Sales and delivery need a shared understanding of the work before a project is sold. Salespeople do not need to be architects, but delivery experts need meaningful involvement while the work is being shaped. Otherwise, delivery inherits promises built on outdated technical assumptions, vague requirements, or a timeline nobody delivering it believes.
Take a migration estimate. Someone needs to check whether content can be exported in a usable form, what access is available, and how the destination will be prepared. Client review and testing also take time. If those assumptions are still unknown, the proposal should say how they will be validated and what happens if they prove wrong.
Give architects, developers, and delivery leads a say in the scope, estimate, and statement of work before anyone signs it. That review gives sales a stronger proposal and the client a more credible commitment. Discovering the difficult questions together is cheaper than discovering them after the work has been sold.
This post is part of my 25 lessons from 25 years in consulting series, exploring what it takes to build a consulting firm that delivers for clients and supports the people doing the work.
From leadership and employee experience to sales and delivery, the series comes back to one idea: a consulting company should be its own best client.
Have a lesson of your own? Share what has worked, what hasn’t, or what you wish more consulting firms understood in the comments.