Blog

Mindset·11 August 2026·3 min read

Can you keep thinking and acting the same way and still get the results you need?

If the answer is no, something has to change. And whatever that change is, it will move through a process, whether you manage that process well or not.

I've watched enough of these unfold to know the leaders who get it right, and the ones who don't, aren't separated by talent. They're separated by whether they understood the process at all.

Take the sales director I worked with a few months back. She rolled out a new qualification framework to her team. Week one, the room was buzzing. By week three, half the team was quietly back to their old habits, and she was telling me "we're just not very good at change management here," like it was some fixed trait of the business.

Her framework hadn't failed. Her team's mindset just hadn't caught up to it yet, and a new process sitting on top of an old way of thinking doesn't hold, it fizzles the moment nobody's watching.

It isn't a trait. It's a five-stage curve every team moves through, and once you can see the curve, you stop mistaking the middle of it for failure.

𝟭. 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. The kickoff energy. Everyone's genuinely excited about the new approach.

Your job here is to make the case for change, clearly, tied to a specific result, and repeated often. If your peers dilute the "why," the "why" dies before it gets going.

𝟮. 𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴. Implementation starts, and the new approach feels like extra work, not less. This is when you hear "this might work in theory, but our business is different."

What you're really managing here is uncertainty. People don't yet know what's on the other side, so keep painting the picture, better performance, delivered through changed behaviour.

𝟯. 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗯𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. The Valley of Despair. Performance dips because people are trying something new without the confidence they used to have. Most change initiatives die on the vine right here.

This is where you get tested the most. You're taking people to a place they can't yet see, and you can see it because your vantage point is different. Hold the line, your senior sellers will push back hardest, and that's harder to argue someone out of than a specific tactic.

𝟰. 𝗕𝘂𝘆-𝗶𝗻. Small wins land. Confidence builds. The new approach stops feeling like an experiment.

Your role shifts here, from selling the change to coaching the behaviour. Give feedback, recognise it publicly, and watch the team move from unconsciously doing the wrong things to consciously doing the right ones, the moment their mindset actually catches up to the new process.

𝟱. 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹. The new way stops being something the team is trying. The mindset shift is complete, and the old way genuinely doesn't occur to them as an option anymore.

Your last job is to bake it into the environment, the CRM, the pipeline reviews, the incentives, the hiring. Leave the old behaviour rewarded anywhere in the system, and you'll drift back, mindset included.

That sales director's mistake wasn't leadership. It was reading stage three as proof the framework had failed, when it was really her team's mindset still catching up, right when she needed to hold the line the most.

Fail to lead a team's mindset through that curve, and you don't just stay still. You go backwards, and the belief that "nothing here ever really changes" gets a little more permanent each time. The next attempt starts harder than this one did.

For the fuller argument, my book Perception Selling: Win More with Less is coming soon.

Coaching·5 August 2026·3 min read

Why your best sellers can't teach anyone else

A CEO in Singapore told me last year that his board had approved a five-year plan with 20% year-on-year growth. His CFO had frozen sales headcount indefinitely. He said it plainly:

"I am essentially asking my team to perform magic."

He is not alone. Most revenue leaders are being asked to do more with the same or fewer resources. I call this the growth paradox.

The instinct is almost always the same. Work harder. Add activity. Chase more opportunities. And yet results stay stubbornly flat. The problem was never effort. The way effort is deployed has not kept up with what is being asked.

Every team already has a system

Every revenue-generating organisation already has a Sales System, whether it has been designed or not. Like an engine, it is producing results either by design or by accident.

Sales leaders need to be two things at once. A driver, who navigates the market and pushes the team. And a mechanic, who understands how the system actually works and can diagnose where it is breaking down.

Most leaders are strong drivers. Very few are mechanics. They push harder when numbers slip, without ever opening the bonnet to see what is actually wrong underneath.

The problem underneath the problem

Most sales teams are running on a mix.

Top performers usually sit in Unconscious Competence. They get results, but cannot explain how or why. The rest of the team sits closer to Unconscious Incompetence. They have been trained. They have the tools. But without conscious application, the behaviour drifts and the reasons why get forgotten.

Four states of competence describe how sellers actually operate.

Unconscious Incompetence. You don't know how, and you don't know why. Conscious Incompetence. You know how and why, but you have chosen not to do it. Unconscious Competence. You get results, but you can't explain how or why. Conscious Competence. You get results, and you can explain exactly how and why.

The sales gods problem

I worked with a global facilities management company that saw huge growth after the 2008 financial crisis. Four reps delivered extraordinary numbers. Internally they were nicknamed the "sales gods."

They were genuinely skilled. But the bigger driver was external. The crash had forced companies everywhere to cut costs, and outsourcing facilities management was the easiest way to do it. The market had shifted underneath everyone's feet, and these four happened to be standing in exactly the right spot.

As one executive put it years later, "They didn't let this small detail get in the way of enhancing their god-like reputation."

Why this costs more than you think

When top performers operate from Unconscious Competence, they start to look like they have a gift no one else can access. That belief spreads. The rest of the team quietly decides that greatness is not teachable. The gap between the stars and everyone else widens.

Not because the middle of the team lacks potential. Because nobody has ever shown them anything they can actually use.

Here is the part that matters for where you invest. The biggest opportunity is not the top performers. It is the middle 60%. A small improvement there produces a bigger overall business impact than squeezing more out of people already close to their ceiling.

The only state that scales

Only Conscious Competence scales.

Systematising a sales team is the work of getting the whole organisation to Conscious Competence. Not making instinctive people less instinctive. Educating everyone, from the top performers down to the newest hire, to name what works and why. So the entire team can articulate how it wins. And how it loses.

That is the difference between an Improvised System and an Adaptive one. An Improvised System runs almost entirely on Unconscious Competence in a few people, and Unconscious Incompetence across most of the team. A handful improvising well, the rest defaulting. An Adaptive System runs on Conscious Competence across the board, where success is visible enough to belong to the whole team.

The bottom line

If your best sellers cannot explain how they win, you do not have a Sales System. You have four people you cannot afford to lose.

The work of systematising sales is the work of making what your top performers do by instinct visible enough that your whole team can do it by design.

For the fuller argument, my book Perception Selling: How to Win More From Less is on Amazon.

Client Engagement·28 July 2026·3 min read

You didn't lose the deal. You lost the perception.

Buyers don't pick whoever can actually deliver the best outcome. They pick whoever they believe can deliver it. That is a completely different competition to the one most sales teams think they are in.

You might have the better solution, the stronger team, the superior long-term value. None of it matters if the buyer never sees it.

The scoreboard was never "who is actually better." It was always "who the buyer thinks is better." And most teams only work that out once the deal is already gone.

Every seller makes a hundred small decisions

Ask a good seller what they said in a client meeting. They will tell you clearly.

Ask them why they said it that way rather than another way. Most go quiet. Because they didn't actually choose it. It just came out, shaped by instinct built up over years.

Selling is made up of a hundred small decisions rather than one big one. Made in real time. Mostly without thinking. What to lead with. What to leave out. How much detail to give. When to push and when to hold back.

Every one of those decisions builds the client's confidence in you or quietly chips away at it. Whether you are paying attention to it or not.

The capability that goes unnoticed

Buyers choose based on who they believe is most capable of delivering. And belief has to be earned deliberately, not assumed.

You can have the deeper expertise, the stronger delivery team, the better long-term outcome. And still lose. Because none of it gets demonstrated in the moment it needs to be. Capability that isn't shown doesn't count. A client cannot credit you for something they never saw.

This is where instinct becomes the problem rather than the strength people assume it is. Most sellers rely on it because it has worked well enough before. Because deliberate practice takes more effort than defaulting to what feels natural.

But instinct is not consistent. It performs differently on a good day than a bad one. Differently with a familiar buyer than a new one. Differently under pressure than at ease.

A Sales System built on something this inconsistent will always produce inconsistent results. No matter how talented the people inside it are.

Two sellers, same skill, different outcomes

This is why two sellers with near-identical ability can produce completely different numbers. One is making the small decisions on purpose. Choosing what to demonstrate. Choosing how to frame it. Choosing what the client needs to see in order to believe. The other is making the same decisions by accident. Relying on whatever instinct supplies that day. Hoping it holds up.

That gap comes down to intention applied consistently. Not raw talent.

What deliberate actually looks like

Being deliberate treats each decision as a decision worth making on purpose. Not something to default past. It does not mean turning a conversation into a script or a performance.

It means walking into a meeting having actually worked out what the client needs to leave believing. And what would make them believe it. Rather than winging it based on how the conversation happens to go.

It means staying alert enough during the conversation to notice whether something is actually landing. Rather than assuming it is because it was said clearly.

And it means paying attention afterwards to what the interaction actually did to the client's confidence. Not just whether it felt like it went well.

None of this is complicated. It is just rarely automatic. Which is exactly why most sellers skip it. Instinct is quiet and comfortable. Intention takes effort every single time.

That is precisely why so few people sustain it without a system built to reinforce it.

The decision underneath every decision

Sellers are not just closing deals or managing pipeline. In every interaction they are shaping how capable they are perceived to be. Whether they mean to or not.

The only real choice is whether that shaping happens on purpose or by accident.

For the fuller argument, my book Perception Selling: How to Win More From Less is on Amazon.

Mindset·21 July 2026·2 min read

The single most important leadership capability of our time

When I hear leaders talk about change management, I hear a strange resignation. "We're just not very good at it." Companies have quietly accepted being bad at something they simultaneously say is critical.

Which cannot both be true.

What the numbers say

70% of transformation projects fail. That's McKinsey's number, and it hasn't moved much in years. Some research puts it as high as 88%.

Look closer and it gets worse. 72% of failures trace back to just two causes: employee resistance and inadequate management support. Not market conditions. Not a flawed strategy sitting in a drawer somewhere.

Global transformation spend in 2026 is $2.5 trillion, growing at 19 to 21% a year. We are pouring trillions into outcomes we already know most organisations won't achieve. Not because the disciplines are unknown. Because they are unapplied.

McKinsey's research on failed transformations keeps landing on the same four decisions. Aspirations set too low, so leaders aim well below the organisation's actual potential. No compelling "why," so thousands of employees are asked to change for a reason that never lands with them. A focus on activity instead of outcomes, where managers stay busy running transformation rituals while the results drift elsewhere. And impact that isn't sustained, because the performance disciplines quietly end the moment the programme does.

Predictable, every time.

The counterpoint

Projects run with excellent change management succeed 88% of the time. Projects run with poor change management succeed 12% of the time. Sevenfold.

This isn't a mystery. The evidence has been public for three decades.

The six things the 88% do differently

All six require sustained effort, not a well-run kickoff.

A compelling "why." Not a slide with a rationale on it. A reason specific enough that a senior leader can explain it in twenty seconds, without notes.

Visible executive sponsorship. Not endorsement from a distance, the top leaders visibly doing the new behaviour themselves. The moment the CEO stops doing the old thing, everyone notices.

Environmental change, not just training. The CRM fields, the pipeline reviews, the incentives, all redesigned to support the new behaviour. If the environment still rewards the old way, the training was theatre.

Change agents embedded in the team. Peers who model the behaviour daily and hold others to it, not consultants gone by Friday.

Continuous reinforcement. Coaching, review, and feedback on a weekly rhythm, not a launch event followed by a quarterly check-in nobody attends by month three.

Behaviour measurement. Leading indicators tracked the way a sales pipeline gets tracked. What gets measured gets sustained.

It has been documented for three decades. It isn't applied because it's hard, patient, unglamorous work, and something more urgent is always competing for the same attention.

The decision

Change management is the single most important leadership capability leaders can develop today. And most have quietly agreed to be bad at it. That is not a capability gap. That is a decision.

For the fuller argument, my book Perception Selling: Win More with Less is on Amazon.

Forecasting·15 July 2026·2 min read

55%. 17 months. Coincidence?

When I hear leaders talk about forecast accuracy, they sound resigned. "We're just not good at forecast accuracy." And lo and behold, it keeps missing.

I was training a team of account managers last week. The leader was in the room. He described his regular Friday forecast conversation with his boss. He called it a lottery. Up one week. Down the next.

The tool that would fix this is already in his business and yet nobody in the team can name the value it brings for them. If you don't understand the value, you cannot apply the rigour. If you cannot apply the rigour, the forecast is a lottery.

Why this matters

60% of forecasted deals do not close.

55% of sales leaders don't trust their own forecast. Every quarter, most sales organisations miss the number they promised the board. Get the number wrong twice in a row and you are on borrowed time.

The average CRO now lasts only 17 months. A large part of that is forecast miss. Boards do not fire people for missing hard targets in a tough market. They fire them for saying the number will be there and then it isn't.

In the best organisations, forecast accuracy is a KPI. Managed and coached like any other. In most organisations, it isn't. And that is where the credibility problem starts.

Forecast accuracy is not a soft skill. It is a critical competency and a leadership credibility line.

What actually fixes it

Not another tool. Not another training programme. The fix is a qualification process that is known, used, and applied with rigour on every deal, every week.

Every stage move backed by evidence. Every committed deal tested against the same discipline. Every Friday call built on questions like "what do we actually know?" rather than "how do we feel?".

The organisations that hit forecast are not the ones with the most technology. They are the ones with the most consistent rigour in how they qualify.

Why nothing has embedded, and what is changing

The rigour has always been the hard part. Managers are stretched. Training fades after a few weeks. The senior thinking that would make the discipline stick cannot be in every deal review, every Friday call, every pipeline conversation.

So the tool gets bought. The process gets rolled out. And within a quarter it is back to feel and hope.

