Selling a big consultancy project - at the highest levels
Selling a big consultancy project - at the highest levels—is one of the most difficult, high-pressure jobs in business.
Not because “sales is hard” 🥱.
Because it’s not one skill. It’s a full-stack craft.
Here’s what you’re actually doing, often at the same time:
Strategy: picking the right problems, shaping a point of view, defining what “better” even means
Planning: designing a credible path from today to outcomes, sequencing work, surfacing assumptions
Discovery: asking uncomfortable questions, spotting the real constraint, diagnosing politics as well as process
Qualification: deciding not to chase, setting boundaries, protecting focus
Stakeholder mapping: understanding power, incentives, blockers, champions, and silent vetoes
Value construction: making outcomes commercial, quantifying impact, linking to exec priorities
Deal architecture: scope, options, packaging, pricing logic, risk allocation
Proposal writing: clarity, narrative, evidence, specificity, “why us” without cringe
Negotiation: trading not conceding, holding margin, managing procurement games
Rapport & trust: credibility, warmth, presence, consistency under pressure
Multi-threading: keeping 6 conversations moving in one organisation without dropping any political plates
Listening: paying deep attention, hearing what’s said, what’s not said, and what can’t be said
Leadership: aligning your team, keeping standards, making calls with imperfect data
Resilience: getting ignored, delayed, ghosted, “re-org’d”, and still showing up
Networking/outreach: building pipelines the slow way (relationships) and the fast way (systems)
Social selling: writing, speaking, showing your thinking in public, building authority - without performing
Delivery alignment: selling what you can actually deliver, and delivering what you sold
And then someone says to you, “I can teach you all of that in two-days.”
Think … really? ⚠️
Of course you can absolutely learn some components and base level skills quickly.
But mastery here is reps + feedback + judgement - over years - with real deals at stake.
That’s where on-demand mentoring works.
If you sell complex work, what skill do you think is most under-rated: initial engagement, qualification, stakeholder mapping, negotiation… or the emotional control to stay calm when a deal wobbles?