultural-integration plan, and the synergy-realization timeline. For an operational-excellence engagement, prioritize the baseline metrics by process, the front-line buy-in plan, and the sustainment-mechanism design. Different engagement types load on different brief sections — a single template does not fit all.
Why Use Eonebill for Consulting Briefs
Eonebill lets consulting firms and their clients draft, agree, and store engagement briefs alongside the resulting SOWs, change orders, and deliverable archives in one searchable workspace. Start free, no credit card required.