This is what AI in sales is now changing. Not by selling deals. By keeping the discipline in place, every day, on every deal, for every seller. The manager still leads. The seller still owns the deal. AI just makes sure the rigour that everyone agreed to actually happens.

That is the first time we have had a way to embed forecast discipline at scale.

The bottom line

Forecast accuracy is not what you buy. It is what you build.

For the fuller argument, my book Perception Selling: How to Win More From Less will be on Amazon soon.

General·30 June 2026·3 min read

More Sales. Fewer Resources

The more we spend on tech, the less performance we get.

Sales quota attainment in 2026: 42%. Down from 53% four years ago.

Sales tech market in 2026: $57 billion. Growing 16% per year.

Average sales team: 12+ tools.

Every year for four years performance against quota dropped, yet the number of sales-tech tools increased.

This is why

Targets go up. Capabilities stay the same. The way people sell does not shift, year after year.

Sales training is not the problem. It is part of the change journey. The problem is that most leaders treat it as the whole journey. The work that has to follow, the consistent reinforcement that actually embeds new behaviour, either doesn't happen, or doesn't happen enough to make the change stick. Six months later the team is back to square one, and the cycle begins again.

Technology should have filled this gap. So far it hasn't. So far it has been checklists, systems of record, dashboards, pipelines. Tools that capture what has already happened, or that prompt the next task to be done. None of it shifts how the seller actually thinks about the account in front of them.

Performance comes from shifting how people behave. Consistently. Sustained. Not from telling them what to do once and hoping it sticks. That has always been our focus: how do we shift behaviours to improve performance. That is the work.

The reason this has been so difficult, the reason every sales transformation programme of the last twenty years has under-delivered, is that sustained behavioural development at the scale of a whole sales team requires linking all the activities of sales and management together. The account plan, the opportunity, the meeting, the manager's coaching, the seller's reflection. In most organisations these are separate conversations. They need to flow as one.

That is the gap. And it has been the gap for as long as B2B selling has existed.

What AI now enables

AI is the first tool that has the potential to systematise sales to help a seller think, and behave, differently. Not faster. Differently.

It puts the senior thinking into the seller's daily work. The strategic frame. The methodology applied to the live deal. The pattern they would have missed. The question they should be asking. Thinking shifts. Behaviour follows. And because the system delivers this continuously, not in a workshop, not in a quarterly review, but every day, on every deal, the new behaviour holds.

This is the shift that matters. Not "AI for sales." Not more tools.

AI is the first technology that makes systematisation possible at scale.

To be clear, tech is part of the answer, not the answer. The answer is shifting how people think and behave. AI is the first tool we have ever had that can actually help us do that across a whole team, not just for the top three performers.

What systematisation actually delivers

When the team is selling the same way, thinking the same way, and learning together every day, the benefits compound. In rough order of what a sales leader cares about most:

Higher win rates and bigger deals from the team you already have.

Forecast accuracy you can take to the board, not hope but evidence.

The middle 60% performs closer to the top 20%.

Cross-sell and upsell opportunities surface from accounts you already have.

Coaching scales to every rep and every deal, not just the ones you have time for.

New hires ramp faster, and turnover stops being existential.

One disciplined way of selling across the whole team.

Sellers arrive sharper and more relevant in front of clients.

The organisation learns from itself. Patterns from one deal inform the next.

In short, systematisation answers the question every revenue leader is asking right now: how do we get more from less.

What this means

The leaders who pull ahead in the next twelve months will be the ones who recognise that AI is not the answer, but it is the enabler, and start building the system around their team with AI sitting underneath, not on top.

This is the work that has been profoundly difficult until now. It is finally possible.

For the longer version of the systematisation argument, the book is Perception Selling: How to Win More From Less, available on Amazon.

General·9 June 2026·5 min read

AI that will actually improve your sales numbers

Halfway through a sales transformation at a major bank, the senior leader running it told me the whole programme came down to one word: methodology.

Most organisations don't have a single, unifying way of selling that every seller can think through, speak to and execute against. Where it does exist, it lives in the heads of mature, successful salespeople, grounded in years of experience. But it does not scale. They cannot be in every deal, every meeting and every account.

Most sellers don't get the continuous development they need. They get a sales workshop once every few years, and the expectation that they will apply the learning immediately and permanently. They rarely get access to the senior sales experience inside the organisation. The thinking that helps a seller win is rationed because the people doing it cannot scale, and because most organisations have never institutionalised the way of selling that would scale even if those people could.

On Monday I wrote about a senior partner who walked into a stalled deal review and asked the question that changed everything. He could only be in a handful of rooms each week.

That rationing has been true for the entire history of selling. Until the last twelve months.

Something has changed in the last year. The senior thinking inside a sales organisation, both the experience of senior people and the methodology that defines how the organisation sells, can finally reach every seller, on every account, every day. As a permanent team supporting the seller's thinking, not as a replacement for the seller.

For years I have been advising leaders about the need to systematise sales. Not by buying more tech, although as it happens tech is now part of the answer, but by building the interconnectivity between the key selling activities, so that information is deployed at the right time, to the right person, in front of the right client, before opportunities are lost.

Imagine an omnipresent team of specialists, sitting in every seller's pocket, guiding, advising and supporting as a thought partner. Activating and applying shared experiences and methodology in the moment, not just for the few top performers but for every seller.

What it actually looks like

I'm not going to spend time on the technology. The technology is finally good enough; that is the part that matters. What I want to talk about is what it looks like to use.

A seller starts her day. Three accounts on her plate, two deals in active pursuit, one client meeting at eleven.

She opens the system. There is a quiet note from her account strategist, except the account strategist is software now. The note says: "Ahmed has shifted roles internally according to his LinkedIn. The last time you spoke to him was March. Worth a check-in this week?"

The deal coach has been reading her client's quarterly earnings release from yesterday. The CEO mentioned cost cutting in the same breath as a digital transformation programme. The deal coach surfaces a thought: "this combination usually means procurement gets involved earlier than the current pursuit plan assumes. Worth pressure-testing with the relationship lead."

Before the eleven o'clock, the seller opens the meeting prep. The deal coach has drafted three questions she could ask. She rewrites two, accepts one, adds her own.

After the meeting, she captures her notes. The system notices that the client used a phrase, "we need this to be a phased decision," that it has seen before in deals that slipped a quarter. It flags it as a watch-out. The seller decides what to do.

That is what a permanent team supporting a seller looks like. Not a chatbot. Not a dashboard. Not a replacement. A continuous thinking partner that does the work only senior people and a fully embedded methodology used to be able to do.

Four questions to ask any AI sales vendor

There will be a lot of vendors over the next twelve months claiming to build this. Most of them will not be. Four questions cut through the pitch in about ninety seconds.

Does it know how your company sells? If the system does not run against a defined way of selling, a method your top performers actually follow, it cannot give you an informed view about anything. It can summarise. It can score. It cannot think.

Does it produce a view, or just a summary? A summary is "your client mentioned cost cutting in their earnings call." A view is "the combination of cost cutting and digital transformation in the same earnings call usually means procurement gets involved earlier than your pursuit plan assumes." The first is a fact. The second is what a senior salesperson would have told you. Tools in this category produce the second.

Can it see the whole picture, or just one corner? A view about a deal depends on information from the account plan, the previous meetings, the stakeholder map, the competitive position, and what is going on at the client right now. A tool that can only see calls, or only emails, or only CRM activity, cannot do the thinking. The breadth is the capability.

Does it help the seller decide, or try to decide for them? The rule any tool in this category needs to obey is that it never tells the seller to walk away from a deal, deprioritise an account, or remove a stakeholder. The seller decides. The system thinks alongside.

If a tool fails any of those four, it is not the thing I am describing. It might still be useful. It is just something else.

What this means for revenue leaders

The systematised organisations are about to pull ahead in a way the improvisational ones will not see coming. The senior thinking that has been locked inside a few senior heads, and the methodology that has lived in binders nobody reads, will both become things every seller can draw on every day.

The organisations that have not built a methodology, that have not invested in the discipline, that do not have a defined way of selling, will buy the same software but get faster improvisation. Confident-sounding outputs and no measurable lift on the number.

I have argued for twenty years that the bottleneck in B2B sales is the system around the seller. That argument is finally about to be tested.

General·2 June 2026·5 min read

The AI in your sales stack is solving the wrong problem

I hoped AI would help move sales numbers. Three years in, it hasn't. This piece is on why.

Three years ago, sales technology vendors began promising that AI would transform B2B sales. Win rates would jump. Quota attainment would lift. Forecasts would finally become accurate. The CRO's life would get easier.

Three years and several billion dollars of investment later, none of that has happened.

Win rates in B2B sales are still stuck between seventeen and twenty-five per cent. Quota attainment has fallen from sixty-three per cent to fifty-three per cent over the last decade, according to Korn Ferry's annual sales effectiveness research. Forecast accuracy is no better than it was before "revenue intelligence" became a category — fewer than half of forecasted deals close. Sales cycles are longer than they were before the pandemic, not shorter. The tools have multiplied. The outcomes have not.

I want to write this week about why, because the honest answer is going to determine which sales leaders pull ahead in the next two years and which ones spend those two years buying more tools that don't work.

What actually got built

If you map the AI products that have been sold to sales teams over the last five years, they fall into a small number of categories.

The first is recording. Tools that sit in your meetings, transcribe them, and produce summaries afterwards. Gong is the canonical example. Useful. Captures what happened.

The second is writing. AI that drafts your outbound emails, builds sequences, personalises at scale. Outreach. Apollo. Many others. Useful. Sends more emails, faster.

The third is summarising. AI that lives inside the CRM and writes up what your team has been doing so you don't have to. Salesforce Einstein. Microsoft Copilot for Sales. Useful. Saves a lot of typing.

The fourth is prospecting at volume. AI agents that try to do the entry-level sales job — find people, email them, qualify them. 11x. Artisan. AiSDR. The most ambitious pitch in the market. It is also the one that has gone most publicly wrong.

You'll notice something about all four. They do work that was already happening. They do it faster. They do it cheaper. They do it at higher volume. They do not, in any of these cases, do work that wasn't being done before.

That matters, because the bottleneck in B2B sales is not the work that was already being done. The bottleneck is the work that nobody was doing — the strategic thinking about an account, the judgment about a deal, the question of what to actually do next when the situation is ambiguous.

The inbox is now angrier than it has been in twenty years

If you want a concrete picture of what happens when AI gets pointed at the wrong job, look at outbound email.

Five years ago, sales teams sent outbound email in modest volumes. Reply rates were low but predictable. The inbox was a working channel.

Then everyone bought AI tools to write more emails, personalise them at scale, run sequences at volume. The reasoning was straightforward. AI does the work cheaper, so we can do more of it. More volume should mean more replies.

What actually happened was the opposite. Reply rates on AI-assisted outbound have fallen by more than sixty per cent in eighteen months. AI-generated emails are now getting flagged as spam roughly three times more often than ones written by humans. The score that Gmail and Outlook quietly use to decide whether your emails reach the inbox at all — your sender reputation — has dropped sharply for any company that has scaled its outbound with AI. Within ninety days of going AI-heavy, the average sender's reputation falls by enough to push their emails out of the inbox and into the promotions tab. Once that happens, the only way back is to slow down.

In early 2024, Google and Yahoo started strictly enforcing new rules on bulk email senders. The rules were a quiet acknowledgement of what was happening to the inbox. The enforcement has tightened every year since. The inbox is now defending itself against the very tools that promised to make it more productive.

This is what happens when AI is applied to a volume problem. It works for about a year. Then the system pushes back.

What the failure is actually telling us

The AI SDR story I wrote about on Monday — the seventy-six-million-dollar company that lost most of its customers in ninety days — is the human face of the same pattern. It was not a bad company. It was the wrong premise.

The premise was that sales is a volume problem and AI could solve it by doing more, faster, cheaper. The reality is that sales is a judgment problem. More emails sent by software that does not understand the account, the decision-making dynamic, or the moment in the deal does not move the number. It makes the inbox worse and the customer wearier.

This is not a story about bad AI. The AI is fine. It is a story about pointing AI at the wrong part of the sales job.

What's now starting to arrive

Something has changed in the last year that is worth paying attention to. The new generation of AI can do work that the previous generation could not. It can hold a complicated situation in its head. It can weigh trade-offs. It can think things through and come back with a view about what to do next.

That is a different kind of capability. It is also still mostly absent from the AI tools currently being sold to sales teams, because those tools were built before the change.

Next week's newsletter is on what becomes possible when AI is pointed at the right part of the sales job, and how to tell whether a tool is built on the new capability or the old one.

For now, two things worth holding in mind. The first is that more AI of the kind we have been buying for the last five years is not going to move the numbers. The second is that the leaders who are still measuring the value of their AI investment by activity levels rather than by performance outcomes are going to find themselves explaining a flat year to their boards.

If the AI was supposed to lift the number and it hasn't, the tool was probably pointing at the wrong job.

What is your team's actual experience with the AI you've bought in the last two years?

General·26 May 2026·5 min read

The next wave of AI tools, the ones built to help sellers think differently, is going to change the game.

The conversation I keep having with revenue leaders this year goes like this: Last year's number, plus twenty per cent (or twenty-three, or thirty, it depends on the year and the board). Same headcount, or less. Same operating budget. Same team. Same clients, a little wearier than they were the last time we asked them to spend more.

The leader looks at this and asks: how do I get more from less? The answer most leaders reach for is to push harder. Add activity. Sharpen the pitch. Run more meetings. Hold more pipeline reviews. Lean harder on the top performers.

