This is the recording from a recent Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training webinar. If you’d rather listen than watch, the audio can be accessed as a podcast through all major podcast apps instead. Just search ‘The Skilled Consultant podcast’.
Sales shouldn’t feel like a dirty word — but for many consultants, it does.
In this interactive taster session,
Whether you’re a manager learning to bring in work for the first time, or an experienced consultant wanting to sharpen your sales conversations, this session offers three clear tools you can apply immediately.
Reframing the Sales Process
Deri introduces the Consulting Sales Pyramid:
Building Authority — becoming known and trusted for solving a specific client problem.
Consulting — listening, advising and co-creating solutions with the client.
Selling — closing the work, which should feel almost frictionless if the first two are done well.
He then shares three practical tools which you can put to work straight away.
Tool 1: Your ‘Fishing Line’
Many consultants struggle to articulate what they do in a way that resonates.
Enter the Fishing Line: a short, memorable phrase that states who you help and the problem you solve. For example:
We help consulting team leaders develop exceptional teams.
Tool 2: The Turn
Moving from a friendly conversation to a structured sales discussion often feels awkward. The Turn is a simple, disarming question:
Are you open to setting up a separate conversation to explore ways you could address those challenges?
Learn how to use it why it works.
Tool 3: STONES
Finally, Deri shares STONES, Honeycomb’s proven structure for a consultative selling conversation. STONES can be used to guide client meetings and write proposals that hit the mark first time:
Situation: Understand where the client is now.
Tomorrow: Explore what better looks like.
Obstacles: Uncover what’s stopping them.
Now Us: Share how you can help — briefly.
Explore Solutions: Co-create what could work.
Solidify: Agree next steps and keep momentum.
What Next?
The core message is that selling in consulting is not about flashy pitches — it’s about trust, relevance and making it easy for your client to buy. The tools shared in this training taster are just a few of the many Honeycomb use in their coveted sales and BD training programmes.
If you want to explore more, this series of articles is a great place to go:
Building Authority: Step 1 to Consulting Sales Mastery
From Hook to Proposal: Step 2 to Consulting Sales Mastery
Proposals, pitches, and the primal brain: Step 3 to Consulting Sales Mastery
Share this post