Mastering client expectations is one of the most crucial skills in management consulting.
Well-managed client relationships lead to better results, long-term trust, and increased retention.
When expectations are misaligned, projects can quickly become derailed, leading to frustration, missed deadlines, and even scope creep, continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project’s scope.
It’s important to strike the right balance between pleasing the client and setting ground rules from the get go to avoid running into these issues.
In this article, we explore the key strategies consultants must employ to manage client expectations. Consultants must proactively manage expectations by documenting them from the outset, maintaining ongoing communication with the client, assigning clear ownership for managing expectations, and preparing for scope changes and additional requests in order to consistently ‘over-deliver’.
1. Setting Clear Expectations
The foundation for effective client management is establishing clear expectations from the beginning. Before any project kickoff, consultants must have in-depth discussions with the client about the compensation, scope, deliverables, timelines, and potential challenges associated with the project. These details should be documented in a formal statement of work or contract, leaving no room for ambiguity. When both parties have an understanding of what is included, and what is not, it prevents misunderstanding down the road.
A formal agreement can protect intellectual property (IP) developed by consultants. For example, clients with high privacy requirements will request that consultants sign numerous NDAs. In this context, it is important to have a formal contract that ensures that the client cannot claim IP developed by consultants as their own. This ensure that consultants are free to use these resources in projects for other clients.
Additionally, formal agreements help consulting firms to utilize the services of experts. Documenting expectations early on ensures more accurate staffing. While consultants are often generalists, those who excel in specific areas are frequently assigned to similar projects where their expertise is most relevant. According to ManPower Group, “companies that develop and implement SoWs can identify exactly what work needs to be done and look for who can do the work most efficiently”.
2. Maintaining Consistent Communication
While setting clear expectations early on is necessary, regular check-ins with the client ensures that consultants remain aligned with their clients’ expectations. For instance, during a consulting project to refresh the sales tools for a Fortune 500 company, my team at a boutique management consulting firm met with the leaders of six departments on a weekly basis. These check-ins helped us make sure that the changes we were making were consistent across all six verticals, and gave us ample time to address any concerns. Establishing clear communication channels — whether through weekly meetings, email updates, or project management dashboards — ensures that clients always have visibility into the progress of a project.
Providing access to project tracking tools can also enhance transparency. During this transformation project, our team maintained a shared folder on the client side filled with key sales deliverables such as scorecards, scenarios, value statements, and blueprint waste assessments, so the client could include their input every step of the way. When clients can visually see milestones, upcoming deadlines, and potential risks, they feel more in control of the process. The more informed a client feels, the less likely they are to request sudden changes or become frustrated with the pace of the project. This is especially true of longer-term projects such as transformation, governance, and social impact efforts, where the pace tends to be slower.
3. Assigning Ownership for Managing Expectations
Despite formal documentation and client check-ins, it’s not uncommon for communication errors to occur. On a recent consulting project for a large client, a nonprofit religious organization, my team had the opportunity to build out a comprehensive tracking system to analyze the user’s journey. We developed a detailed research framework, only to realize later that the client had expected a much simpler market research effort. To address this misalignment, the partner and engagement manager stepped into the project to adjust the scope, manage client expectations, and reallocate internal resources. The partner represented the team, so that we could quickly regroup to ensure the client’s actual needs were met within budget.
There should always be a designated person responsible for handling expectation-related conversations, particularly when the client’s demands start to shift beyond the original scope. Typically, the most experienced and tenured consultant should take on this role, as they have the credibility, experience, and authority to handle difficult discussions.
4. Managing Scope Changes
Even with the best planning, projects often evolve, and scope changes become inevitable when a client raises concerns or makes new requests.
It’s important to approach any discussion about changes carefully and tactfully. Clients should understand that any undocumented changes to the original scope may come with additional costs, extended timelines, or shifts in priorities. Thus, when a client requests additional work, the first response should never be an automatic “yes”. Instead, consultants should assess whether the request is necessary, how it impacts the overall project, and what trade-offs need to be made.
One of the biggest pieces of advice is to “under promise, and overdeliver”. Over-delivering when there’s time can strengthen client relationships and reinforce the consultant’s value.
If there is bandwidth to go above and beyond without disrupting the core project, doing so can enhance trust and make future engagements more likely. However, when additional requests are made, consultants must be honest about what is achievable within a given timeframe.
During the sales tools refresh I worked on, I had planned to over-deliver by including specific examples of how sales team members could navigate certain scenarios. However, we had only committed to providing general example scenarios. The feedback I received from my manager was that this was a great way to overdeliver, but wouldn’t be helpful given the time crunch we were under. If overdelivering becomes necessary, adding extra firm resources or adjusting priorities can help meet urgent needs without compromising a project’s overall success.
The bottom line
Managing client expectations in management consulting is not just about delivering results — it’s about ensuring that clients have a clear, realistic, and evolving understanding of what those results will be.
By setting clear expectations from the outset, maintaining open lines of communication, assigning ownership of expectation management, defining a process for scope changes and balancing flexibility with realism, consultants can create a more structured and successful working relationship with clients.
The best consultants don’t just meet expectations or exceed them — they manage and shape them, ensuring that clients feel heard, understood, and confident in the project’s direction.
Elle Cheney is a student at Brigham Young University with an interest in management consulting. She enjoys tennis, hiking, creative writing, travel, exploring new cultures, and mentoring K-12 students.
Image: DALL-E 3
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