It feels productive. Everyone is busy. The numbers don't move.

The honest answer, the one I have watched the small handful of organisations who consistently outperform their peers actually live by, is that you need to change how your people think and act, in a sustained way that survives the noise of the business.

That sentence is short. The implications are not.

Why thinking and acting both have to change

Most sales improvement initiatives change one or the other. Training changes thinking, lightly, for about three weeks. Coaching changes acting, briefly, for as long as the manager keeps showing up to the 1:1s. Tools change activity, which is something else again.

None of these on their own sustain a change in how people operate. The reason isn't that the training was bad or the coaching weak. The reason is that nothing in the business holds the new behaviour in place after the initiative ends.

To get a sustained performance shift, the seller has to change the way they think and act. For this to happen requires repeated support to shift thinking and then acting over a sustained period. Otherwise you get three weeks of effort and a return to the mean.

Why most sales leaders find this hard

The leader in front of this challenge is usually not, in the technical sense, a sales person. The head of sales at a bank is a banker first. The head of sales at a medical-device firm is a clinician or a product expert. The partner running new business at a consulting firm is a consultant. Domain expertise is the muscle they have spent thirty years building. The system of selling itself is rarely a muscle they have trained.

When they're asked to lift performance, they reach for what they know. More technical excellence. Sharper pitch. Better discovery. That work is necessary. It just doesn't lift the number, because the bottleneck sits in the system underneath the selling.

The leader who consistently lifts performance realises they have to be both the driver and the mechanic. Most are excellent drivers. Very few are mechanics, because the mechanic's work was never taught to them. They were never told that was part of the job.

The activities that don't talk to each other

In any B2B sales organisation, the revenue-generating activities come down to four activities. Demand Generation. Opportunity Management. Client Engagement. Relationship Management. The work that fills the funnel, the work that pursues the deal, the work that happens in the meeting, the work that sustains the account between meetings.

In organisations that outperform their peers, these four activities are joined up. The insight from a meeting flows into the opportunity plan. The opportunity plan updates the account plan. The relationship view shapes the pursuit strategy. Information moves between the activities at the speed thinking requires.

In most organisations, the four activities barely talk to each other. The information that should be flowing falls through the gaps. Strategic thinking only happens when good information is available to the right person at the right moment. Most of the time, it isn't.

That is the systematisation gap. Sales doesn't lack effort, talent, or technology. It lacks the connective tissue that lets the four activities work as one system.

What's changing now

For most of my career, closing this gap was a manual job. Senior people did it in deal reviews. Methodology coaches did it in workshops. The connective tissue was made of people, and people don't scale.

The top performers got most of it because senior people invested where the return looked strongest. The middle of the team, where most of the latent performance lift sits, got a fraction of it. The thinking that helps a seller win was rationed.

What has changed in the last eighteen months is that AI has finally matured to the point where the connective tissue can be made of software, not just people. A team of thinking partners, methodology coach, account strategist, deal mechanics specialist, relationship analyst, sitting alongside every seller, holding an informed opinion on the situation in front of them, grounded in the methodology the organisation has chosen.

Not a chatbot. Not a dashboard. A continuous thinking partner that does the work only senior people used to be able to do.

What this means for revenue leaders

The next wave of AI tools, the ones built to help sellers think differently, is going to change the game.

Not because the tools themselves are magic. Because they finally close a gap that has been open for as long as I have been in this business. The gap between the senior thinking that lifts performance and the sellers who need it.

For most of my career, that gap could only be closed by senior people working through it deal by deal, account by account, conversation by conversation. The thinking didn't scale, because the people doing it couldn't be in every conversation. Now it can.

The next twelve months will sort out which tools actually close the gap and which ones just claim to. The leaders who can tell the difference will get a structural advantage their competitors will not see coming.

Next week I will write about what AI in sales has actually become so far, and why most of the current investment is going into tools that won't move the number.

Forecasting·12 May 2026·3 min read

Hope is not a forecast. The Forecast Trap.

Three months ago, his forecast was $12.4 million.

Last week, it came in at $9.2 million.

In the board meeting, nobody was surprised. Not really. The CFO had already built the variance into his assumptions. The CEO had quietly revised expectations six weeks earlier. Everyone in the room had learned, without saying so, to discount whatever the CRO presented.

It does not start at the board meeting. It starts in the pipeline review, three quarters earlier, when nobody pushed back on the numbers and the cycle began again.

This is the forecast trap. It is not dishonesty. The CRO believed the numbers. The sellers believed them. That is what makes it dangerous.

Forecasts are built on where sellers need clients to be. Not where clients actually are. The deal that is 90% confident is not 90% confident. It is the deal the rep has been closest to for six months and cannot bring himself to move. The deal stuck in procurement is not stuck in procurement. Nobody knows where it is.

Optimism is not a forecast. It is a feeling. And most pipelines are built on feelings.

A forecast should be built on evidence. What the client has said. What the client has done. What has changed in their organisation in the last thirty days that is visible and verifiable.

The cost is not just a missed number. Someone presents to a board. Someone loses credibility they spent years building. Someone discounts fifteen percent off the bottom of a deal to drag it across the line before December 31st. The CFO in Sydney described it perfectly:

"It's not forecasting. It's a theatrical performance with a predictable three-act structure that costs us millions in margin."

The fix is one question. Not a new CRM. Not another dashboard. One question that changes everything: where is the client in their buying process?

Not where the seller believes they are. Not where the forecast needs them to be. Where they actually are.

It is the most important question in forecasting. Not because sellers are unreliable. But because it shifts the focus from seller confidence to buyer behaviour.

Every other question in a forecast review measures the seller. How long have you been working it. How strong is the relationship. How confident are you.

Those questions are not irrelevant. But they measure the wrong thing.

Deals close on the buyer's timeline. Not the seller's. A client moves when their internal priorities align, their budget is confirmed, and their decision-makers are ready. Seller confidence does not accelerate that process.

"Where is the client in their buying process?" forces a different answer. What has the client done recently that indicates movement? What commitment have they made? What has changed inside their organisation in the last thirty days?

When sellers can answer those questions with specifics, the forecast is grounded. When they can't, the deal is not where they say it is.

Accurate forecasting is downstream of everything else. Downstream of opportunity management, relationship management, and client engagement. When those disciplines are in place, the forecast becomes a reflection of reality. When they are not, the forecast trap closes around you — the numbers look real, everyone believes them, and by the time the gap is visible, the margin is already gone.

The CRO in the opening story did not have a forecasting problem. He had a system problem. His people were selling without a shared understanding of where clients actually were. That is how the trap works. Not through dishonesty. Through optimism without evidence.

Coaching·4 May 2026·2 min read

Shotgun Coaching: Why Trying to Fix Everything Changes Nothing

After a joint client call, a sales manager handed his rep a list of 37 improvements.

The rep asked where to start.

"All of them," the manager said.

Nothing changed.

Not because the rep wasn't willing. Not because the feedback was wrong. Because no one can process 37 simultaneous changes and produce any of them.

This is shotgun coaching. It's one of the most common mistakes I see in sales organisations.

Leaders who care notice everything that could be better. The problem is that noticing everything and coaching everything aren't the same thing. When you try to fix everything at once, you change nothing.

Effective coaching is diagnostic. It starts with one question: which one or two behaviours, if changed, will move performance most?

There are three domains where coaching produces the greatest return.

Client Intelligence and Insight

Does the salesperson genuinely understand the client's world? Not product knowledge, commercial awareness. Industry pressures, strategic priorities, the buying group beyond the one contact they're comfortable with. When this is weak, everything suffers. Discovery stays shallow. Value becomes generic. Conversations default to price.

Sales Execution Excellence

How consistently does the seller apply the methodology when it matters? In most established teams, the problem isn't knowledge. It's execution under pressure. The knowledge is there. The behaviour just isn't stable. This is where coaching typically produces the fastest results.

Relationship Development

Is trust being built through competence and integrity or just familiarity? Can the seller have a commercial conversation at the executive level? Are expansion opportunities being spotted proactively, or only responded to? Strong relationships reduce volatility and increase lifetime value. Coaching here shifts the seller from transactional contributor to strategic partner.

Timing matters as much as focus. Pre-meeting coaching sharpens intent. Post-meeting coaching converts experience into learning before it fades. Opportunity reviews stop optimism replacing strategy. Funnel coaching protects forecast integrity. Skills development builds capability that compounds.

Most leaders do some version of these. The best ones do all of them, deliberately, at the right moments, with a clear sense of what they're developing.

Early in your career, success is measured by your own performance.

As a leader, it's measured by the performance you build in others.

The leaders who make that shift stop asking what they can do in the next client conversation. They start asking what their team needs to be able to do it themselves.

Different question. Different result.

Mindset·30 April 2026·4 min read

The Knowing-Doing Gap

Why your team knows better and still does not do it

Twelve months after running a set of client engagement and relationship management workshops with a major management consulting firm, I went back to run a negotiation session.

I opened by asking the group to walk me through the basic discovery questions. Foundational material. Things they had covered, discussed, and practised the year before.

They could not do it.

Not because they were not capable. Not because the frameworks were wrong. Because nobody had reinforced it. Knowledge that is not practised does not stick. It fades.

When I looked at the root cause, it was not the individuals. It was the leaders. The senior team had attended the initial training for an hour and then left. They never modelled the behaviours. They never asked the questions that would have signalled to their people what actually mattered.

Their teams concluded, correctly, that it did not matter. Not because anyone said so. Because nobody showed them otherwise.

What leaders value gets valued. What they tolerate is allowed. When leaders are absent from the change process, the change process fails.

The Conscious Competence Model

This is not a new idea. But in twenty-five years of working with sales organisations, I have rarely seen it applied with the discipline it requires.

The model describes four states of awareness and capability. People do not move through them in a straight line. They can operate at different levels across different skills, and pressure often pushes people back. Understanding where your team sits changes how you develop them.

What each state looks like in a sales team

1.  Unconscious Incompetence

The rep who consistently misses their number while remaining convinced they are doing everything right. They do not know what they do not know. They may even be falsely confident in approaches that are actively working against them.

This is the most difficult state to address because the individual sees no problem. The manager's instinct is often to give more time. The more effective intervention is to create the awareness first.

2.  Conscious Incompetence

This is the state most sales teams land in immediately after training. They understand better approaches. They can discuss the frameworks. They even agree with them.

Then a conversation becomes uncomfortable and they revert. They default to the product pitch. They skip the discovery questions. They know better. They simply have not internalised it yet.

This is not a character flaw. It is a normal part of the development curve. The question is whether the leadership environment accelerates the progression or lets it stall.

3.  Unconscious Competence

The top performer who seems to do everything right without being able to explain how. They ask strong questions, build trust naturally, create value instinctively. They cannot teach it because they cannot articulate it.

When promoted into leadership, they often struggle. Not because they lack the skills, but because they have never been required to make those skills explicit. What they do is real. It is just invisible, even to themselves.

The Huthwaite research on this is instructive. What effective salespeople say makes them successful often differs significantly from what they actually do. Unconscious competence is genuine skill running on an inefficient foundation.

4.  Conscious Competence

This is where performance becomes scalable. The individual understands the logic behind the approach, applies it consistently, adapts it intelligently, and can teach it to others.

Conscious competence turns individual talent into organisational capability. It is the difference between a sales organisation that performs because it hired the right people and one that performs because it built the right system.

An improvised system is powered by individual instinct. An adaptive system is powered by shared understanding. The maturity of the system will never exceed the level of conscious competence within the team operating it.

The real problem is not the training

Most sales training works at the level of conscious incompetence. People leave the room knowing more than when they arrived. That is not nothing.

But knowledge and behaviour are not the same thing. New behaviour only becomes consistent once new thinking becomes conscious. And conscious thinking only becomes consistent when it is reinforced by the environment around it.

The management consulting firm I described at the start did not fail because the training was poor. They failed because the leaders stepped out of the room and never came back in. Their people were paying attention to that signal, even if nobody meant to send it.

The knowing-doing gap closes when leaders model the behaviours, ask the questions, and create the conditions where the new approach is the expected approach. Not occasionally. Consistently.

That is a leadership problem before it is a sales problem.

The question worth sitting with: where does your team sit on this model, across the skills that matter most? And what is the leadership environment actually reinforcing?

Because whatever the answer is to the second question, the answer to the first question will follow.

Mindset·20 April 2026·1 min read

Most Sales Leaders Think They're Addressing Mindset When They're Addressing Mood.

Nothing says "I'm committed to transformation" quite like a new company water bottle.

New year. Big target. The business decides capabilities need upgrading. In comes the motivational speaker. The rallying cry to stay positive, be resilient, hit the number. Everyone leaves buzzing. Three months later — same results.

That's not mindset development. That's mood management.

Mindset is how your people think. How they process complexity. How they make decisions under pressure. Whether they react or anticipate. In B2B sales, this kind of thinking is non-negotiable — but reacting is always easier.

And most leaders have never considered mindset as something they can actively develop. It sits underneath capability, underneath process, underneath training. Invisible until someone names it.

Five specific ways of thinking, when deliberately adopted, consistently drive stronger performance. They're not abstract. They're observable. And they're coachable.

Strategic objectivity. Your rep says the deal is "definitely closing this month" while ignoring every warning sign. That's not confidence. That's belief bias.

Outcome orientation. "I made my 30 calls today." What did they produce?

Proactive value creation. Reacting to client requests vs anticipating client needs. One makes you an order-taker. The other shifts perception.

Trust through competency and integrity. Being liked gets you in the door. Being respected keeps you in the room. Being trusted gets you the business.

