A $2,000 package and a $40,000 engagement aren’t the same sale.
The larger one runs across several conversations. More than one person is often involved in the decision making process. There’s usually a proposal, sometimes a procurement process, and a longer gap between interest and signature. The skills that close a small offer quickly are rarely the ones that close a large one.
Here’s how the sale actually works at this size, step by step.
Pushing for a decision in one conversation is usually a mistake
At this level the decision forms across a sequence. Each conversation either advances the sale or quietly ends it. Your job in any given conversation is to earn the next step. Sometimes that next step is the close. More often it’s agreeing when you’ll meet again, settled before the current conversation ends.
This is what my framework, the Selling Staircase, is built around. Five steps, and an invitation at every one of them. Nobody climbs on their own. You invite your prospect to the next step, and they accept.
Deals rarely die from a no. They die from a conversation that ended without a next step.
Step 1: Introduction
At this deal size, most introductions come through referral or reputation rather than cold outreach. You’re rarely starting from zero.
This is an advantage, and it creates a trap. When someone arrives warm, it’s tempting to skip straight to what you do. Slow down. A referred prospect still needs to understand why you specifically, and you still need to understand what they’re looking to accomplish.
The invitation: a real conversation, scheduled, with a stated purpose.
Step 2: Curiosity
This is the most commonly missed step on the Selling Staircase. Most consultants either don’t know how to create curiosity, or they never think to try. They move straight from introduction to explaining what they do, and the conversation flattens before it starts.
Curiosity is what makes someone want to keep talking. It isn’t a pitch.
The move here is to say something specific enough about their situation that they lean in and ask a question. Generalities about your process don’t do this. An observation about their particular problem does.
Watch for buying signals and act on them immediately. When someone asks what working together looks like, or mentions timing, or starts using “we” about your work, this is the signal. The most common error is noticing it and doing nothing, because acknowledging it feels pushy. Missing it costs far more than naming it.
The invitation: a deeper conversation about their situation.
Step 3: Discovery
This is where five-figure sales are won and lost.
Ask more than you explain. Your expertise is the reason they’re talking to you. It’s also the thing most likely to sink the conversation, because the instinct is to demonstrate value by explaining. At this deal size, over-explaining reads as uncertainty, and it turns discovery into free consulting.
Things worth understanding before you write anything down:
- What is most important to them?
- What are they looking to invest?
- What criteria will they use to decide which consultant to move forward with?
- Who else is involved in the decision, and what matters to that person?
- What does the decision process look like, including timing?
- What does a good outcome look like, in their words?
The criteria question matters more than people expect. A proposal that visibly answers the criteria your prospect named is far harder to compare away on price.
Expertise questions. There’s a skill underneath this list that I teach as expertise questions. Rather than telling a prospect how experienced you are, you ask questions that plant seeds about your expertise, make that expertise relevant to their situation, and make you the easy choice. Done well, you aren’t claiming competence. Your prospect is noticing it.
The invitation: permission to put together a proposal, with a date attached.
Step 4: Proposal
A proposal written before you understand the decision tends to get compared on price, because price is the only part the reader can evaluate without context. So learn what you can first.
That said, a proposal isn’t the end of a conversation. It’s often the start of one. Your prospect needs something concrete to react to. They come back and tell you they like this part, they want to change that part, can you adjust here. This is how the conversation moves forward, and refusing to put something in front of them does not serve either of you.
When a prospect arrives without much information, you still may want to write the proposal. The goal is to earn their business, and the proposal is one step in that process.
A proposal at this size does a few things well. It restates their situation in their language, closely enough that they recognise it. It names the outcome rather than listing your activities. It sets a clear scope, including what isn’t included. And it gives a price without apology or padding.
Always schedule the circle-back call before you send it. A proposal reviewed together is a conversation. A proposal sent alone is a document waiting to be judged on price, and it can’t answer a single question.
The invitation: the circle-back call, on the calendar, before the proposal leaves your hands.
Step 5: Close
This is the second most commonly mishandled step on the Selling Staircase.
Most people lay out a perfectly good offer and then never get closing language out of their mouth. No decision gets put in front of the prospect, so the prospect doesn’t make one. The conversation ends politely and nothing happens.
Usually this isn’t a skills gap. It’s discomfort with the selling conversation, or with the money conversation, and it shows up as giving your prospect an easy out.
Use closing language. Then stop talking and let them respond first. The discipline is the silence after you ask. Most people fill it, and filling it’s how you talk yourself out of a sale you had already made.
Expect objections and treat them as information rather than resistance. An objection usually means someone is still engaged and is telling you what is unresolved. Price objections are frequently not about price. They are about confidence in the outcome.
Following up without chasing
Between a proposal and a decision there’s usually a wait, and this is where most consultants go quiet or go anxious.
Following up works when it carries something. A relevant example, a clarification, a note that addresses something they raised. Following up fails when it only carries pressure, and “just checking in” carries nothing at all.
When you set the next step during the conversation, you never have to invent a reason to follow up. The reason already exists, because you both agreed to it.
The mistakes that cost the most
- Skipping curiosity and moving straight to explaining what you do.
- Explaining instead of asking. The higher the value, the more this hurts.
- Writing a proposal before you understand the decision.
- Sending the proposal instead of presenting it on a scheduled call.
- Discounting to overcome hesitation, which signals the first number was not real.
- Missing buying signals because acting on them feels pushy.
- Never getting closing language out of your mouth, so no decision is ever put in front of your prospect.
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Sales coaching for consultants covers how I work with consultants and agency owners selling $10,000 to $50,000 engagements, including reviewing recordings of your real sales calls.