What do you need from us, and what happens if we can't provide it?

Interview access to the people named at kickoff, the financial or operational data we agree on, and a decision-maker available for the findings session. Every consulting engagement I've seen run late ran late for this reason — not because analysis took longer, but because the interviews took three weeks to schedule. If access slips beyond the agreed window, the delivery dates move accordingly and I will tell you in writing on the day, not at the deadline. If access is blocked for more than 30 days, I invoice for work completed and we reschedule the remainder into my next opening.

How do you handle our confidential information?

Everything I see — financials, strategy, staffing issues, whatever comes up in interviews — is treated as confidential indefinitely and never disclosed to anyone outside the engagement, including future clients in your sector. I'll sign your NDA if you have one. Interview notes are anonymised in the report: people tell you the truth only when they know it won't be attributed, and protecting that is what makes the findings worth reading. I retain no client data beyond the engagement other than the final report, which I keep for my own records, and I reserve the right to describe the engagement type in my portfolio only in terms that cannot identify you unless you agree otherwise.

How do we know your recommendations will work?

You don't, and I won't pretend otherwise. What I can tell you is that every recommendation comes with the evidence behind it, the assumptions it rests on, and what would have to be true for it to fail — so you can disagree with the reasoning rather than take my word for it. I also expect to tell you at least one thing you don't want to hear; if I get to week three and everything I've found conveniently agrees with what you already believed, one of us hasn't done our job.

Why not just hire a firm, or a full-time person?

Sometimes you should. A firm gives you bench depth and a name to point at in a board meeting — worth real money if the decision is contested internally. A hire makes sense if the problem is permanent rather than a specific diagnosis. I'm the right choice when you need a senior pair of eyes on a defined question, quickly, without a team of juniors learning your business at your expense. If, after the kickoff, I think what you actually need is a hire, I'll say so — losing the engagement is cheaper for me than delivering a report that was never the answer.

What if we need to pause or cancel mid-engagement?

Pause up to 30 days without charge; beyond that the slot is released and the remainder is rescheduled into my next availability. If you cancel, the deposit isn't refunded and you're invoiced for the phase completed — discovery only, or discovery plus findings. You receive every deliverable produced up to that point, including raw interview themes and the analysis, so the money already spent still buys you something usable rather than nothing.

What if an invoice goes unpaid, or you become unavailable?

If an invoice passes its due date, work pauses and the final report and roadmap are held until payment clears — you'll get a WhatsApp message from me first, always. If I'm unavailable through illness or emergency, you hear within 24 hours with revised dates; beyond a week I'll hand over the interview notes and analysis so far and, where you want it, introduce a consultant I would use myself. You never end up paying for a diagnosis you can't see.

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Business Consulting Engagement Proposal Template

A consulting proposal is judged on whether the client can see the outcome, not the activity. This template leads with the deliverable they can hold — a recommendations report and a prioritised 90-day roadmap — and draws a visible line between advising on the plan and executing it.

Take the whole thing

The scope, deliverables, timeline and client questions — as plain text you can paste anywhere. No signup.

The scope, as written

Working together, we'll diagnose the real challenge, design a practical solution, and build the roadmap to get there. You'll leave with prioritised recommendations and a plan your team can execute — not a deck that ages in a shared drive. What I need from your side to make that happen is set out below, because this is the one variable I can't control.

How to price this work

We looked for survey-grade pricing for this kind of work across our markets — India, the UAE, the UK and Brazil — and did not find any we would stand behind. What is published is mostly agency price lists, which quote the agency, not the market. Rather than average those into a number that looks authoritative and is not, we have left this blank.

What we can tell you is how to arrive at your own number:

Start from hours, not a feeling. Estimate the work in the deliverables below, add the revision rounds you actually grant, and multiply by the day rate you need to hit your yearly target.
Add the invisible work. Calls, briefs, feedback rounds and project management are usually a third of the real time and the first thing left out of a quote.
Price the outcome where you can. What the work earns or saves the client is a better anchor than your hours — the hours are your floor, not your price.
Quote one number, then hold it. The scope below is what protects that number; discounting a vague scope is how a profitable project becomes a loss.