Flexible frameworks. Treating methodology like a driving test — follow it perfectly while the examiner's watching, ignore it once you get your licence.

These aren't soft skills. They're operating system upgrades. Without them, every framework and every training investment runs on an incompatible system.

Leaders — how much time do you spend on what your people do vs how they think?

What you value gets valued. What you tolerate is allowed. What you ignore persists. Your team has already decided what you really care about — whether or not you've said a word.

Relationship Management·14 April 2026·2 min read

The Way They See You Is the Way They Treat You.

Your biggest client is rethinking how they go to market next year. Are you in that conversation? Or do you find out when procurement sends you the RFP?

That gap has nothing to do with your product. It’s a perception gap.

Seen as a vendor; get procurement, limited access, and pricing conversations. Seen as a trusted partner; get senior leaders, a partner-oriented conversation, and competitive protection. Same client. Same need. Different perception of you. Completely different relationship.

The way they see you is the way they treat you. It determines the access you get, the conversations you’re invited into, the pricing power you have, and whether you’re in the room before a decision or after it’s already been made.

So here’s the question: what is your team doing — deliberately, strategically — to advance how clients perceive you? As the incumbent, you own the buyer’s perception of you — in every aspect of the relationship. The question is whether you’ve built it deliberately.

Every sales organisation wants to differentiate themselves. Every buying organisation wants to buy from a differentiated seller. The real differentiation isn’t in your product, your pitch, or your pricing. It’s in where the client places you on the Perception Ladder. That’s the differentiation that changes how they treat you.

The Perception Ladder

A European semiconductor business in China had this problem. Technically superior products. Four major clients representing 95% of their revenue. Competitors eroding their position across all four. Client feedback was consistent — too reactive, not innovative enough.

The problem wasn’t the product. It was how clients perceived them. They had no idea where they stood on the Perception Ladder, and no framework for intentionally shifting it.

The work started in their account planning with awareness — assessing how key stakeholders actually perceived them. Not where they assumed. Where they actually were. Then it became about strategic intention — deliberately fostering the perception they needed, stakeholder by stakeholder.

Behaviours that had been reactive became intentionally aligned with shifting stakeholder perceptions. Managers who had been responding started anticipating. Insights were shared, needs were pre-empted, perceptions were advanced.

Revenue tripled from €50 million to €150 million in twelve months. Two long-term contracts secured — €75 million and €49 million. Not by changing what they sold. By changing how they were perceived.

The way they see you is the way they treat you. Without a framework for deliberately shaping perceptions, the default becomes tactical — respond to the next RFP, prepare the next proposal, chase the next purchase order. All necessary. But tactical work, however well executed, can send perceptions backwards, creating unintended perceptions — which may not land where you need.

Opportunity Management·7 April 2026·1 min read

You Didn't Lose to a Better Solution. You Lost to a Decision-Maker You Never Knew Existed.

Buyers don't make decisions based on objective reality. They make decisions based on perception. Perception of whether the problem is worth solving. Perception of your competition. Perception of you.

Which means every decision-maker you fail to identify is a perception you fail to influence. They form their own view — of you, of your capabilities and your value — without any input from you whatsoever.

You're not losing to a better solution. You're losing to an unmanaged perception.

A commercial director. A major contract. A chemical company in Seville. Five solid relationships — procurement, technical experts, the right seniority. Six months of pursuit. Two days before the decision, he discovered the sustainability team had significant concerns about the product's carbon footprint.

He hadn't known the sustainability team was involved. Or couldn't get to them. He lost. Not to a better product. Not to a lower price. To a perception he never had the chance to shape.

Great sales teams don't leave this to chance. They have a system. Three critical strategic elements — most sales teams skip all of them:

Position. How their perception of you — and of every alternative — shapes where you stand in their decision. making process. Not where you think you stand.

People. The perception of every person who shapes the decision, visible or not.

Plan. The specific actions to shift perceptions and improve your probability of winning.

Every decision-maker you don't reach is a perception you don't influence. Your competition may not be making the same mistake. When do you stop relying on luck and start relying on intention?

It's a choice.

General·31 March 2026·2 min read

The Chairman Said Don't Worry. Sales Will Find a Way.

The target arrives. The business has decided what growth looks like next year — the direction, the scale, the number. How it actually gets generated is a different conversation. That part belongs to sales.

Don't worry though. Sales will find a way. They always do. Apparently.

What frustrates me most isn't the target. Ambitious targets are fine. What frustrates me is the gap between what's being asked and the understanding of what's required to deliver it.

The question every revenue leader should be asking is this: if we continue to think and act in exactly the same way, will we get the results we need? The honest answer is no. If results have to shift, behaviours have to change. Most leaders know this. The gap exists between knowing it and actually doing something about it — and that gap gets swallowed by the relentless pressure of chasing the number that's already on the board. Someone once defined insanity as doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. In sales organisations, we call it the annual plan.

Here's what I've learned across 20 years and more than 100 organisations: the revenue you need is almost always already within reach. It's sitting in client relationships that haven't been deepened, cross-sold, or evolved beyond the original engagement. It's in demand generation built around the same approaches that produced last year's results.

It's in opportunities being pursued without the strategic thinking required to actually win them. It's in client engagement that remains reactive and transactional — not client-centric, not focused on understanding and solving client issues.

The leaders who crack this problem don't work harder. They build a system that works consistently — regardless of who's having a good week and who isn't.

As I write in Perception Selling: Win More with Less —

"Goals are for people who want to win once. Systems are for people who want to win repeatedly."

That system is Perception Selling — nine elements that together determine whether a sales organisation grows by design or by accident. It's what this newsletter is about. Every week, one idea. One element of the system. One thing you can look at differently starting today.

See you next week.

Mark

Client-Centricity·19 March 2026·2 min read

The Invisible Competitive Advantage

Over the past two weeks, we've covered two things.

Differentiation doesn't live in your product; it lives in how you show up. True client-centricity isn't reactive service; it's anticipating what your client hasn't seen yet.

Now here's the part most organisations miss entirely.

Differentiation compounds.

Do it once and it's a good meeting. Do it consistently over months, across stakeholders, through the noise of day-to-day account management, and perception shifts. Your client stops seeing you as one option among several. They see you differently.

That shift may be slow. But over time it shows up. Forecasts become more reliable. Win rates improve because you're in the room before the buying process starts. Margins hold and price sensitivity diminishes because your value is perceived as more than just your products and services.

Why competitors can't replicate it

They can copy your product. They can match your pricing. They can hire your best people. What they can't replicate is the perception your clients have of you, built through consistently valuable interactions.

That perception is your moat. It's why clients call you first when something changes. It's why you're invited into conversations your competitors never hear about. No competitor can shortcut their way to that.

The three disciplines that make it systematic

This doesn't happen through good intentions. It has to be built into how teams operate.

The first is how you manage opportunities. Knowing who's driving the decision, who's blocking it, and how to build advocacy before you need it.

The second is how you manage relationships. Not just keeping the main contact happy, but systematically deepening your presence across the organisation. Relationships that don't grow, shrink.

The third is how you show up in every interaction. World-class teams prepare deliberately. They know what perception they're trying to advance and how each conversation moves the client's thinking forward.

The question that starts it

When I work with a leadership team and want to cut through quickly, I ask one question: how do your teams show up in front of clients?

Not what they say. Not what they sell. How they engage.

If you're not intentionally creating differentiation, you're blending in. And blending in means one thing. Competing on price.

The choice

You can leave differentiation to chance. Or you can make it systematic, built into how your teams engage, manage opportunities, and develop relationships over time.

The first path leads to margin compression and competitors who are always one price cut away from winning your accounts.

The second creates an advantage that quietly compounds until one day your clients can't imagine working with anyone else.

That's how you move from vendor to trusted partner. That's how you win.

Client-Centricity·5 March 2026·1 min read

Client-Centric or Just Reactive?

Most sales teams like to think they’re client-centric. They respond quickly. They solve issues. They run quarterly reviews. And they wait to be told what the client needs rather than developing needs themselves.

But that isn’t client-centricity. It’s reactive order-taking and basic sales administration.

Are you waiting for your client to define the issue? Or are you proactively identifying risks and opportunities before they do? The difference is everything.

Reactive service keeps you in the game. It doesn’t give you influence and influence comes from shaping how stakeholders see risk, cost and opportunity — their perception.

Because buying decisions aren’t driven by objective facts alone. They’re driven by how those facts are interpreted — by multiple stakeholders, each with different risks, incentives and personal exposure.

Most account teams are busy firefighting: resolving issues, processing requests, updating stakeholders. But they’re operating inside the brief — not shaping it. Real client-centricity means entering the decision-making process early. Challenging assumptions. Reducing the power distance gap. Helping stakeholders see cost, risk and opportunity differently than they did before the conversation.

That position is earned through deliberate perception development.

Not:  “What do you need from us?” But: “What issues are you trying to solve — and what happens if they remain unresolved?”

Not: “How can we support this initiative?” But: “What insight and experience do we bring to reduce the risk of failure?”

The job isn’t to respond to requests.

The job is to advance how your client interprets your value — and how they perceive your contribution to their business results. That shift — from vendor to strategic partner — is true differentiation. It appears in pockets, usually driven by individual effort rather than organisational design.

Without a system, it never becomes predictable.

Next week: why this compounds into an advantage competitors struggle to replicate.

Client-Centricity·13 February 2026·2 min read

The Differentiation Paradox (And Why Most Sales Teams Get It Wrong)

Most B2B buyers now complete the majority of their research before they ever speak to a salesperson. Why? Because they don’t perceive meaningful differences between providers. So by the time your team is invited in, the problem has already been framed. The criteria have been defined. The shortlist has been formed. You are no longer shaping demand. You are responding to it. That’s the paradox.

Differentiation Sounds Simple - It Isn’t.

Ask most sales teams what makes them different and you’ll hear:

Better service

Stronger relationships

Deep expertise

Customer focus

The problem? Your competitors say the same thing. The uncomfortable truth is this: Most companies are not meaningfully different in their products or capabilities. Take Coke and Pepsi Both sell similar carbonated drinks. Similar ingredients. Similar pricing. Often placed side by side. Yet Coca-Cola consistently commands stronger brand preference globally. Why? Because differentiation doesn’t live in the product. It lives in perception. It lives in what it feels like to choose you.

In B2B, It’s Even More Brutal

When buyers perceive no difference (without you):

They define the problem themselves.

They set their own buying criteria.

They narrow their options.

They turn suppliers into compliant respondents.

By the time you arrive, you are negotiating inside someone else’s frame. And when every option looks similar, price becomes the default decision filter.

Where Sales Teams Get It Wrong

They try to differentiate with:

Features

Discounts

Case studies

Slide decks

None of these create strategic distinction. True differentiation in complex B2B markets shows up in behaviour:

Challenging assumptions constructively to educate

Simplifying to make internal decisions easier for your buyer

Clarifying ambiguity (not creating it)

Anticipating risk before the client names it

Reframing pricing as investment and RoI

Differentiation is not what you sell. It’s how you engage.

The Real Work of a Sales Leader

This is not left to individual flair. World-class teams prepare deliberately. Before every interaction, they ask:

What client perception are we advancing?

How does this move the client’s thinking forward?

Where are we creating clarity others are not?

How are we anticipating; risk, issues, and opportunities.

Differentiation is not a slogan. It is a repeatable pattern of behaviour. If your team cannot clearly articulate — and consistently demonstrate — what makes engaging with you different, your clients will not feel it. And if they cannot feel it, they will not pay for it.

When differentiation is left to chance, price is the only differentiator left. That is the paradox. And most sales teams are still playing inside it.

Relationship Management·25 November 2025·3 min read

Account Killer #6 — Internal Misalignment Kills Relationships Faster Than You Think

How many of you have lived through a version of this?

JCC Consulting invested heavily in a must-win opportunity. They built the solution, launched the work, and carried the full pursuit cost believing the client was fully committed. Internally, the team felt confident. No one wanted to challenge the narrative or raise concerns because protecting personal reputation felt safer than confronting reality.

Only one person knew a senior stakeholder had disengaged — but they kept quiet. The internal story was already set. And speaking up risked being the one who “derailed the deal.”

By the time JCC understood what was happening, the account had walked. They were left with the cost of the pursuit, the cost of the solution, and the loss of an account they should have kept and an opportunity they should have won.

This is what internal misalignment looks like in practice. It deteriorates client confidence quietly and reveals itself suddenly. It destroys relationships far faster than most organisations think.

The Reality: Clients Experience Misalignment Long Before You See It

Clients feel misalignment through inconsistent: messages, behaviours, intent and/or delivery. And every inconsistency erodes their perception of alignment — which means it erodes trust.

The issue isn’t the behaviour. It’s the thinking behind it — the internal narratives, assumptions, and incentives that drive inconsistent execution. When your people say one thing and act in ways that contradict it, they experience uncertainty and uncertainty is the doorway competitors walk through.

Three Quiet Forces That Create Misalignment

Inconsistent objectives

Different teams running different priorities.

Strategy in one direction. Execution in another.

Clients see the gap before you do.

Inconsistent understanding of value

Teams interpret the client’s priorities differently.

No shared view of what “good” means.

And so the client gets fragmented delivery.

Protectionism

People protect their own performance, relationships, and reputation rather than challenging the internal story.

It’s safer to say nothing than to be the person who raises the inconvenient truth.

This is exactly why JCC failed. Not because they were careless. But because everyone assumed alignment, and no one was willing to disrupt the illusion.

