From Hook to Proposal: Step 2 to Consulting Sales Mastery

How to move from relationship to sales conversation - part 2 of 3 on mastering the art of selling consulting services

Jun 13, 2024

This month, TSC is focusing on sales and business development (BD) skills. It’s a practical look at what it means to be great at consulting BD, tackled in three parts over three weeks, because there are three phases to the sales cycle:

Building Authority: Being known for something specific and starting conversations with the people you want to help,
Consulting: Framing the issue for your client, co-creating an approach to solve it, and writing a compelling story (in the form of a proposal) that helps them make a decision,
Selling: Pitching your solution, handling objections, agreeing commercials, and getting the green light to kick-off the work.

We summarise these in the Honeycomb Consulting BD Pyramid:

This article is focused on the ‘Consulting’ phase. Part 1 covered the ‘Building Authority’ phase (click to read if you haven’t yet) and Part 3 will be about ‘Selling’ to close the deal and get that revenue booked.

Last week we covered how to develop a personal brand, become a visible authority, develop your fishing line, and hook potential clients in. That process involves providing value to others (for free) and developing strong relationships.

But it’s easy to get stuck in the relationship game. Lots of nice chats that don’t lead to a concrete discussion about a proposal. That’s a safe space for many consultants, but unfortunately it doesn’t lead to paid work - the life blood of a consulting firm.

This is where a simple tool from David Fields can be useful: The Turn

Turning from Relationship to Sales conversation

The Turn helps you shift from relationship to sales. Once a prospect has described a problem you (or your firm) can help with, you simply ask:

Would you be open to setting up a separate conversation to explore how we might be able to help you figure out a solution to that?

This phrase has three significant features:

‘Open’ - most people will say yes as they don’t want to appear closed-minded,
‘Separate’ - clearly sets an expectation for what you’ll be discussing, and gives you permission to bring in a colleague with relevant expertise,
‘Explore’ - no commitment, we’re just going to talk about it and see if there’s something interesting there.

The critical final step: Once they say yes, get it in the diary straight away.

Deri Hughes, Honeycomb MD, talks about The Turn in this short explainer video:

The aims of the Consulting phase

Now you are into the ‘Consulting’ phase, and you have 2 key aims:

Firstly, you need to structure the problem so that the client sees it in a new light. They need to feel it’s now solvable when they've previously not been able to find a solution.
Secondly, you need the client to feel confident that you are the right person or firm to help them and that their investment of time and money is going to bring significant benefits.

It can be useful to consider the four hurdles that buyers need to overcome during this process (as helping them do this will mean you achieve your aims).

Solution - they can see that their problem is solvable,
Effort - they understand and accept the amount of time and effort this is going to take them and their team,
Price - they’ve got the money to spend and believe they are going to see return on their investment,
Trust - they trust you are going to keep the promises you’ve made and deliver the solution for the agreed effort and price.

Ease your clients over the hurdles

The first conversation is absolutely critical - this where you start to understand what the client is seeking to achieve and why they haven't achieved it already. You’re then going to co-develop a solution with the client that they're properly bought into. And finally, you're going to codify all of that in a proposal which hits the mark. This can be a pretty quick process if you get really good at it.

Deri provides an example:

We had an inbound inquiry earlier this year from a huge, global company looking for a development program for their Managing Partners. They wanted to put about 1,000 Managing Partners through this program over a few years. We had a 1-hour intro meeting and were able to understand the issues sufficiently that we could write a detailed proposal. That proposal absolutely hit the mark for them on everything but price. Following just one more meeting where we negotiated only around price, we were introduced to their main decision-maker with a firm recommendation that they should go ahead with a pilot program for this work.

This example demonstrates the importance of that first conversation. If you have one meeting and come away without an understanding of the problem, you can't articulate a solution that gets the client over that first hurdle. The effort hurdle is also looming high - it can start to feel like this is just too much effort. You can see how it’s going to take you a lot longer to get them over the line, if indeed you do at all.

However, if like Deri, you can turn one meeting into a proposal that hits the mark on everything but price, you'll be doing pretty well.

Step through the process with STONES

To help you step expertly through this process, we recommend a technique called STONES. This method was developed by Lars Tewes, one of our expert Sales trainers, who has spent 30 years advising on consultative selling approaches.

STONES stands for: Situation, Tomorrow, Obstacles, Now us, Explore solutions, Solidify.

Situation, Tomorrow, and Obstacles should be at the heart of any conversations you are having. These stages involve asking a lot of questions and listening carefully to grow your understanding.

Situation - Where are they today?
Tomorrow - Where would they like to get to? What does the future look like? What benefits will they receive as a result of solving that problem?
Obstacles - Why haven’t they solved this already?

Consider a range of potential obstacles - capability, capacity, political, relational, resources. It's important to understand those because, if you're not tackling the obstacles they haven't been able to overcome, you're not going to get there either.

We have provided here an example first meeting script which may help you get started, if you are unfamiliar with the STONES technique:

Stones Example First Meeting Script

1.48MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Once you've got a clear understanding that they want to talk about how you might help, you can move on to the next stages of STONES.

Now us - Ground yourself as somebody who has the credibility, experience, and expertise to be able to suggest solutions to their problem.
Explore solutions - Have a co-creation conversation about what the best solutions might be. Perhaps you bring in examples that have worked with other clients or brainstorm a structure around a potential solution. All the while, start to test whether or not this is something that is going to work for them.
Solidify - Come away with a very clear next step.

Ideally, that next step will be you putting a proposal together, but it often takes more than one meeting to get there. Perhaps you explored four or five different solutions, and you agree that you'll come back with two different options to consider in a second meeting. Perhaps it becomes clear that budget might be challenged so you need to recut your solutions.

Deri provides an example of this:

A recent client was asking us for a major program, and we understood in the first conversation that they probably didn't have the budget to do everything. So, we laid out what the full ‘bells and whistles’ version would look like and how much it would cost. And we said to them, “There are options around this, it’s modular, but we'll need to have another conversation to figure out exactly what the right fit is for you”. With this particular client, it took another couple of conversations to pin down what was going to be most valuable for them within the budget that they had. We could then refine the exact details of the program we are going to run.

Writing crisp, compelling proposals is an essential element of success at this stage.

In a compelling proposal you articulate the problem they want to solve in their words. You understand the benefits they're going to get from solving that problem, and you position your solution as clearly and convincingly delivering those benefits. You know that the price is going to work for them and the effort is acceptable. You write with clarity, which builds their trust that you are capable of convincing others to take decisions.

In short, you guide them over all four buying hurdles.

When the proposal is good enough to be put to a decision-maker, you move into the third and final phase of the BD process; Selling. That is the focus of next week’s article.