Over the past 5 years, I’ve assembled nearly 100 proposals, many of which relied on some level of standardization of offerings. When the team was smaller, I secured numerous deals using this approach. When the company was acquired, my role changed, and I subsequently defined a new set of core offerings. Two of them, Modernization as a Service and FinOps, were useful as offering constructs.
While the leadership narrative focused heavily on offerings, I was really operating within a sales-led system. With this understanding in retrospect, there is one thing I must do differently when contributing in this type of environment:
Put yourself in the seller’s shoes.
The seller’s primary objective is to close revenue rapidly with minimal friction. They frequently have limited time per deal, limited technical depth, and are incentivized on pipeline size and deal closure. From a purely behavioural perspective, they’ll use whatever works fastest and engage SMEs/leads only when technical depth is needed to advance the deal.
While it’s effective to base solutions around a single seller persona, the reality is that not all sellers are the same. Some sellers focus primarily on relationship building and on encouraging deal momentum. Since they lack technical depth, they can benefit from single-slide narratives and pre-packaged deal pathways.
By contrast, solution sellers can engage in structured conversations beyond the initial relationship. They have limited depth in emerging technical areas, so they need modular solution breakdowns and easy ways to handle client objections.
Finally, a partner-led seller collaborates with hyperscaler partners like AWS, GCP, and Snowflake. They are heavily reliant upon partner narratives, co-sell opportunities, and funding methods.
While each seller’s needs differ slightly, they all go through the same sales process, where each step introduces some level of undesirable friction:
- Stage 1: Initial Conversation
- Stage 2: Discovery
- Stage 3: Solution Framing
- Stage 4: Client Validation
- Stage 5: Closing
The initial conversation is perhaps the most important stage, as this is where first impressions really count. At a fundamental level, conducting research before any conversations occur is highly recommended. With this in mind, the seller can benefit from short positioning statements and industry-specific triggers that ideally align directly with the client’s immediate needs.
The discovery, or qualification stage, is where a certain level of inquiry is needed to understand what’s ultimately required. The goal is to connect the client’s challenge to existing offerings. Remember, a consulting environment can be sales-led, but solutions still play a key role. Thus, sellers need the ability to pose diagnostic questions to orient towards a specific offering or a tailored combination.
The solution framing stage is where discussions can become overly technical or, on the flip side, too vague. To empower sellers (and yourself as a participating technical SME or practice lead), you must create a multi-part narrative that describes the business need, the desired business outcome, the core capability required, the delivery process, and a high-level architecture to streamline the discussion. Such visuals are particularly beneficial when discussing and exploring complex technical subjects.
The fourth stage, client validation, is where the client will likely ask whether the organization can actually deliver what’s being proposed. This is where demonstrating credibility is extremely important. Such credibility can be exemplified using case studies, product demonstrations, or even early discussions with delivery-level SMEs.
The closing stage can introduce two sources of friction: pricing & scope. To reduce this friction, it can help to build pre-scoped packages (e.g., SKUs), with directional pricing bands and clearly defined delivery models.
Given this context and, in part, based on my experience to date, the best decision I can make is to build a system that sets the sales team up for success: a seller enablement system. In my next post, I’ll share the details of exactly what that consists of.