Why Internal Misalignment Is So Dangerous

It creates three silent failures:

False confidence

Everyone internally thinks things are fine.

Externally the client is drifting.

Inconsistent client experience

Clients get different answers, different levels of urgency, different interpretations of what matters.

Lack of accountability

Nobody is wrong.

Everyone is right “from their perspective.”

And the client pays the price.

This is where relationships deteriorate — not through a major failure, but through a long series of misaligned moments. And by the time anyone internally notices, the perception shift has already happened.

The Fix: Strategic Alignment Isn’t a Meeting — It’s a Discipline

The solution isn’t more communication. It’s more consistency — in thinking, planning, and execution. That means:

one shared understanding of the client’s key results

one unified accurate narrative about the client’s world

one strategy, not multiple adapted versions

one structure that forces alignment before action

one rhythm of review that prevents narrative drift

one expectation: we own the client’s perception, collectively

And you can’t do this without the client. Account planning built without client input isn’t strategy. It’s projection.

If you don’t integrate the client’s voice into your planning, you aren’t aligned — you’re guessing.

The Perception Principle

The way your client experiences your alignment becomes their perception of your capability. And perception drives their behaviour, because the way they see you is the way they treat you. Your differentiation erodes making competitors more attratctive.

Hope waits. Strategy aligns. Discipline protects.

Relationship Management·12 November 2025·2 min read

Account Killer #5 — Account Planning: The Illusion of Strategy

Every company talks about account planning. Few do it well.

For many, account planning has become a ritual — something that happens once a year, full of data, activity, and good intent. But not strategy.

The process gives leaders comfort. It looks organised. It feels in control. But what it often delivers is noise — not clarity.

And that’s the illusion of strategy. Most account plans don’t drive differentiation, anticipation, or growth. They’re not living strategies. They’re static reports.

When planning lacks purpose, relationships stagnate. Teams mistake movement for momentum. And the business stays one step behind client expectations.

The Real Problem

Relationships stay reactive because there’s no forward view. There’s no intentional design or strategic development of perception — no one thinking deeply about how the client sees us and what we want that perception to be.

Most organisations are trapped in account planning that isn’t even strategic — it’s performative.

It may feel like control because there’s data, decks, and discussion. But it’s not control. It’s comfort. And comfort is dangerous.

The more information teams gather, the more confident they feel. But nothing changes. No priorities shift. No new strategies emerge. No one owns the next move.

That’s how businesses convince themselves they’re managing their key accounts — while slowly losing them.

The Cost of Ineffective Account Planning

The implications run deep:

Clients drift. They don’t feel led or challenged, just serviced so there's menaingful differentiation.

Expectations are just met. This becomes the norm — and when “good enough” becomes acceptable, relevance fades.

Differentiation disappears. Without perception-shifting insight, you look like everyone else — competent, consistent, and forgettable.

Risk builds invisibly. Relationships weaken, confidence erodes, and competitors start to fill the space.

Money is left on the table. Lack of deep understanding; information is collected but never interpreted or connected.

It’s not that the plans are bad. It’s that they’re irrelevant — because they don’t drive decisions, actions, or perception. Information without insight is noise.

And when planning produces noise instead of clarity, the organisation becomes reactive — waiting for the next issue to appear instead of designing what happens next.

The Fix

Account planning should be the strategic engine of client growth, not an annual reporting exercise.

The best organisations treat account planning as a living system — one that connects insight, strategy, and perception.

That means:

Clarity of intent. What perception do you want to create with the client?

Connection of insight. What issues, opportunities, and outcomes matter most to them now?

Design of action. What must you do — and be seen to do — to create relevance and trust?

Account planning isn’t about collecting data. It’s about creating differentiation. The goal isn’t just to manage accounts — it’s to shape perception.

Because in Perception Selling, the way your clients see you is the way they treat you.

And when your account plans are designed to shape that perception intentionally, you move from maintaining relationships to engineering long-term differentiation.

Hope waits. Reporting records. But strategy — strategy directs.

📘 Missed last week’s edition? Account Killer #4 — The Illusion of “We’re Fine.” When comfort masks erosion.

📅 Next week: Account Killer #6 — The Myth of Internal Alignment: When your biggest competitor isn’t outside, it’s inside.

Relationship Management·4 November 2025·2 min read

Account Killer #4 — The Illusion of “We’re Fine”

Why silent dissatisfaction kills relationships long before clients say a word

They want proactivity. Your team reacts.

They want innovation. Your team takes orders.

They want partnership. You give them process.

That’s the illusion of “We’re fine.”

Everything looks okay on the surface — the revenue’s steady, the meetings are polite, and the feedback’s generally positive.

But “fine” doesn’t mean loyal. It means your client stopped expecting more.

Silent Dissatisfaction

They leave after a sharp trigger — or after enough friction builds to feel like one.

A missed commitment.

An awkward renewal conversation.

A competitor’s fresher idea.

A change in priorities.

Any of these can tip the balance.

The pattern is the same: perception moves first, then decisions follow.

Account managers often miss the signals because of belief bias — we see what we want to see. It’s easier to believe the relationship is strong than to test if it really is.

The client’s world moves fast. Their expectations evolve quietly and quickly. And when your team stops evolving with them, perception starts to drift — long before performance does.

Reactive vs Proactive

In Perception Selling, I describe this as the “anticipation gap.” It’s the space between what the client wants next and what you’re still delivering.

Reactive account managers fix problems. Proactive account leaders prevent them.

Reactive teams take orders. Proactive teams bring ideas.

The difference isn’t just behavioural — it’s cultural. Reactive cultures reward activity. Proactive cultures reward awareness, curiosity, and insight.

The Cost of ‘Fine’

The gap between trusted partner and vendor isn’t small — it’s massive in its impact.

Once clients stop seeing innovation, competitors start offering it. Once clients stop feeling understood, competitors start listening. Silent dissatisfaction turns into quiet replacement.

Not overnight, but predictably.

The Fix: Awareness Over Assumption

The best account teams measure perception as carefully as performance. They ask:

What’s changed in the client’s world since our last meeting?

Where are we taking orders instead of shaping outcomes?

What would it take for them to describe us as indispensable again?

Hope waits. Strategy plans. Awareness leads.

Because by the time a client says, “We’re fine,” they probably aren’t.

📘 Missed last week’s edition? Account Killer #3 — How Many of Your Key Client Relationships Depend on One Person?

📅 Next week: Account Killer #5 — When Data Replaces Strategy. The comfort of dashboards, the illusion of control, and how numbers can blind you to real insight.

Relationship Management·28 October 2025·2 min read

Account Killer #3 — How Many of Your Key Client Relationships Depend on One Person?

Your key client relationships are assets to the business; they’re at risk when that relationship is overly dependent on an individual — not the organisation.

When too much control over a client relationship is anchored to one person, your business isn’t strong — it’s exposed.

This is concentration risk.

In finance, it means too much revenue tied to one client. In account management, it means too much influence tied to one individual.

And when that person moves, gets promoted, or loses relevance, the organisation doesn’t just lose a contact.

It loses visibility, access, and confidence. Growth slows. Continuity breaks. Sometimes, the account follows them out the door.

That’s not control. That’s exposure.

The Real Issue

This isn’t about individual performance. Account growth should never depend on the strength of individual relationships.

When one person “owns” the client relationship, the business starts to orbit around them — not the client. That’s over-dependence. It means:

Information flow follows personal agendas.

Influence relies on relationships, not insight.

Understanding client decision-making becomes difficult.

Growth and strategy both depend on individuals, not systems.

The warning signs are easy to miss:

Little cross-functional connectivity within the client account.

Infrequent reporting about the account’s progress and activities.

Poor transparency into what’s really happening with the client.

Relationship owners become protective or reluctant to let others in.

Strategic opportunities that appear — or disappear — as a surprise.

This isn’t a people issue. It’s a lack of process and strategy — which means it’s fixable.

Why It Matters

The impact of concentration risk rarely appears straight away — but when it does, it’s sudden.

Whether it’s someone leaving from your side or theirs, the risk is the same.

Clients tethered to one account owner lose trust and confidence during handovers.

Internal teams react instead of anticipate — creating a suboptimal client experience.

Knowledge lives in inboxes and memory, not systems.

New account leads look unprepared, rebuilding trust from scratch.

Growth slows because strategy isn’t shared or reviewed collectively.

Competitors gain influence as your control erodes.

When access and trust sit with one individual, you’re not managing a relationship — you’re managing exposure.

The Fix

The answer isn’t more control. It’s better systems, strategy, and team-driven execution.

Continuity isn’t automatic; it’s built through structure and shared accountability. That means:

Consistent, replicable account planning and execution.

Regular strategic reviews for visibility and learning.

Cross-functional teams aligned to client objectives.

In Perception Selling, I call this intentional relationship design — building trust, access, and influence deliberately, so they survive the people who hold them.

Relationships in business will always be personal. But they must be designed and managed to protect both client and company.

Trust takes time. Continuity requires structure. Both depend on systems that are repeatable, manageable, and scalable.

When one person holds the relationship keys, you don’t have control — you have exposure.

Hope waits. Strategy directs. Continuity is built.

If this challenge feels familiar, I’d love to hear how your organisation approaches it.

How do you ensure continuity when relationships evolve or change hands?📘 Missed last week’s edition? Account Killer #2 — When Strategic Clients Start Looking Elsewhere →

📅 Next week: Account Killer #4 — The Illusion of “We’re Fine.” The comfort story leaders tell themselves while relevance is already eroding.

Relationship Management·21 October 2025·2 min read

Account Killer #2 — When Strategic Clients Start Looking Elsewhere

Over time, even the strongest relationships plateau. They stop growing. Expectations aren’t exceeded. Energy fades. And that’s when they become vulnerable — to new ideas, new voices, and new attention.

It’s not so different from human relationships. Boy meets girl. They connect, invest, and grow together. Then routine sets in. Familiarity replaces curiosity. And suddenly, one person starts to wonder what life might look like elsewhere.

Business relationships follow the same arc. When engagement becomes predictable and differentiation fades, clients start to look beyond you — not out of disloyalty, but from a sense of dissatisfaction that drives interest elsewhere.

It’s rarely emotional. It’s commercial. When clients stop feeling you’re aligned with the achievement of their key results, the opening appears.

That’s how competitors get in. Not through better pricing or products, but through the gaps created by unfulfilled expectations and unrefreshed engagement.

The Root Cause: No Account Strategy This doesn’t happen because teams are careless. It happens because they operate without a clear relationship strategy — one that actively manages expectations, preferences, and perceptions.

They confuse activity with alignment. They assume familiarity equals trust. And they rely on tenure, not intentional design.

Without strategy, relationships default to reaction. Competitors don’t win by being better. They win by being present — and perceived as more relevant.

And perception drives behaviour. Because the way your clients see you is the way they treat you.

The Cost of Complacency: I saw this play out with JCC Consulting (name changed). They invested nearly £2 million pursuing a must-win opportunity with a long-standing client. The proposal was strong. The solution was sound. But their engagement was tactical.

They had influence with procurement — but none with a senior stakeholder who had quietly grown sceptical. A competitor filled that gap. By the time JCC realised, the deal — and the account — were gone. This wasn’t just one lost opportunity. It damaged confidence, cost jobs, and weakened the firm’s reputation. That’s what happens when you mistake familiarity for strategy.

The Antidote: Intentional Relationship Design The best account leaders don’t rely on history — they engineer relevance.

They design for depth, not just access. They map influence, not just contacts. They track how perception changes — not how they hope it stays.

In Perception Selling, I describe this as the intentional design of relationships — deliberately building trust, access, and influence rather than leaving them to chance. It’s how you protect what you’ve earned and keep competitors from getting inside.

Because perception moves faster than information — and once it shifts, everything else follows.

The Quiet Erosion: The first step to losing a strategic relationship isn’t poor performance — it’s complacency.

Competitors don’t need your client to be unhappy — only uncertain. Because uncertainty creates opportunity.

When you stop showing up with insight, presence, and anticipation, you leave a gap. And someone else will fill it.

Hope waits. Strategy plans. Anticipation leads. But awareness protects.

Because in strategic relationships, competitors don’t replace you overnight — they replace you quietly.

📘 Missed last week’s edition? Strategic Anticipation: The Discipline That Drives Differentiation →

📅 Next week: Killer #3 — The Star Performer Risk. When one person holds all the keys, your growth becomes fragile.

Relationship Management·14 October 2025·2 min read

Account Killer #1 — Strategic Anticipation: The Discipline That Drives Differentiation

Anticipation is often never designed into how account teams work. That’s what keeps vendors reactive and trusted partners rare.

The best account leaders don’t just react — they anticipate. They know what matters to their clients before the client has to ask.

In the first Account Killer, we explored how hope replaces strategy when teams operate reactively. This week, we look at the antidote — anticipation.

It’s the same in strong relationships — whether personal or professional. Most of us have people we trust, but not all of them are the partners we wish we had. The difference is anticipation.

In business, it’s the same principle. Trusted partners don’t wait to be told what’s changing — they stay aligned with the client’s world, helping them prepare for what’s next.

Most account teams aren’t careless — they’re overloaded. They’re managing issues, servicing requests, and responding to the noise of the day. The problem isn’t effort. It’s awareness. They rarely have the time, space, or mindset to anticipate.

That’s why so many relationships stay transactional. They never make the shift to strategic or trusted partner. Anticipation takes intentionality — the discipline to step back, see trends and patterns that shape impact the clients objectives.

The best teams don’t rely on instinct alone. They’ve built anticipation into the way they think, plan, and engage.

