# Engagement letter

The contract that hires an advisor, setting the fee and the term.

Sellers sign one before a listing goes live, and buyers sign one when they hire representation of their own. A handful of clauses decide almost everything else in it: what is charged and when, how long the exclusivity runs, and what tail survives after the letter ends. Read those before the rest, because together they answer the two questions that matter later, which are what this costs and who has to be paid if the business sells a year from now to somebody the advisor once emailed.

In numbers: A twelve-month engagement at a $10,000 monthly [retainer](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/retainer) costs $120,000 before a single dollar of success fee is earned.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/engagement-letter
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt