How to write an expert-network brief that gets you the right expert

Most disappointing expert calls are decided long before anyone dials in. They are decided in the brief. A vague brief produces a plausible expert who cannot answer the question that actually matters, and the hour is spent establishing that fact rather than using it.

A good brief is not a long one. It is a specific one. The difference is whether a sourcing team, reading it cold, can picture the person who should be on the call.

Start with the decision, not the topic

"Nigerian fintech" is a topic. "Whether a payment services bank licence is a realistic route to market for a foreign acquirer in the next eighteen months" is a decision. Sourcing against a topic gives you someone who can talk about the sector. Sourcing against a decision gives you someone who has been in the room when that decision was made, or refused.

Say what you will do differently depending on the answer. It sounds excessive, but it changes what the sourcing team looks for. A question that will change a valuation needs someone with commercial exposure. A question that will change a legal structure needs someone who has administered the rule.

Be specific about the seat, not the title

Titles travel badly across markets. The useful specification is the seat: what did this person control, over what period, and in which geography. "Former head of distribution at a tier-two lender in Kenya between 2019 and 2024" is a seat. "Banking expert" is not.

Where you can, describe two or three plausible profiles rather than one. It widens the search without loosening it, and it tells the sourcing team which trade-offs you are willing to make when the ideal person is conflicted or unavailable.

Name the boundaries early

Every serious brief has people who cannot be approached: the target's current employees, the counterparties in a live process, anyone under an obligation that would make the conversation improper. Name them at submission. It is faster to exclude them at sourcing than to discover a conflict after a shortlist has been built, and it prevents an expert being put in a position they should not be in.

The same applies to subject matter. If part of your question touches on a live transaction, say so, so the moderator can scope the conversation before it starts rather than interrupting it halfway through.

Rank your questions

Send five to eight questions, ordered. Not because the call will follow the order, but because the ranking tells the expert what the hour is for. If the first two questions are answered well, the call has succeeded, and both sides know it.

Avoid questions that can be answered from a public filing. They are a poor use of an hour, and they signal to the expert that the preparation was thin.

Say what "good" looks like

One line is enough: "a clear view on whether the licensing route is viable, with the two or three things that would stop it". This gives the sourcing team a test to apply to each candidate: could this person plausibly produce that output.

Give a real timeline

Deadlines shape sourcing decisions. A brief needed in three days is sourced differently from one needed in three weeks: fewer candidates, tighter geography, more reliance on existing relationships. Both are legitimate; they are not the same search. Telling us the deadline is not pressure, it is information.

The test

Read your brief back and ask whether a stranger could name a category of person to call. If they could, it is a brief. If they could only name a subject, it is a topic, and the call will be a general one.