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?