In Perception Selling, I describe four ways to do this — four disciplines that turn anticipation into action:

Unrecognised Problem — Help the client see a challenge they didn’t realise they had, or reveal the true scale of one they thought was solved.

Unanticipated Solution — Show them a way forward they hadn’t considered.

Unseen Opportunity — Expose the gain they’re leaving on the table.

Broker of Capabilities — Bring the full strength of your organisation to expand how the client defines success.

These are not sales tactics. They’re anticipatory disciplines.

Anticipation isn’t about being clever or manipulative; it’s systemic professionalism. But it’s also about authentic differentiation — being seen as someone who adds value beyond delivery. When you don’t anticipate, you blend in. When you do, you stand apart.

Client expectations evolve fast. They want partners who see the road ahead, not just the one behind. Anticipation sustains differentiation. It’s what keeps you relevant in the client’s mind long after competitors start circling.

The first step toward losing a strategic relationship isn’t poor performance — it’s becoming indistinguishable.

Hope waits. Strategy plans. Anticipation leads.

It’s the difference between being a vendor and being a trusted partner. And it’s the discipline that keeps your relationships differentiated, relevant, and secure.

📘 Missed last week’s edition? Relationship Management: Hope Is Not a Strategy →

📅 Next week: Killer #2 — When Competitors Are Already Inside Your Relationships.

Relationship Management·6 October 2025·1 min read

Relationship Management: Hope is not a strategy - your competitors love leaders who hope.

Most leaders think their biggest risk lies in driving new business. But the real danger sits inside their most strategic relationships. Growth doesn’t collapse overnight. It erodes quietly when relationship management is reactive, tactical, and short-sighted.

What I see across sales orgs is not a lack of effort, but a lack of strategy. Seven patterns repeat:

Account hoping – mistaking activity for strategy.

Competitors inside relationships – ignoring the slow erosion of your influence.

Star performer risk – one person holds all the keys.

Data ≠ strategy – reports pile up, insight doesn’t.

Single-threaded relationships – one contact away from collapse.

Complacency comfort – assuming tenure for trust.

Reactive firefighting – waiting for problems instead of shaping client perception.

Losing a strategic relationship isn’t just lost revenue. It means market share shrinks, reputation takes a hit, competitors gain ground, and people lose jobs. The impact is broader, deeper, and often irreversible.

I wrote about this in Perception Selling. JCC Consulting lost a must-win client opportunity after investing nearly £2 million in pursuit costs. Not because their solution was weak, but because their engagement was tactical. They had no depth with one influential stakeholder. A competitor did. By the time anyone realised, the deal — and the account — were gone. This wasn’t just one lost deal. It shook confidence across the team, cost jobs, and eroded trust with the board.

The real challenge isn’t a lack of effort. It’s a lack of strategy. When relationship management is tactical and reactive, you gamble with growth. When it’s strategic and proactive, you protect it. The leaders who win don’t just manage accounts. They intentionally design relationships. They stop being firefighters and start being architects of growth.

Next week, I’ll dive into Account Killer #1: Hoping ≠ Strategy. In the meantime, look at your top relationships: are you truly operating strategically? Or just reacting?

Relationship Management·28 March 2025·2 min read

Retention to Revenue — Get the Most from your Existing Clients

Following my recent webinar on “Maximising Revenue from Existing Clients”, I wanted to take a moment to revisit the key takeaways—because this topic is more relevant than ever.

High-performing businesses understand that true, sustainable growth doesn’t come from constantly chasing new clients—it comes from deepening the value within the relationships you already have.

In fact, we’re seeing more and more businesses report that 50% of their revenue is driven by just 5% of their clients. That should make us all stop and think: Are we doing enough to nurture, retain, and grow these critical relationships?

Strategic vs. Tactical: Where Growth Begins

Most teams are still stuck in tactical mode—focused on immediate outputs and short-term wins. But those who elevate their thinking and adopt a strategic approach to client management unlock more revenue, more loyalty, and more influence.

It’s not just about the next deal—it’s about earning the right to stay at the table and grow together.

Use S.V.O.T Analysis to Uncover New Opportunities

One of the most practical tools we explored in the webinar was the S.V.O.T Analysis: Strengths, Vulnerabilities, Opportunities, and Threats within a client relationship.

This framework pushes us to ask:

Are we truly aligned with our client's evolving priorities?

What emerging threats could displace us?

Where haven’t we delivered value yet?

It’s an exercise that brings clarity and uncovers untapped revenue potential.

Anticipate. Don’t Just React.

The strongest client relationships are built on trust, insight, and foresight.

If you understand your client’s world well enough to bring solutions before they ask, you position yourself as indispensable. This means staying close to industry shifts, understanding internal dynamics, and being present in the conversations that matter.

Clients want strategic partners, not passive suppliers.

Climb the Relationship Ladder

When you’re seen as a trusted advisor rather than just a vendor, a few powerful things happen:

Price becomes less of a barrier

Competitors become less relevant

Conversations move from transactional to transformational

This requires consistent effort, deep client understanding, and a mindset shift from selling to solving.

Cross-Selling and Upselling—But Strategically

This isn’t about selling more for the sake of it—it’s about aligning your offerings with the client’s most pressing needs.

When you understand their pain points, business goals, and what’s holding them back, you’re in a position to recommend solutions that truly move the needle. That’s when cross-selling and upselling become value-led, not product-pushed.

Let’s stop seeing clients as accounts and start treating them as growth partners.

Because when you manage relationships strategically, you don’t just retain revenue—you grow it.

To growth,

Mark Wills

Opportunity Management·17 January 2024·2 min read

Improve Sales Performance: Get more Strategic when Managing Opportunities - Part 1

We’ve said it a million times; B2B sales is complicated. With on average six-seven decision-makers involved, the need for a strategic approach is undeniable. Yet, many sales teams are still way too tactical in their approach and need to cultivate a more strategic mindset. Unfortunately, strategic thinking does not come naturally to many, what is required is a framework to get clarity in what they know and what they don’t in any given selling situation, allowing for quicker and more effective qualification of opportunities.

Strategically Managing Opportunities Elevates Sales Performance

Adopting a strategy-led opportunity management approach is not just about increasing win rates; it's about cultivating a sales team's ability to think strategically, enhancing their technical sales knowledge, and ultimately, developing business knowhow. The tangible business impact – an accelerated the buying process, improved win rates, and an understanding of the real reasons behind win and losing. It's about creating a coherent strategy that differentiates your team distinctly in a crowded marketplace.

Three of the Most Common Opportunity Management Challenges and how to overcome them

Inability to Access Key Decision-Makers: Use an opportunity management framework to map decision-makers. This approach helps identify known and unknown decision-makers and strategically find ways of engaging with them at the right time - crucial for increasing your probability of success.

Lack of Strategic Approach and Thinking: Strategically managing opportunities enhances the team’s ability to think more collaboratively to come up with ideas and actions to move deals forward that may not otherwise have been thought of before.

Subjectivity vs Objectivity: Subjectivity and belief bias skews decision-making. When people collaborate across a single view of an opportunity it supports objectivity in decision-making, which is key to strengthening your strategy and improving your chances of winning or exiting early.

Is your sales team still flying blind?

If your sales team does not have a mechanism built into your sales process to map out a selling situation in terms of decision-makers, competition, your position in the opportunity and a process for qualifying the opportunity, then you are operating at a disadvantage to your competition.

As a seasoned sales leader, the question to ask is can your team continue to think and act the same way and get the results you need?

If the answer is no, how will you help them evolve to meet the changing dynamics of B2B selling?

When you answer these two questions you will find a path that translates into increased revenue, reduced cost of sales, improved predictability, top-line revenue growth, staff retention, and market share growth.

Embracing a strategic approach in opportunity management and relationship management is key.

In Part 2, we’ll delve deeper into creating a culture of continuous improvement and innovation in sales teams, ensuring sustained growth and success.

Our upcoming articles feature advanced sales techniques and expert insights, all structured to elevate your sales team to excellence. If you’re ready to know more specifically for your business, let’s get in touch.

Demand Generation·29 November 2023·3 min read

Strengthen your Demand Generation Capabilities with these Key Focus Areas - Part 2

This is part 2 of our Strengthen your Demand Generation capabilities. If you haven’t checked part 1, head over here

Let’s continue with our discussion on the challenges and opportunities within Demand Generation. Mastery here will have a dramatic impact on funnel strength and elevate sales performance and results.

This is a top-of-funnel activity; accelerating the number of opportunities, development of relationships, and improved client engagement.

Demand Generation Challenges

Cross-Sell and Up-Sell

Cross-selling and up-selling are critical to growing wallet share, protecting client relationships, and maximizing lifetime value of the client. However, it requires strategic thinking and approach:

Understand the Client’s World: Immerse yourself in your client's environment. Stay updated on industry trends, significant events, and the internal dynamics of their organization. This knowledge positions you as more than just a vendor; instead, they see you as a partner who truly understands their challenges and aspirations - their world.

Compelling Discovery Skills: The ability to ask insightful questions and listen actively will help uncover and develop deeper needs and value-add opportunities, leading to more cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Providing Insights and Perspective: Differentiate yourself by providing relevant insights and perspectives that help the client see challenges they weren't aware of and/or solutions they had not thought of.

Aligning Capabilities: Ensure that your products or services are not just a fit for the client’s needs, but that they are shared in a way that highlights your differentiation articulated in the client’s context.

This is how you increase wallet-share, solidify your position as a trusted advisor, and enhance your overall relationship with the client. This not only improves your sales performance but also contributes to long-term client retention and growth.

Accessibility of 'Issue' Owners

Identifying and getting in front of the right decision-maker, with the right message, at the right time is the game we play. This is the very essence of a sales strategy and

can be a game-changer. You need to understand the following:

Buyer Personas: Who owns the issue you solve? Who is experiencing discomfort or needs to improve their current performance? Getting in front of the issue owner can place you ahead of others and give you real insights into the issues faced and how they are impacting their role and their business.

Understanding Buying Drivers: Understand what truly drives purchase decisions within your client’s organizations. Recognize the factors that weigh most heavily on the minds of decision-makers.

Identifying Needs: Be adept at identifying both the expressed and unarticulated needs of your prospects. This skill is crucial for positioning your solution as essential and timely.

Compelling Messaging: Develop messages that resonate. Your communication should cut through the noise, capture attention, show how you improve business performance, solve their issues, and articulate the unique value you bring.

Improved prospect targeting and easier access to decision-makers lead to a healthier sales funnel, better sales results, and increased market share.

In the space of Demand Generation, our focus remains steadfast on delivering insights that translate into tangible sales results and performance improvements. Ensure your sales team is continually honing their skills, especially in areas like client discovery and communication. Regular training sessions, workshops, and simulation exercises can be invaluable.

Stay engaged and look forward to more advanced strategies and insights in our upcoming content, all designed to propel you toward sales excellence.

Demand Generation·13 November 2023·2 min read

Strengthen Your Demand Generation Capabilities with these Key Focus Areas - Part 1

Demand generation is one of the four Client Management Activities that drive the results of your organization. In this 2-part series, we’ll zoom into the three challenges faced by many organizations.

Demand generation is the lifeblood of a sales team and both insufficient and excess demand can have an adverse impact. There are distinct challenges presented when a business has both insufficient and excess demand.

When demand falls short, sales teams find themselves with limited opportunities, which can result in counterproductive behaviors that hinder client relationships. Conversely, an abundance of opportunities necessitates a stringent qualification process to ensure resources are not wasted on low-win prospects.

How successful a sales team is at Demand Generation, will either constrain or propel business growth. Let’s take a closer look at these three Demand Generation challenges to better identify focus areas to improve on:

When demand falls short

When there are insufficient qualified leads, it leaves sales teams scrambling to make the most out of limited opportunities. The key to overcoming this hurdle is:

Prospect Targeting: Focus on identifying and reaching out to the right prospects, ensuring all sales efforts are strategically aligned.

Marketing-Sales Integration: Seamless collaboration between your marketing and sales, to align on targeting, messaging, and follow-up.

When executed well, your sales team will experience greater market awareness around your capabilities, strengthened pipeline, and improved win rates, leading to enhanced revenue performance, target achievement, and all-round better sales results.

Market Mapping

Understanding your market and identifying qualified leads is crucial for sustained sales success. To overcome this challenge:

Market Research and Ideal Prospect Profile (IPP): Dive deep into market trends and create detailed IPPs to ensure you're targeting the right audience.

Persona Mapping: Develop clear and concise buyer personas, aiding your sales team in understanding and addressing the specific needs of potential buyers.

Implementing these strategies will lead to a repeatable and manageable approach to lead generation, fostering reliable sales results and contributing to top-line growth and expansion of wallet and market share.

Managing an abundance of opportunities

Having a consistent, systematic qualifying process enables informed and objective business decisions that help determine how to allocate sales time and resources. The knock-on effect to other aspects of the sales system becomes self-evident. Ensure your sales team is equipped to effectively qualify opportunities, distinguishing high-win from low-win probability scenarios.

Encourage practices that prioritize identifying speaking to client needs and issues. This will change the client’s perception of salespeople from product specialists to problem solvers, ultimately shifting the relationship to that of a strategic advisor or trusted partner.

In our next edition, we will look at two other sales challenges in Demand Generation: Cross-sell & Up-sell and Accessibility of 'issue' Owners. Stay tuned for more insights, backed by over two decades in the sales arena, as we continue our path toward sales excellence.

General·31 October 2023·2 min read

Can you continue to think and act the same way and get the results you need?

