The consulting market rewards firms that sell senior expertise and deliver junior capacity. The gap is legal, common, and entirely avoidable with better questions during selection.
Ask who is on the team, by name
Named individuals with named allocations, written into the statement of work. If a firm cannot commit to that, the people in the room are a sales asset, not a delivery one.
Ask what happens if the benefit does not appear
A firm confident in its estimates will accept a portion of fees tied to the outcome. The answer to this question tells you how much they believe their own business case.
Ask for the handover artifact list up front
Documentation, runbooks, architecture decisions and training plans should be listed as deliverables at proposal stage. If they appear only in the final phase, dependency is the business model.
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