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Report structures

The consulting session report.

A consulting report keeps decisions in a section of their own, apart from the discussion. The four sections are discussion, decisions, action items and next steps, and the decisions section is the one the client quotes back six months later.

What was discussed and what was decided are different things, and a consulting engagement goes wrong at exactly the point where the client remembers one as the other. The record both sides keep is the only protection either party has, and it is worth more to the consultant than to the client, because the consultant is the one who will be asked why the invoice looks like that.

01The four sections

The four names this kind of work gets, and nothing to fill in.

  1. 01Discussion
  2. 02Decisions
  3. 03Action items
  4. 04Next steps

You are not choosing this from a gallery. You answer one question when you sign up and these four become the shape every comes back in. Any of them can be renamed, added to or removed, and your version is what you get from then on.

02A finished report

Not a blank table. The document, written out.

Invented client: a fourteen person software firm, pricing engagement, workshop 2 of 4.

Discussion
The two pricing options on the table and what each does to the March renewal conversation. The sales lead's concern that a single price removes the room he uses to close, and the counter that the room is where the margin goes.
Decisions
One price, not two tiers. Decided by the founder in the session with the sales lead dissenting, which is recorded here because it was said out loud and will matter in March.
Action items
Consultant: draft the four renewal emails, one per account, by the 14th. Founder: confirm the number with the board before the 12th. Sales lead: list the three accounts he expects to push back and why.
Next steps
Read the four emails together next session and cut whichever one is apologising for the price.

Every person, session and number above was written for this page. No real client is shown. The four section names are not samples: they are the sections the product fills in today.

03What clients ask for

Three things the reader of this report is actually looking for.

  • A record they can circulate internally to people who were not in the room.
  • Who owns each action and by when, since an action item without a name is a suggestion.
  • A clean account of what was decided and by whom, for the meeting six months later where somebody says we never agreed that.

04What goes wrong

Four mistakes, and each one costs a renewal rather than a mark.

  • One long narrative. A client scanning for their own action item should find it in five seconds.
  • Leaving a dissent out because it was awkward. The dissent is the most valuable line in the document.
  • Actions with no owner, which is how a decision becomes nobody's job.
  • Writing it as advice rather than as a record, which quietly turns a note into a deliverable you did not agree to produce.

05How it gets written

Five steps, and four of them take no time at all.

  1. 01Record the session

    Record on a phone, a laptop or the call software you already work on, with everybody in the session having agreed out loud first.

  2. 02Upload the recording

    Upload the file when the session ends, or paste a transcript if your call software already made one.

  3. 03Read the draft

    The draft comes back in about a minute, in the four sections: Discussion, Decisions, Action items, Next steps.

  4. 04Correct it

    Change anything that is wrong and add anything the recording missed. Nothing goes anywhere until you have done this.

  5. 05Send it

    It goes to the client under your own name and stays on their own page with every report before it.

06Where this came from

Two sources outside this company.

Nearby

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Bring one recording and read what comes back in these four sections. No account and no card, and the 7 day trial needs no card either.