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Guide
Five things that make a brief useful
Written from the receiving end, because a good brief produces a sharper proposal and a considerably more accurate number, and most briefs make both harder.
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- Most useful
- The recurring objection
- Least useful
- A list of deliverables
- Always send
- Current material
- Always say
- What has already failed
What to send
The objection or blocker
One sentence describing what keeps happening. It locates the problem faster than any document and it is rarely where the company thinks it is.
Your current material
Website, brochure, presentation, a recent quotation, a listing. Not curated. The version actually in use.
What has been tried
Including what failed and why you think so. Nobody will judge you and it prevents a proposal that repeats it.
Who decides
One person, a committee, a headquarters in another country. This changes the shape of the engagement more than the scope does.
A rough budget range
So the proposal is for something you can buy rather than a fantasy that wastes two weeks on both sides.
The deadline that actually matters
A trade fair, a launch window, a board meeting. Real constraints improve proposals.
What to leave out
A list of deliverables. If you already know you need eight pages and a video, you want a supplier rather than a consultant, and a production agency will give you better value.
Three pages of confidentiality preamble before any description of the problem. Sign an NDA, then describe the situation.
The phrase we want to be a premium brand with nothing following it. Everyone wants that. What matters is what you can evidence that a competitor cannot.
If you do not know what you need
Which is the normal situation, and saying so plainly is more useful than inventing a scope.
An assessment across six areas, delivered in writing, is the usual answer. It is a small fixed piece of work and it stands alone.
Several clients have taken the assessment away and acted on it themselves, which is a perfectly good outcome.
Questions overseas teams ask
Should we run a formal RFP?
For a large multi-vendor programme, reasonably. For positioning or brand work, an RFP usually produces proposals written to the document rather than to the problem, and the better consultants often decline them.
How many partners should we approach?
Two or three properly briefed beats six briefed thinly. Proposal quality is roughly proportional to the access you give.
Should the brief be in English?
Yes, for an overseas partner. A translated brief loses precision exactly where precision matters, and I would rather have your imperfect English than a polished translation of it.
Send the objection, not the brief
One sentence about what keeps happening, plus your current material. That is genuinely enough for a first conversation.
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Kunal Waghmare · Padmavati Hills, Mokai Vasti, Bavdhan, Pune, Maharashtra 411021, India
office@quiamo.com · +91 90216 02686 · English