If you can propose a technical solution, you already know how to sell
Salesforce peeps transitioning to consulting: you know that thing where someone tells you their business goal and you propose a technical solution? That's sales.
More importantly, that's ethical sales: selling people what they actually need, knowing that you can deliver (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, dear reader).
Many people transitioning from employee to consultant undersell themselves on this point. In my 13 years at my last solopreneur firm, I had no explicit sales experience and never spent a dime on marketing. Clients came to me mostly through referrals, and I'd convince them of the fit by discussing their business with them, asking the right questions, and proposing a solution bespoke to their needs.
I.e., what you likely do on a regular basis as an employee. Build rapport, speak to your experience, do the sales-y things, but when it comes to custom software builds, it's active listening that will clinch the deal every time.
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I'm Jessie Grenfell, CEO & Principal Architect of Codality and delighted to be back to using my active listening skills to architect elegant, cutting-edge solutions for my clients.
#Salesforce #Consulting #AIArchitecture #BusinessDevelopment #ActiveListening
Jessie Grenfell
Jessie has spent 20+ years architecting and delivering software for organizations where complexity is the norm: financial services, insurance, nonprofits, and regulated industries where getting it wrong isn’t an option. She specializes in the hard problems: unique operational workflows, cross-system integrations, and compliance requirements (HIPAA, CCPA, SOC 2) built into the design from the first conversation.
Her AI work comes out of that background. She has shipped AI to production, not just piloted it: a multi-agent research pipeline that cut a client’s investigation time from over an hour to minutes, and natural-language analytics that let executives ask plain-English questions of their operational data and get validated charts back. Years building business critical systems taught her where AI belongs in a business process and where it doesn’t.
At Codality, she leads engagements from discovery through delivery, because she’s seen what happens when that thread gets cut.