A clause-by-clause review template for consulting proposals, pairing each section with the questions to ask and the warning signs that predict a difficult engagement.
Consulting proposals are drafted by people who write them for a living and read by people who see a handful a year. This template levels that asymmetry. It is ungated and free to reuse inside your organisation.
Last reviewed 3 July 2026 · Free and ungated
Selected senior operators from the Global Board can pressure-test the proposal, the fee and the premise itself, confidentially and before you commit budget, resources or reputation. Trial engagements are complimentary.
Review this before committingA proposal is a sales document that will later be treated as a contract exhibit. Every ambiguity in it will eventually be resolved in one party's favour, and the firm has drafted it knowing which ambiguities those are. Reviewing it section by section, with the right question against each, is the cheapest risk management you will ever do on a consulting engagement.
| Proposal section | Questions to put to the firm | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Problem definition | Whose words is this written in, ours or theirs? Does it restate our brief or reframe it towards their standard offering? | The problem has been redefined to match a methodology the firm already sells |
| Scope and exclusions | What is explicitly out of scope? What happens to work that falls in the gap between in and out? | Exclusions are listed nowhere, which means they will be discovered as change requests |
| Team and staffing | Which named people are committed, for what percentage of their time, and for how long? | Partners appear in the pitch and the org chart but not in the day-rate breakdown |
| Methodology | What does week three actually look like? What do our people have to produce for their people? | Method described entirely in framework diagrams with no observable activities |
| Fees and expenses | What is the all-in number including expenses, and what specifically triggers additional fees? | A precise fee with a vague expenses clause, or fees quoted per phase with later phases unpriced |
| Deliverables | Is each deliverable defined by its content and acceptance criteria, or only by its title? | "Final report and recommendations" with no statement of what it must contain to be accepted |
| Dependencies on your people | How many of our FTE-days does this plan silently assume, and from whom? | The plan works only if your best people are available half-time and nobody has asked them |
| Timeline | Which dates are commitments and which are estimates? What moves if a milestone slips? | Every date is caveated on "client readiness", making slippage always your fault |
| Knowledge transfer and IP | What stays with us when they leave: models, working files, trained people? | Deliverables are yours, but the models that produced them remain firm IP |
| Exit and extension terms | Can we stop at a phase boundary without penalty? What does an extension cost per week? | Stopping early is possible but forfeits work in progress you have already paid for |
Run it twice. First on the draft proposal, before the firm considers it final, when changes cost nothing and reveal how the firm behaves under scrutiny. Then on the final version, in a session where the sponsor, procurement and the executive who will live with the engagement go through it row by row together. The person who will manage the firm day-to-day fills the template in; the sponsor should not, because the sponsor has usually already decided.
The hardest question about any consulting proposal is not answerable from the document: is this engagement the right instrument at all, at this price, from this kind of firm? Operators who have commissioned similar work, and lived with what the A-team handed to the B-team after month three, read proposals differently from anyone inside your building. That reading, before signature, is precisely what a brief to the Global Board is for.
Give them the questions, not your annotations. A good firm answers crisply and amends the draft; a firm that responds with charm instead of redrafting has told you something useful before you have spent a euro.
Yes, but the warning signs shift. Large firms carry staffing and leverage-model risk; boutiques carry key-person and capacity risk. The template rows are the same. The answers you should worry about differ.
Use both. Procurement processes are strong on commercial terms and weak on methodology, dependencies and knowledge transfer, which is where consulting engagements actually go wrong. This template covers the ground procurement templates usually cannot.