Client Handover Pack.
A reality audit for the first two weeks of any engagement. Structured so that the gaps are as visible as the answers, because the gaps are what will hurt you in month three.
Whether you have enough reality about this client to commit to anything at all.
The browser version keeps everything on your device. Nothing you type is sent to aFactor.
What has to be true first.
- At least one scheduled conversation with someone who owns the commercial outcome, not only the marketing contact.
- Read-only access, or a promise of it, to whatever analytics and ad accounts exist.
- Any prior agency deck, audit or strategy document. Ask for the ones that did not work as well.
- Two uninterrupted hours. This is not a form to complete between meetings.
Its stated limits.
- It will not tell you whether to take the client. It will tell you what you would be taking on.
- It will not survive being filled in alone at your desk. The value is in the conversation it forces.
- It does not replace a contract. A signed reality sheet is a shared understanding, not a legal instrument.
- It cannot fix a client who will not answer. If three sections stay empty after two attempts, that is your finding.
8 sections, and what each one makes you write down.
Commercial reality
- What is actually sold
- How the money works
- Fulfilment ceiling
- What acquisition currently costs
Decision rights and stakeholders
- Name and role
- What they decide
- Can they veto?
- Have you met them?
- Who signs off creative, and how long does that take
- Who is not in the room but will have an opinion later
- What is the slowest approval you should plan around
History and prior attempts
- What was tried
- When
- What was concluded
- Why it stopped
- The story the client tells about why previous work failed
- What you suspect actually happened
Access and asset inventory
- Asset or access
- Owner
- Promised on
- Received on
- Status
- Who legally owns each account
Constraints and non-negotiables
- Constraint type
- The reality
- How firm is it?
Success definition, and the measurement it rests on
- What the client says success looks like
- What that translates into as a number, over what period
- Can that number be measured today?
- Metric that matters
- Where it comes from
- Do we trust it?
- Gap to close
Risk register and exit triggers
- Risk observed
- Likelihood
- What it would cost us
- Early warning sign
- Conditions under which this engagement should be renegotiated
- Conditions under which it should end
The Engagement Reality Sheet
- Line
- Agreed position
- Name and role
- Signature
- Date
Questions the template makes you answer.
- Which of the seven sections is thinnest, and what does that thinness tell you about how this client operates?
- What did they state with confidence that you have seen no evidence for?
- What are you being asked to be accountable for that you do not control?
- If this engagement fails in six months, which line on this page will turn out to have been the cause?
What you are left holding.
A one-page Engagement Reality Sheet, signed by both sides, plus the completed pack behind it as the working record. This is portfolio-eligible. A handover pack with honest blanks, a named risk that later materialised, and a signed success definition demonstrates more professional judgment than a campaign screenshot.
Published open. Copy it, adapt it, use it on client work. If you pass it on, keep the attribution line on it.
Sixty-five instruments, eighteen published open.
Each one names the decision it protects, states what it will not do, and ends in something you could defend six months later.