What's included

✓Stakeholder interviews (up to 6) + current-state assessment
✓Problem definition + root cause analysis, evidenced rather than asserted
✓Strategic recommendations report, written and presented live
✓Prioritised 90-day action roadmap with named owners and success measures
✓Implementation support session (2 hours) after delivery
✓One round of revisions on the report, from a single consolidated set of written comments
✓Not included: execution of the recommendations, software or tooling costs, legal, tax or regulatory advice, travel and accommodation for on-site work, and any third-party data or research subscriptions

Worth adding for this kind of work

+The boundary between recommendation and implementation stated in one sentence
+Named the stakeholders to be interviewed, so access is a commitment rather than an assumption
+What "done" means, written as a deliverable the client receives on a date

The timeline

1Sign proposal & pay depositDay 1
A 50% deposit confirms the engagement start date and is non-refundable — it reserves consulting weeks that can't be resold at short notice. Payment details sent on WhatsApp.
2Kickoff call + access agreementDay 2–3
We align on scope, success criteria and, critically, who I need to interview and by when. You confirm the named participants and the data I need access to at this call.
3Discovery & assessmentWeek 1–2
Interviews, data review and current-state mapping, with progress notes on WhatsApp. This phase is entirely dependent on your people showing up: if an interview slips past the agreed window, the whole timeline shifts by the same number of days and I'll flag it in writing the day it happens.
4Findings presentedWeek 3
Recommendations and roadmap walked through live, with the uncomfortable findings included rather than softened. Session booked via WhatsApp.
5Final delivery + implementation sessionWeek 4
Final report delivered after one revision round, plus the 2-hour action-planning session. Final invoice sent on WhatsApp.
630-day follow-upWeek 8
A short WhatsApp check-in a month later on what actually got done. Free, and honestly more useful to you than the report — plans fail in week five, not week one.

Where this proposal usually goes wrong

Selling days instead of outcomes.
Lead with the report and the roadmap. Day rates invite a negotiation about the number of days.
Leaving implementation ambiguous.
State plainly what you will and will not execute. Otherwise the roadmap becomes your unpaid backlog.
Assuming stakeholder access will just happen.
List the interviews as a client obligation with a deadline — no access, no diagnosis.

Questions clients ask about this work

What do you need from us, and what happens if we can't provide it?
Interview access to the people named at kickoff, the financial or operational data we agree on, and a decision-maker available for the findings session. Every consulting engagement I've seen run late ran late for this reason — not because analysis took longer, but because the interviews took three weeks to schedule. If access slips beyond the agreed window, the delivery dates move accordingly and I will tell you in writing on the day, not at the deadline. If access is blocked for more than 30 days, I invoice for work completed and we reschedule the remainder into my next opening.
How do you handle our confidential information?
Everything I see — financials, strategy, staffing issues, whatever comes up in interviews — is treated as confidential indefinitely and never disclosed to anyone outside the engagement, including future clients in your sector. I'll sign your NDA if you have one. Interview notes are anonymised in the report: people tell you the truth only when they know it won't be attributed, and protecting that is what makes the findings worth reading. I retain no client data beyond the engagement other than the final report, which I keep for my own records, and I reserve the right to describe the engagement type in my portfolio only in terms that cannot identify you unless you agree otherwise.
How do we know your recommendations will work?
You don't, and I won't pretend otherwise. What I can tell you is that every recommendation comes with the evidence behind it, the assumptions it rests on, and what would have to be true for it to fail — so you can disagree with the reasoning rather than take my word for it. I also expect to tell you at least one thing you don't want to hear; if I get to week three and everything I've found conveniently agrees with what you already believed, one of us hasn't done our job.
Why not just hire a firm, or a full-time person?
Sometimes you should. A firm gives you bench depth and a name to point at in a board meeting — worth real money if the decision is contested internally. A hire makes sense if the problem is permanent rather than a specific diagnosis. I'm the right choice when you need a senior pair of eyes on a defined question, quickly, without a team of juniors learning your business at your expense. If, after the kickoff, I think what you actually need is a hire, I'll say so — losing the engagement is cheaper for me than delivering a report that was never the answer.
What if we need to pause or cancel mid-engagement?
Pause up to 30 days without charge; beyond that the slot is released and the remainder is rescheduled into my next availability. If you cancel, the deposit isn't refunded and you're invoiced for the phase completed — discovery only, or discovery plus findings. You receive every deliverable produced up to that point, including raw interview themes and the analysis, so the money already spent still buys you something usable rather than nothing.
What if an invoice goes unpaid, or you become unavailable?
If an invoice passes its due date, work pauses and the final report and roadmap are held until payment clears — you'll get a WhatsApp message from me first, always. If I'm unavailable through illness or emergency, you hear within 24 hours with revised dates; beyond a week I'll hand over the interview notes and analysis so far and, where you want it, introduce a consultant I would use myself. You never end up paying for a diagnosis you can't see.

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You already have the document — copy it above and send it however you like. What a copy cannot tell you is whether anyone read it. Send this same template from ClosingMoment and you will know the moment your client opens it, which sections they read, and how long they spent — so you follow up while they are still deciding.

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