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Don't approach the task at hand with a typical salesman mentality. Approach it as if you are building a long term win-win relationship. Understand your target's pain points, offer them solutions through your services, demonstrate results through meaningful metrics, and always ask for feedback. Be patient during the sales cycle, follow up, and build long term relationships with small steps and potentially bigger ones. Sales cycles can sometimes be arduous and long (and are taking longer nowadays). Most importantly don't ruin your reputation for the sake of a sale if you and your team can't confidently deliver an engagement with success. Good luck.
If you are this deep in your career and don’t like selling, be realistic with yourself and stick to what you enjoy and are best at. In consulting, the only way to be really secure and successful long term as a partner is to sell.
My issue/concern is around what it's like on the other side. Having spent 15+ years as a client who bought $1-3m / year in services, I (like all my colleagues) really hated getting sold to.
A consultant may have a relationship with a client exec. However, most don't realize that the same exec has relationships with dozens of consultants and dozens more are trying to break down the door / get introduced. On any given week, I had 3-5 requests for breakfast/lunch/dinner/drinks/coffee/golf/etc... and I was just an SVP.
Every email about "share our perspectives on xyz.." or "chat about your concerns regarding xyz" was clearly an attempt to start a discussion leading to a sell.
Perhaps I need to just get over my distaste but to this day it's something that bothers me.
BCG1 - I wish I could say I had a system or approach to how to deal with it but it was nearly random. One time I got an invitation to play at Winged Foot from a MBB partner I barely knew. What golfer says no to that? A few weeks later, I needed help with business plan for a business we needed to spinout. I called him up. He delivered a very impressive proposal very quickly and I didn't bother to call anyone else.
He probably looked at the win as good BD skills and relationship building. I looked at it as luck. Had my project come up 6 months later, I doubt I would have called him.
That's my fear. I know the skills and techniques to build relationships. I just find it distasteful and recognize that success comes from luck and timing as much as it comes from effective BD.
Go for it!
All about networking. Reach out to them. Ask them about their business, what are they seeing in the marketplace, where are they struggling, etc. Look for their problems and offer up solutions.
OP - I've been on both sides (thankfully back to the client side now). When in sales mode, I think the best thing to do when approaching your contacts is to NOT sell to them. Keep the relationships warm. Give advice on what you know, if the topic comes up. Tell em the hard truth when they need it (bonus points if that truth DOESNT financially benefit you), and build trust. When a problem comes up, I always call the folks that I trust. Your sales cycle might be long at first, but the wins you do get will be worth it.
It's about being there when you don't need something from them that makes a client feel good about working with you. It's the jerks who only call when they've got a new offering, or see something in the news and try to "save the day" that get ignored.
Sage advice SC1
Don’t do it. Seen it fail a hundred times. You will almost definitely be miserable.
Some firms have Delivery Partner.
I came from a very technical background where I absolutely despised selling. I was planning to leave consulting after making SM, but have been here through PMD once I realized that effective PMDs don’t sell. My clients think I’m the smartest person in the room and know that I’ve got their backs. As they rose through the ranks, so did I. So, I do go pitch RfPs, occasionally, but most of my volume is old relationships that ask me to put a proposal together once I help them think through what it is they actually need. A lot of investment of my time to pulse the market and provide things that help to make them more successful, zero time doing traditional “selling”. And that actually comes pretty naturally. My recommendation is that you stay in a “safe place” while you’ve the opportunity, but put some wins on the board over a good year or so to prove to yourself you can (in whatever way is most natural for you). Then go for that next level role. And maybe you discover you can’t be successful at the next level, and that’s cool too. You’ve mitigated your risk.