Five rounds is not thoroughness. It is one decision deferred four times, and the work gets quieter with each deferral.
Unlimited revisions sound generous and behave like a trap. Without a limit, nobody has to decide, so nobody does. The work drifts toward whatever offends the fewest people in the room.
Name the rounds in the proposal
Two rounds, written into the contract, with a definition: a round is one consolidated set of comments from a named decision-maker, delivered once.
The definition does more work than the number. Most overruns are not extra rounds, they are three people sending contradictory notes on different days.
Without a limit, nobody has to decide, so nobody does.
Present with a recommendation
Three options with no view is an invitation to average them. We present what we would do and why, and show the alternatives as the reasoning behind it.
Clients hire a studio for judgement. Withholding it to seem neutral is the most expensive kind of politeness.
Write down what a third round costs
Sometimes a project genuinely changes: a merger, a new market, a name that will not clear. Price a third round in advance and it becomes a decision rather than a grievance.
On the restaurant merger this kept an opening date. The scope changed in week four, the cost was already on the page, and nobody spent a week negotiating.