David A. Fields Consulting Group Ideally, every time your consulting firm achieves a project milestone, you’ve generated so much delight that your client leaps with joy, slathers you with praise and immediately immortalizes your results in an entertaining YouTube short featuring adorable toddlers.
How do you craft a consulting deliverable that compels such love?
Are there characteristics common across the wide variety of consulting firm deliverables that will consistently invoke a positive reaction from your clients?
Undoubtedly.
Below is a checklist that will allow you to dial up your consulting firm’s impact a notch or two before you bestow your deliverables on your eagerly awaiting clients.
The checklist is purposely incomplete, so there’s room for you to add your ideas.
The 9 Attributes of a Perfect Consulting Deliverable
Right-Side Up
Your deliverable is about your client, not you or your firm.
It gives the information they need, the way they need it.
Their success metrics, expectations, cultural nuances, communication style, and, most importantly, their benefit all take priority over yours when you design your output.
☐ Is your deliverable highlighting your work or your client’s results?
Told as a Story
Every consulting deliverable is a story.
It articulates your ultimate point, message, or thesis, and provides an easy-to-follow path from where the client was to where you’ve taken the client.
Story does not mean mystery novel!
Lead your clients logically to a conclusion by offering a clear summary and roadmap at the start, milestones along the way and a practical narrative throughout.
☐ What’s your deliverable’s story?
Clearly Communicated
Your story will only resonate with the client if the way you tell it is understandable, unambiguous and compelling.
Eschew ponderous, stilted, pretentious language.
That’s for professors, not consultants.
Make generous use of metaphors, frameworks and graphics.
Edit your work mercilessly, and embrace silence in all its forms. Often saying and showing less communicates more.
☐ Is your story plainly stated and illustrated so that it’s crystal clear to your client?
Reassuring
Your clients risk their money, time, and reputation when they hire your consulting firm.
Your deliverables should relieve any doubt about investing in your consulting firm’s work.
☐ What will buoy your client’s confidence in the deliverable?
Reputation Enhancing
Reassuring clients addresses the “You won’t harm me” point of the Trust Triangle.
Meet the “You’ll help me” point by making your client look good to their colleagues and, especially, those whose opinions they value.
☐ Will your client be proud to show off your deliverable?
Anchored and Challenging
The best consulting outputs simultaneously tell clients, “It’s a good thing you hired us” and “You’re smart too”.
Many consulting firms focus their deliverables on what the client needs to change: thinking, behavior, processes, systems, etc.
However, if your deliverable isn’t anchored in what your client already knows, they’ll reject your clever breakthroughs and game-changing revelations.
Consider the ratio of new and challenging information (“Aha!”) to confirmatory information (“I knew that”).
☐ Do you have the right challenge ratio in your deliverable?
Collaborative
Results matter, of course, but your clients’ experience during the creation of those results often holds as much or more weight.
Partner with your clients via an open, engaging process.
When they collaborate in the construction of your outputs, your clients will value your work and your consulting firm more highly.
☐ Are you building your deliverable with your client?
Forward Looking
Your deliverables are one step in the clients’ journey.
What’s next for them?
Ensure your deliverables always suggest the next steps.
Pro tip: your client’s next steps shouldn’t all require a follow-on engagement with your consulting firm.
☐ Does your deliverable recommend the client’s post-project actions?
What Else?
There are more attributes to the perfect consulting deliverable.
What has delighted your clients in the past?
What else makes a perfect deliverable and should be included on this checklist?
Text and images are © 2026 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
Love this David! The simplicity and clarity make it appear to be a very simple tool to integrate into a deliverable design and QAQC process. Looking forward to testing it out!
Than you!
Perfect, Kim. I agree with you that keeping the checklist simple makes it much more usable on an ongoing basis. Good on you for putting the idea into practice!
Very helpful David, I think you created a perfect deliverable. Pressed for coming up with a 10th consideration I’d say to tie it back to the desired outcomes from the proposal.
You hit the nail on the head, Christian. An “obvious” attribute I left out is results! A deliverable that doesn’t actually deliver what you promised your client is far from perfect.
Bonus chocolate points to you, Christian.
I love this checklist. I’d add that design is also a way of communicating Right-Side Up thinking. Integrating their logo, using their brand colors (rather than mine), and formatting the document to look like others they’re already using are easy ways to do this. These steps signal that I’m paying attention and that the deliverable is tailored to their specific needs and challenges. When I make something look and feel familiar, I remove a barrier to the audience’s engagement and comprehension.
Very interesting addition to the checklist, Rebecca. Your overall point of making the deliverable easy and quick to digest holds a lot of weight. Design is important.
My guess is many firms would object to removing their own branding from deliverables–that branding serves as a reminder of who created the value and also, importantly, protects IP owned by the consultancy. However, perhaps you’re talking about keeping your consulting firm’s logo and merely changing the colors to match the client. Some marketers may object, but if the big movie studios are willing to color-shift their logos to fit the theme of a movie (a trend that started, I think, with the WB logo in The Matrix), then perhaps it’s okay for our consulting firms!
Thanks for the very smart contribution, Rebecca!