Many leaders we speak to consistently share their concerns about being able to achieve their growth plan both in the short and medium term. Expectations of growth are constant and yet the resources available to achieve growth remain the same or are even less!

Revenue leaders we help, find it immeasurably valuable to see their sales organisation as a system of interconnected moving parts. Think of it as your sales engine. If you want better performance then optimizing the moving parts is essential to improve win rates, revenue growth and client relationships.

There are four core client management activities. Performance improvement is achieved by understanding what you currently do in each of these component parts, and then optimizing for performance.

Put simply – this is how you get more from less.

You optimize your sales system through training and coaching sales methodology and tools. When you do this, you can expect the following direct and indirect benefits:

Direct impacts:

Win rates increase

Average case size increases

Revenue increases

Forecasting is more accurate

Probability of achieving or exceeding growth plan increases

Indirect impacts:

Customer relationships develop toward or are maintained as trusted partner

More opportunities are identified

You enter the buying process earlier

Contributors know how to respond to clients more effectively

Staff attrition decreases

Here are a few tips to begin optimizing your sales system:

Use the sales system to identify where you feel you are experiencing:

Performance issues or a lag in growth

Sales process challenges

Areas where you have a need for improvement

Ask the following 10 questions:

How confident are we of achieving our objectives if we continue to think and act the same way?

Where are deals getting stuck?

Are we accessing the right decision-makers?

How effective are client conversations at surfacing client needs?

Are we leaving money on the table?

How are we perceived by our key customers?

Are we differentiated through the client’s lens?

Are we adding value for the client?

Do people feel accountable for what they have to achieve?

Do they feel enabled to achieve the key objectives of the business?

Get expert advice on how to adopt a sales methodology and make it stick

Provide regular training and coaching to your sales team.

Track and monitor your performance improvements

If you're ready to start optimizing your sales system, let’s get in touch. We can help identify your areas for growth quickly by prioritising what moves the needle fastest to help you achieve your objectives.

Opportunity Management·28 April 2023·6 min read

Selling to large organisations is complicated - Here’s how to simplify, strategise, win more and win bigger.

With decades of combined enterprise selling experience under our belt and having coached many B-B sales organisations, we have arrived at a singular inescapable conclusion; selling to large organisations is complex!

What makes it complex is not the solution or the problem, although both could themselves be complicated.

What makes enterprise selling complicated is the number of decision-makers involved in the buying process.

CSO Insights, a leading research firm into B-B sales reports this data annually.

When buyers are asked how many decision-makers were involved in their buying process, the data has consistently shown year on year increases - with the average being 6.4.

This means that enterprise selling is getting MORE complicated and not less.

The same question was asked to sellers and a very different picture was painted.

According to the research, sellers believe there are closer to 4 decision-makers involved in the decision-making process.

Think about that for a minute; if sellers believe there are 4, and buyers say upwards of 6;…this means sellers consistently fail to identify ALL the people involved in the decision-making process.

Now think about this:

Does the risk of losing increase or decrease if the key decision-makers are not identified and accessed?

Accessing decision-makers during the buying process is arguably one of the biggest challenges the modern sales team faces.

As the data would suggest, sellers don’t identify or access them all, which is the single biggest strategic reason for the loss of an opportunity.

There is however a solution.

One that is proven to have an exponential impact on getting out of low-win-probability opportunities quickly, whilst at the same time, helping you increase win-rates.

The difference between strategy and tactics

If selling was a sporting endeavour, strategy would be how you prepare for the game, whereas tactics would-be the decisions made during the game.

Strategy is the 35,000 feet aerial view over (in this case) a selling situation; evaluating your position(s) of advantage and positions of disadvantage.

An effective sales strategy should get the right seller in front of the right buyer with the right message at the right time.

Tactics are how you manage the situation when in front of the buyer.

I say this without reservation:

“Today’s B-B sellers still think too tactically and not strategically enough.”

A selling situation becomes complex when there are three or more decision-makers involved in the buying process. That’s pretty much most B-B selling situations; as the CSO data would suggest.

So, how do you simplify the complex?

Have you heard the expression how do you eat an elephant?

Yes, you break it into smaller chunks. Of course, we are not literally advocating eating elephants, it is metaphoric.

The way you simplify complex situations is by breaking them into smaller chunks so that you can understand the individual constituent pieces.

The best way to do this is by using a specific opportunity management framework.

Case Study: What happens when you don’t cover the bases.

A client of ours who works for a large consulting firm shared this story:

A major, highly desirable opportunity had come to market with an existing client. The relationship manager for the client had not been in contact with the client for more than 6-months.

It turns out, a very senior decision-maker in the client business had fallen out with the relationship manager and a competing firm was cosying up to the disgruntled decision-maker.

My client’s team, in pursuit of this opportunity and not aware of the fallout until very late in the selling process, invested heavily in the solution. They were so proud of their work; they started announcing how great the solution was; blasting it out on social media. Even before showing the client the solution.

Come the pitch-day, the disgruntled high-degree of influence decision-maker didn’t show up for the presentation. The reception from the other decision-makers was also lukewarm at best.

Here’s the punchline: the estimated cost of this pursuit and solution design was calculated to be circa GBP 2 million.

Flabbergasted, I asked how often this sort of thing happens. He responded… “oh all the time”.

We went on to discus some of the likely consequences of this situation and it was mind-blowing:

Misdiagnosis of the real reason for the loss means this situation will happen again

The blame for losing the opportunity falls on the wrong people

Those people may lose their jobs, an unnecessary loss of talent.

Loss of morale - we could go on.

The consequential costs of these kinds of situations are staggering and yet, wholly unnecessary.  Does a version of this happen in your organisation?

So, what should have happened?

Desirability does not mean winnability

The cost of putting a pursuit together; time, salaries, emotional exertion, opportunity-cost, some of which are easier to quantify than others, is huge!

Not all opportunities are winnable no matter how desirable, and a lack of strategic thinking will see you pursuing opportunities you cannot win.

Yet opportunities are pursued all the time based exclusively on desirability without weighing the winnability of the opportunity.

Before solutioning, it’s important to understand both winnability and desirability to determine if it is worth investing the time, money, and energy. This is qualification.

Had the selling team at our client’s business done this, they may have withdrawn from the opportunity much earlier and mitigated some of the actual/potential collateral damage caused.

If you want to compete in B-B sales and you are not using a specific framework to manage opportunities – you have a competitive disadvantage.

The map of the territory: A strategic framework for opportunity management

Imagine you are military commander overseeing the field of battle. You need a map of the territory and as much information about the battle situation as possible.

Missing and/or inaccurate information could cost lives.

In sales, the situation is similar (although it may not cost so many lives).

There are three critical elements to a successful sales strategy: position, people, plan.

Had our client at the consulting firm focussed in on position, people, plan to evaluate the winnability to balance out desirability, maybe there would have been a different outcome.

We believe strongly that most sellers don't naturally think this way.

Evidence of this exists in sales organisation all over the world. That’s why we advocate opportunity management frameworks that act not only as check lists but provide a prompt and structure for strategic thinking.

When we have worked with businesses who have inculcated an opportunity management framework into their sales process, magic happens.

We saw one business increase its win rate from 23.9% to 46%, when using an opportunity management framework such as this.

Their ability to see into opportunities, evaluate their position, and set laser focused strategies also meant they were able to uphold margins. They not only saw an increase in win rates but also margins increased as well.

Final thoughts

Getting pursuit teams organised across a common methodology, approach and language around opportunity pursuit is fundamentally important if you want to intentionally grow your revenue by developing sales capabilities.

As the graphic below illustrates, the potential for performance improvement from the middle 60% of performers will yield greater return to the business than focussing on the top performers.

We are repeating ourselves we know, but most salespeople are not thinking strategically, they think more tactically and in complex selling situations with multiple decision-makers this can be a competitive disadvantage.

The key is to adopt a process and tool that will support strategic thinking, provide a common language for sales teams, creates greater clarity and an increased probability of winning.

As our clients have told us about the return on investment across such initiatives is exponential when implemented well.

Relationship Management·28 September 2022·4 min read

Make Strategic Account Planning Your Competitive Advantage

When 50% of your revenue comes from just 5% of customer relationships; losing a key strategic relationship can have far reaching implications - the loss of existing revenue, future revenue, market share, key people, and the increased likelihood of competitor encroachment.

These strategically important relationships should be treated as business assets. It is imperative you PROTECT and GROW them, because it costs six times as much to re-acquire an unhappy customer than it does to keep a satisfied one.

In this three-part newsletter we will be covering how to make Strategic Account Planing a competitive advantage.

Part 1: From Business Rationale to Account Selection

Part 2: Implementing a Strategic Account Planning Process

Part 3: Executing Successful Account Planning Meetings

Introduction

Strategic Account Planning is critical to developing profitable client relationships. Yet for so many businesses it is an underdeveloped process, that often fails to achieve its objectives. In so many cases, even the ownership of this strategically important process remains unclear.

We cannot emphasise enough how important Strategic Account Planning is to your business because many of the challenges you face when selling B-B are solved by this critical business process.

Solving Sales Challenges

Research from Korn Ferry in ‘The 2021 Buyer Preferences Study’ advises that Buyers consistently reach out to Sellers later in their buying process. According Korn Ferry, over 79% of Buyers wait until they have fully defined their needs and, 57% identify solutions first, before reaching out to Sellers.

Compounding this further; 68% of Buyers say that when they engage with Sellers their experience either falls below or (just) meets expectations. On only 32% of occasions do Sellers exceed expectations.

On the surface this may not sound so bad, however just meeting expectations has become ‘a sea of sameness’. As a result, Buyers have developed a generalised perception that Sellers create mostly undifferentiated experiences - offering low-value in the early stages of their buying process.

This is further underscored when we consider Buyers rank Sellers a lowly 9th place in a list of 10 resources they turn to when they need to solve a problem according to the same Korn Ferry research.

Your Sales System

To understand why Strategic Account Planning (SAP) is so important to your business, we first need to discuss its place in your sales system. All sales organisations operate a sales system, the only difference is how systematised you are in your approach.

The Sales System is a series of interconnected client management activities that position the customer at the centre. Every business that sells will in some way practice these four customer management activities:

Relationship Management

Opportunity Management

Demand Generation

Client engagement

Strategic Account Planning is the process you employ for Relationship Management. Its purpose is to protect and grow your strategically important relationships. The system is symbiotic for instance; you will not have many relationships to manage if you don't manage (and win) opportunities and, vice versa.

Understanding how Strategic Account Planning as a business process connects to other elements of the sales system is key to seeing its commercial value.

Three Key Objectives

A well implemented and executed Strategic Account Planning process must help you overcome the challenges frequently faced at the opportunity pursuit level.

Your Strategic Account Planning process should achieve the following three key objectives:

Create meaningful recognised differentiation over the longer term

Identify opportunities earlier

Get out in-front of the buying process

Commercial Advantages

Business leaders should be in no doubt about the commercial advantages a well implemented and executed Strategic Account Planning process offers. Advancing the relationship status changes the way account stakeholders perceive you. When the relationship status is elevated, the way you are treated changes. It is less transactional, and it becomes increasingly more partner orientated. There are real and material commercial advantages that impact key business results:

You are differentiated in their eyes

The Influence of competition is diminished increasing the probability of sales success

The importance of solution features diminishes

Price sensitivity diminishes protecting margins

Relationships are broader and deeper

You develop stronger advocacy

You hear about opportunities earlier

You have access to key decision-makers

Business results change

Revenue per account increases

Cost of pursuing opportunities decreases

Businesses grow together

Selecting Strategic Accounts

A huge part of successful Strategic Account Planning is acknowledging there are limited resources and then trying to optimise the allocation of those resources. Here is a simple 4-step framework to help you calculate RoRI to guide your strategic account selection:

Final thoughts

Remember the primary purpose of Strategic Account Planning is to advance your customer’s perception of you and your business – this is the game we play! Any business that places value on continued and repeat sales needs to have a robust and effective Strategic Account Planning process.

The first step is account selection. This is an integral part of the overall business strategy because resources are limited, and businesses need to invest in relationships that will achieve the highest RoRI.

In Part 2, we talk about how to implement a Strategic Account Planning process, the framework to implement, the account team, and the cadence around successful execution.

Opportunity Management·17 August 2022·6 min read

Beating The RFP Trap

‘The RFP Trap’ is the acceptance that the RFP process is just the way buyers buy and, that nothing can be done about the formalised buying process and its challenges.

There are of course those who have developed strategies for overcoming these challenges. Unsurprisingly, they tend to win more business.

What’s your strategy for addressing the ‘The RFP trap’? Many sales teams don't have one. In this week’s newsletter we discuss these challenges and how you can overcome them.

‘The RFP Trap’

For many (buying) organisations their process for buying has become ever more formalised and there is very little sales teams can do to change that. Sales teams can however develop strategies to cope with the challenges this presents.

The first step for sales teams to overcome these challenges is to acknowledge the RFP is only ONE step in the customer’s buying process.

It is the step which communicates the Buyer's interest to buy services/products from a provider who they perceive to be the most suitable and a proposal is required in response.

However, the RFP is not the sale in its entirety!

We often hear the term ‘RFP’ used interchangeably, as if it were the whole sales process and it’s easy to see why. From research we know that Buyers on average have completed 57% of their buying process when they first reach out to prospective providers. As the graphic below depicts, if the first contact you have with a buyer is at 'Select Best' or ' Evaluate Options', then the RFP process is the sale for you.

However, The RFP is not ‘the sale’ , which is a very important strategic distinction. This is because if linguistically you position the RFP as THE sale, you will lose the notion that there are a series of preceding steps where you could be engaging with the Buyers EARLIER.

