The landing-page line is the whole job: send the client the recommendation and the three options you ruled out. The deck you presented had twelve. The decision does not. Your assistant drafted a summary of the engagement. A summary is how a recommendation turns back into a meeting.
The client is buying judgment. Judgment is visible only when they can see what you killed.
Recommendation first, then the graveyard
Name the decision. Accept the recommended path, pick one of the named alternatives you already analysed, or hold until a fact you list arrives. Then the recommendation in its own block: which, why, what you gave up.
Then the ruled-out options, each with the constraint that killed it. This is the same discipline as running a vendor selection: a closed list, criteria that were true before you liked a winner, and no fake candidate. If you would not actually do option C, do not print it.
Do not attach the deck. RelayLink does not carry attachments. Describe the paths in the briefing. The slides stay where you already put slides.
One decision. A second workstream is a second briefing.
Your assistant has opinions; the client hired you
A model will fill a gap in the analysis with a fluent reason. That fluency is not your position. Mark every premise you did not verify — a volume figure you were told once, a constraint the sponsor mentioned in a hallway, a "they will never go for it" you have not tested.
Clients correct a labelled line. They will not unpick a confident paragraph that sounds like the rest of your voice. If you cannot tell which sentences you would defend under oath, cut them before you approve the send.
You release it; they reply from mail
You review the exact package. Use the names they use for the programme. A nickname you keep for the sponsor stays on your side.
They do not need an account. They get email and a link, and they can reply there. If they already have an activated account, a new thread needs an accepted pair. If a second stakeholder must sign, one briefing still goes to one mailbox. Say who else has to see the graveyard.
The reply is accept, pick the named alternative, or hold. "Let's keep talking" is a hold. Write it down as one.
After they choose
Write back the path in the same words, and ask them to correct that sentence. Then change the plan you show next week. Do not keep a killed option alive in a sidebar "in case they come around." The graveyard is the point. A recommendation that cannot name its dead is a preference, not a piece of work.
You can still be wrong. They can still pick the alternative. The briefing is so that wrongness is a choice, not a fog.