Do you need a sales consultant? What one does for a small business (and when it’s worth it)
You started the business because you're good at the thing. Fitting the kitchens, running the campaigns, doing the accounts, fixing the boilers.
Nobody mentioned that the job came with a second, unpaid role as head of sales, and yet here you are on a Thursday evening writing a quote you'll probably forget to chase.
You're in a very big club. Government figures put the number of private sector businesses in the UK at 5.7 million at the start of 2025, and 4.3 million of them, 75%, don't employ anyone apart from the owner.
In three out of four UK businesses, the sales department is one person who is also the finance department, the delivery team and the one who buys the milk.
So when sales feel harder than they should, the usual options are to:
Work more hours
Spend more on marketing
Hire a salesperson
There's a fourth one that small businesses rarely consider, mostly because it sounds like something for firms with a sales floor and a bell to ring: a sales consultant.
This guide covers what a sales consultant does for a small business, when it pays for itself, when it's a waste of money, and how to pick a good one.
What a sales consultant does (in normal words)
A sales consultant looks at how your business wins work, finds where it's losing work it should be winning, and helps you build a better way of doing it.
Then, if they're any good, they stick around long enough for the new way to become habit.
For a small business that usually covers four things:
Who you're selling to and what you're selling them. Which customers are worth chasing, which ones cost you money, and which of your services earn their keep. Most small businesses have never sat down and looked at this, and it's often where the quickest win is hiding.
How an enquiry turns into a customer. The steps from "hello" to "paid", written down, so it happens the same way every time and doesn't depend on what kind of week you're having.
Visibility. A pipeline you can look at on a Monday morning and know what's live, what's stuck and what's likely to land this month. It might be a CRM, it might be a spreadsheet. The tool matters less than whether anyone opens it.
Accountability. Someone who asks, every week or every month, "did you make those calls?" People underestimate this part, and it's the part that makes the rest work.
That's different from the two things it gets confused with:
A sales trainer teaches skills: how to run a call, handle an objection, ask for the business.
A salesperson does the selling for you.
A consultant fixes the system the selling happens in.
Plenty of businesses need some training as well, which is why our sales workshops sit alongside the consultancy. And if it's the sales conversations themselves you dread, read our guide on how to sell without being pushy.
6 signs it's worth bringing one in
You're busy but the numbers aren't moving. Lots of conversations, lots of quotes, same turnover as last year. You're putting the effort in. Something in the middle is broken and you're too close to see what.
You're the only person who can sell. Every deal needs you in the room. That works until you're ill, on holiday or simply full, and it puts a ceiling on the business that no amount of marketing will lift.
Your income arrives in lumps. Brilliant March, terrifying May. That pattern nearly always means selling happens when delivery is quiet and stops when delivery is busy.
You couldn't say what's in your pipeline right now. If the answer to "what are you likely to win this month?" is a shrug and a hopeful face, you're forecasting on vibes.
You've got people selling and nobody managing it. Two or three of you, each doing it your own way, no shared targets and no regular look at what's working.
You're about to hire a salesperson. This is the best time of all, and almost nobody does it. More on that below.
And 3 signs it isn't
You haven't got enough enquiries to work with. If three people a month get in touch, a slicker way of handling three people won't change your life. That's a marketing problem first, and our guide to why your marketing isn't working is the place to start.
You already know what to do and you're not doing it. If the fix is "chase the quotes" and you know it, paying someone to tell you again is an expensive reminder. If what you need is someone to hold you to it, that's a fair thing to pay for. Be honest with yourself about which one it is.
The problem is the product or the price. No sales process rescues something people don't want at a price they won't pay. A good consultant will tell you this in the first conversation. A bad one will take the money anyway.
Consultant or salesperson? Do the sums first
When sales are slow, hiring a salesperson feels like the obvious move. Sometimes it is. But look at what you're signing up for:
Salary. Recruiter Coburg Banks puts the typical UK sales executive base salary at around £33,000 in 2026, in a range of £25,000 to £42,000.
Commission. Usually another 20% to 40% on top.
Employer National Insurance. For 2026 to 2027 it's 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year, which works out at roughly £4,200 on a £33,000 salary before any Employment Allowance.
Everything else. The pension contribution, a laptop, a phone, the software, and the weeks of your own time it takes to get them up to speed.
Add it up and you're close to £40,000 in the first year, before a penny of commission.
The painful part is what happens next. If there's no process for that person to follow, no clear idea of who to go after and no way of measuring how they're doing, you've hired someone to guess on your behalf.
A salesperson adds capacity. A consultant builds the thing that capacity plugs into.
If you've got more good enquiries than you can physically handle and a way of working that already converts, hire.
If you don't yet know why deals are won or lost, sort that first, and your eventual hire has a far better chance of paying for themselves.
There's a middle route too. Fractional sales leadership gives you a senior sales head for a set amount of time each month: setting targets, running pipeline reviews and coaching whoever is doing the selling.
It works the same way a fractional CMO does for marketing, and it suits businesses that need direction more than another pair of hands.
What working with one looks like
A decent engagement follows a pattern.
It starts with questions, and lots of them.
Where do enquiries come from?
What happens to them?
Who buys, who doesn't, and what did the ones who didn't buy end up doing?
Expect to share numbers, even rough ones. If a consultant turns up with the answer before they've asked about any of this, be wary.
Then comes the build.
Decisions about who you're going after
A written process
A pipeline you can see
A small number of weekly activities that would move things if they happened every week
Then the unglamorous part, which is keeping it going. Regular check-ins, a look at the numbers, and adjustments where reality disagrees with the plan.
New sales habits tend to wobble the moment a big job lands and the diary fills up. Having someone in your corner at that point is the difference between a new habit and a nice folder of documents.
It will cost you time as well as money. You'll need to turn up, be honest about what's going on, and do the things you agreed to do. Nobody can outsource that bit.
How to choose a good one
Five things to check:
Have they sold, and managed people who sell? Theory is cheap. You want someone who has carried a target and led a team through a bad quarter.
Do they work with businesses your size? Advice built for a 40-person sales floor doesn't shrink well.
Do they ask before they prescribe? See above.
Will they tell you what they can't fix? Including "this is a marketing problem" and "this is a pricing problem".
What's left when they leave? The test of good consultancy is whether the improvement survives without them. Ask what you'll have in your hands at the end.
One more, and we would say this: check whether they'll talk to your marketing.
Sales fixed in isolation tends to unravel, because the enquiries coming in and the promises being made still don't match. We've written about why sales and marketing don't talk to each other and what it costs.
How sales consultancy works at Qrios
Qrios is a marketing business at heart, and marketing only pays when the enquiries it brings in turn into customers.
That's why Qrios works in partnership with No Graft No Glory, the sales consultancy I founded. Two separate businesses that chose to work together, so clients get sales and marketing pulling in the same direction.
I've spent more than 20 years in sales and leadership, including 16 in high street banking leading large sales teams. My NG³ framework is what the work is built on:
Clarity: who you're selling to and where the effort goes
Control: pipeline, process and proper visibility
Consistency: the weekly activity and accountability that make it stick
Sales consultancy through Qrios and NGNG covers strategy, pipeline and process, fractional sales leadership and team accountability.
It's built around what your business needs, with no fixed menu, and the first half hour is free, so you can find out whether it's the right move before you spend anything.
If sales feel like harder work than they should, get in touch. And if what you need is more enquiries and not a better way of handling them, we'll tell you that too.