Sales at Scale is a Team Sport
How larger consultancies can build sales capability that doesn't rely on Partners alone
In larger consultancies, the ambition to improve sales performance isn’t in question. What’s more difficult is working out how to do it—especially at scale, across multiple service lines, and without disrupting the client work that pays the bills.
Sales training often falls into the ‘important but not urgent’ category. It’s a priority in theory, but in practice, it competes with the very pressures it’s meant to alleviate: the relentless demands of delivery, the scramble to build pipeline, and the need to convert opportunities before quarter-end.
In large consultancies, sales capability-building tends to face four persistent hurdles:
Diverse service lines: each with different clients, needs, and buying dynamics.
How to scale: who do you train, how much, and how do you do this at scale without diluting impact?
Delivery pressures: which make it hard to schedule and prioritise training.
Leadership bandwidth: where training must compete with the pressure of creating and converting pipeline.
So when we’re asked, '“How do we create a step change in sales performance across a complex consulting business?”, we know the real question is, “How do you swallow the elephant?”
Firms that make meaningful progress in sales capability tend to embrace four key principles in designing their programmes.
1. Design for commonality, allow for difference
At a firm-wide level, some commonality is essential—a shared language, a shared understanding of what “good” looks like, and a common sales philosophy that supports collaboration across teams. These consistent elements also make it possible to deliver training efficiently and repeatedly, and to build collective muscle across the firm.
But, in most large firms, different service lines serve different client types and solve different problems. Sales behaviours must start from how clients actually buy, so that means acknowledging real differences between service lines in buying cycles, decision criteria, and relationship dynamics.
It’s important to recognise that effective sales capability-building can’t assume a one-size-fits-all model. But nor can it afford to fragment into disconnected initiatives. You need both consistency and relevance.
Done well, this dual approach creates a framework that supports consistency without enforcing uniformity. You get the benefits of scale while maintaining the relevance that both makes training stick and delivers real-world results.
2. Treat sales as a team sport
One of the biggest mindset shifts for many firms is recognising that sales isn’t just the job of partners or a handful of senior directors. While accountability for revenue often sits at the top, the actual work of creating pipeline and progressing opportunities must be a collective effort.
That means thinking about sales as a system that involves multiple roles, each contributing in different ways. It also means developing skills early—not waiting until someone has a sales target to teach them how to sell.
The most robust sales development programmes make this explicit. They clarify role expectations across every grade and focus capability-building efforts on six key areas:
Understanding the role expectations in a sales context
Building a mindset that values commercial contribution
Developing and practising core sales skills
Gaining and using relevant knowledge
Using available tools and technology effectively
Maintaining the discipline to consistently do what needs to be done.
By taking this more systemic view, firms can build sales capability over time, rather than expecting people to step-change overnight as they are promoted into a more senior role.
3. Campaigns create focus and momentum
One of the practical challenges in any large firm is scheduling. Delivery takes priority, and training often comes second, if it happens at all.
A more effective approach we’ve seen is to run Learning Campaigns: time-boxed, targeted periods of learning and application tied directly to a business need. Instead of trying to roll out generic training modules, campaigns align development efforts with commercial goals—creating the conditions for people to learn within the flow of their work. (Read more on this here).
A campaign might be built around a specific learning theme (say, improving client conversations) in support of a real business target (such as increasing qualified pipeline for second half). It typically includes a blend of formats—self-serve learning, peer-group sessions, facilitated workshops, and on-the-job application—underpinned by coaching and structured reflection.
What makes this work within a larger firm is the clarity of roles:
Partners define the strategy and lead senior conversations. They often receive training in sales leadership to help them guide the campaign.
Directors and senior managers hold the bulk of opportunity conversations. Targeted development in consultative sales techniques (like the STONES framework) helps make these interactions more effective.
All grades are involved in creating momentum e.g. tapping into their networks, prompting meetings, and supporting conversations. Training in network development and leverage ensures they know how to contribute.
This integrated approach builds a “one team” mindset around sales and ensures the learning effort is directly contributing to business results.
4. Measure what matters
Finally, if you want to demonstrate value and improve over time, you have to design for impact from the outset.
That means thinking beyond attendance or completion rates and looking at indicators that reflect real behavioural change. In practical terms, we often help clients track four categories:
Reach: Who completed the learning activities?
Sentiment: Has their confidence or motivation changed?
Actions: Are they doing things differently as a result?
Impact: What early outcomes or ripple effects are visible?
By linking the outcomes back to specific training interventions, and using pilot campaigns to test and learn more, firms can build a feedback loop that helps them improve the programme as it scales.
It’s complex, but possible
Creating a step change in sales capability across a large consulting firm isn’t about finding a silver bullet. You can’t be expected to swallow that elephant in one go.
There’s no escaping the complexity. But with the right design principles, it’s entirely possible to create a programme that is both scalable and impactful, builds confidence, shifts behaviour, and strengthens commercial performance over time.
You need to start with the right tools and a clear design for a system that can work within the realities of your business. You must embrace what’s shared across your firm, while staying honest about what’s different. You need to plan to build capability not just at the top, but across every level of the firm. And make a mindset shift from ad hoc training towards something more embedded—campaigns that tie learning to real business need, and a measurement approach that helps you learn what’s working.
If you want some help thinking all that through for your firm, I’d be very happy to chat. Do get in touch - colin.mann@honeycombps.co.uk.
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