Challenges ‘The RFP Trap’ presents for sales teams

The fundamental challenge with the RFP trap is it frequently means you engage later in the buying process, which has the following implications:

They have already defined the issue to be solved

They may have a strong perception of what the solution looks like

Their thinking is harder to influence

Another organisation maybe influencing their thinking

Key decision-makers are harder to access

You do not understand the perceptions of the key decision-makers

Solution offerings can be normalised making it difficult to create meaningful differentiation

Pricing can become more of an influencing factor

This list of challenges is not definitive, but it is hugely problematic!

Strategic Opportunity Management

Like your selling process, there are numerous steps in the customer’s buying process before the RFP is issued. Understanding these steps and, always knowing where buyers are in their buying process is critical.  Here are three fundamental questions to always ask about your opportunity (every time you review it):

Where are they in their decision-making process?

Do we understand their buying-process i.e., how they buy (tender/RFP)?

Who are the decisions-makers and what are their roles?

The answers to these questions will shape your entire strategy in terms of what you can and can’t do to engage with the decision-makers. Sales teams today MUST develop a more strategic approach towards their selling situations and we advise adopting a methodology driven approach for this.

Categorising Buyers into decision-making roles helps determine who you should approach first and, what they are looking for as we show in the table below. This example is extracted from Miller Heiman’s Strategic Selling methodology and is a good example of well-defined decision-making roles.

Economic Buying Influence (EBIs) owns the final decision and is often (but not always) difficult to access, especially when there is no existing relationship, and you are engaging later in the buying process.

User Buying Influences (UBIs) tend to own the issue to be solved and often identify the issue itself because they are the ones experiencing it. They are frequently involved in the buying process earlier.

Technical Buying Influences (TBIs) are there to make sure the right solution is selected. They are often procurement and other purchasing, supply-chain functions and tend to get involved later in the buying process - after the issue has been identified.

It stands to reason that if you are engaging with TBIs first, then you are probably engaging later in the buying process (but not always). TBIs often act as gatekeepers to other decision-makers, which is why a key part of your sales strategy must be to engage earlier with the UBIs and/or the EBI.

Case Study: A customer of ours had a regional sales team who were very reactive to RFPs. The believed the job of a salesperson was to sit and wait for the RFP to land and then respond.

After some coaching they decided to be more pro-active and engage earlier in their customer's buying-process. Here’s what happened:

They had become so used to talking to Procurement (TBIs), that they had no idea of the other decision- maker roles. Their first attempt at early engagement was made to the procurement department of a business where they knew there was an upcoming opportunity - later in the year.

Unsurprisingly, they were told (by Procurement) that they were too early, and they would be contacted nearer the time (when they release the RFP). The sales team were confused because we had advised them to reach out to their potential customer earlier.

Who should they have targeted first? Yes, the UBIs, the people who own the issue they solve. When we engage UBIs first, this has the potential to facilitate the following:

A deeper understanding of the issue from the issue owner’s (UBI) perspective

A chance to influence the UBIs perspective on what the solution could look like

Build advocacy early on

Influence the buying process and shape the RFP when released

Differentiate by the way you engage with the client

Of course, we acknowledge that we do not always have the accessibility to decision-makers we need. And we also have to accept that there are some situations where we are not able to get to the decision-makers early enough - this should be a consideration when qualifying an opportunity.

There are just some issues you can’t solve at the opportunity level and so when you are the incumbent you have to rely on our account planing process - the process for strategic relationship development.

Strategic Relationship Development

We continue to reiterate that this is the most underutilised, yet critically important strategic process in your sales organisation. There should be three objectives of your account planning process:

To create long-term client-perceived differentiation

To identify new opportunities earlier

To get out in-front of the buying process

If you are unable to solve 'The RFP Trap' issues at the opportunity level, then it’s time to get more strategic by identifying ways you can solve them at the longer-term strategic relationship development level. Of course, this works when you are currently doing business with an existing customer; you are unlikely to have an account plan with a customer you are not doing business with.

Final thoughts…

No one likes the formality of the RFP process. Its restrictions (intentionally or otherwise) normalise solution offerings making meaningful differentiation difficult-sometimes impossible, restricts access to key decision-makers and often degenerates the decision-making process into a pricing battle.

None of this is healthy for both buyers and sellers. However, this is the game, and we have the tools and knowhow at our disposal to not only manage this situation but to make sure we develop our approach to 'The RFP Trap' as a competitive advantage.

How are you adapting your approach and if not, how much do you think that costs you?

Client Engagement·14 June 2022·6 min read

Engaging with customers: are you leaving money on the table?

To maximise the impact of every customer engagement for both you and the customer, sales teams need to become more strategic when engaging with customers – here’s how.

In edition 2 of this newsletter, I talked about systematising sales, which is today a fundamental factor in sales organisational success. In editions 3-5 I wrote about to two of the six key competencies you need in your sales system:

• Strategy at the account level
• Strategy at the opportunity level

In this edition, I focus on a third competency - strategy at the client engagement level. This is how your client facing people can quickly become more effective in front of your customer.

Too many salespeople see selling as just the tactical performance in front of the client. Of course, tactics and performance are part of being successful but not to the exclusion of strategy.

Strategic client engagement starts with understanding that there are three different types of client engagement, the strategic objectives of each and the tactical execution skills required in each of these meetings. Let's start with a foundational question.

Why do people buy?

This is THE fundamental question in sales. Customers buy to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity; we call that solving a Business Issue. Understanding this cause-and-effect relationship is critical because nothing happens without reason.

Can your buyers act on every business issue in front of them?  Most likely not. They prioritise an issue by assessing its impact and the consequences of not acting. They ask:

“is the sacrifice of cost, time, risk, hassle, disruption worth the effort?”

It follows that:

Buying action is driven by a perception of the business issue and its impact on both the business and, the customer personally.

And because it’s a perception, all client-facing people can influence this in some way.

Can you distinguish between the different types of needs?

Needs arise from your customer’s perception that there is business issue to solve, but not all needs are made equal. The ‘Need’ Categorisation Matrix (below) helps us categorise the different types of needs and what to do when we come across them.

Some needs are spoken freely, some are known but unspoken and some are just unknown by the customer.

Not responding to needs appropriately can mean missing opportunities and ‘leaving money on the table’. An issue that many sales leaders acknowledge is prevalent in their organisations.

Implied Needs require a conversation about their impact from the customer’s perspective. Try to talk solution to an Implied Need you will get pushback from the customer. In a ‘need development discovery conversation’, the customer must state for themselves that there is an issue to be solved, the consequences are high, and the value of solving is big enough for them to act. Implied Needs need to be developed into Explicit Needs.

An Explicit Need is when the customer states a desire to take buying action to solve a business issue. Whilst Implied Needs may be spoken, unspoken or even unknown, Explicit Needs must be spoken by the customer.

Here’s the golden rule:

Never talk about your solution or your capabilities unless the client has articulated an Explicit Need.

It follows that everyone in your business who touches your customer should not only be able to distinguish between different needs, but they should also be able to respond appropriately.

Somewhat contentiously, this means we are asking ‘non-salespeople’ to adopt a level of sales acumen and by that we mean, everyone who touches the customer should be able to identify, categorise and respond to a customer need.

There are three types of client engagement

Every client engagement is in some way selling. All client-facing people in your organisation need to know the type of meeting they are attending and be able to respond accordingly.

1.   Opportunity Origination Meeting

This type of meeting is early stage for the seller but, could be early, mid, or late stage for the customer, depending on where the customer is in their buying process when you meet them. Firstly, it is critical to align to where the customer is in their buying process.  Then you need to understand there are two different selling scenarios:

Proactive selling

• The seller engages the customer about a specific business issue and the possibility of buying a solution to solve it.
• This is early stage for both buyer and seller as the buyer may not be aware of the issue or its seriousness.
• Buyers may have unknown or known-unspoken needs, which are likely to be Implied in early conversations.

Reactive selling

• The buyer engages the seller because of a perceived business issue they need to solve.
• Buyers are likely to have known spoken, unspoken needs and possibly unknown needs as well. Needs may, at this stage be Explicit because they are aware of and are considering solving an issue.
• This will be early stage for the seller but could be early, mid, or late stage for the buyer.
• People attending could be from various functions in the selling business – not just sales. They should be able to identify an opportunity without the presence of a salesperson. Their situational fluency needs to be strong enough to enable them to develop an Implied Need into an Explicit Need.

2.  Opportunity Pursuit Meeting

The pursuit is on! Meetings for a specific opportunity pursuit should be the outflow of the Opportunity Pursuit Strategy. Your sales strategy should enable you to get in front of the right decision-maker, at the right time with right questions and/or information.

In the table below we focus on the key things to consider when attending Opportunity Pursuit Meetings.

There will be multiple Opportunity Pursuit Meetings; the sales team’s job is to get clear about the customer’s known spoken, known unspoken and unknown needs. It is also to understand who is involved in the decision-making process, are they all aligned with the Explicit Need for taking buying action and whether there are advocates and/or ant-sponsors.

3. Relationship Development or Client Service Meeting

There are plenty of instances where we meet with customers and are not involved in an opportunity pursuit. These meetings should (always) be connected to the strategic account plan as they should be aligned to the overall relationship development strategy. From research we know that customers are very clear in what they want from their selling partners:

• Know them - research their business and demonstrate that knowledge to a high level.
• Make good use of their time - facilitate mutual and compelling discussions that respect their time and abilities.
• Solve their business issues - demonstrate commitment to what happens after the sale.
• Educate them - differentiate by sharing insights that help them make decisions, develop their understanding, and expand their expertise.

Relationship development meetings may turn into opportunity origination meetings, which may subsequently turn into opportunity pursuit meetings.

Importantly, these meetings are not a licence to discuss your latest wares without first identifying the issue they solve and the importance of the issue to your customer.

These meetings are part of the process of developing and demonstrating a deep understanding of your customer’s world as part of the strategic relationship development process.

Last thought

Each of the three meeting types is an opportunity to identify new issues we can help solve, advance the pursuit strategy, or extend and develop the overall relationship. The key is to ensure all meetings are connected to the overarching strategy and, that every client-facing person has the capabilities to identify and develop needs intentionally.

General·26 April 2022·6 min read

You were not hired to produce the same results as last year.

Can you continue to think and act in the same way and expect to achieve your next-level results?

The targets are bigger, the resources are less, and the environment is increasingly more challenging. This is nothing new, but it is the reason why optimising your sales system is so important.

In the last newsletter we focused on what it means to systematise sales and the exponential value this brings to your business. In the upcoming newsletter editions, we focus on ‘HOW’ to systematise sales through the lens of the four Cs:

• Capabilities
• Culture
• Compensation
• Company structure

Today, we start with capabilities.

We believe there are distinct parallels between high-performing sports teams and high-performing sales teams. They both intentionally develop a culture of high-performance; they are structurally set up for success and they both continuously work to hone and perfect their capabilities.

All professional sales teams should adopt a similar approach because consistent high-performance is not a product of chance, just as excellence is never accidental. Achieving peak performance happens because of an intentional commitment to developing, refining, and honing competency and capabilities. As Abraham Lincoln once said:

“If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.”

Some sales teams don't even have an axe, let alone a sharp one!

The modern sales team needs to be equipped with the tools and knowhow to compete and win. Sprinkle in a healthy dose of discipline and process and you will be creating a recipe for success.

According to McKinsey and Company, 55% of sales leaders worldwide recognise that achieving B-B revenue growth will require significant capability development. Equipping salespeople with next-generation capabilities takes effort but, the payoff is significant. Top-quartile teams can deliver 4 to 5 times higher sales growth compared to bottom-quartile players.

How do we get our people to think and act differently to achieve the next-level results?

Success in modern-day sales requires a combination of both process and skill. Sales process tells you ‘What’ to do and ‘When’ to do it, whereas skills are the ‘How’ you do it.

We understand that process can be a charged word in many organisations, however we urge you to think of process as a ‘bridge’. A bridge between the current sales behaviours and the new desired behaviours you need to succeed.

Modern day B-B selling is complicated; multiple decision-makers, each with a different level of influence and their own individual perception of whether:

1.     There is an issue to solve

2.    Should they do anything to solve it

3.    How to solve it

4.   Who/what to use to solve it

5.    How this will impact their own personal motivators

This level of complexity requires sales teams to adopt a more strategic approach across different aspects of the sales process, most notably Opportunity Pursuit and Account and Relationship Development.

The difference between strategy and tactics

Strategy defined: an arial view - 35,000 feet in the air, surveying a situation to determine positions of advantage – strengths; and positions of disadvantage – weaknesses. The strategy is actions that leverage your strengths to mitigate or eliminate your weaknesses to achieve your objective.

Continuing the sports team analogy; strategy is how you set yourself up for the game, whereas tactics are the decisions you make during the game.

Tactics are of course still important, but only focussing on tactics in complex selling situations is an impediment to success!

Sales teams are still too tactically focussed. They lack the frameworks to analyse information concerning a specific opportunity or a strategic client relationship, and this prevents them from developing highly targeted action orientated strategic plans.

Sales teams need to become strategic thinkers and employ critical thinking in their approach to complex sales. When we have seen this shift happen in our clients, performance has taken an exponential lift.

The Strategic Account Plan

Account planning and relationship development is an underdeveloped area for many sales organisations. Many adopt ‘home-baked’ processes that are just not fit for purpose. There are three reasons why you should have an active, regularly updated strategic account plan:

1.     To identify new opportunities earlier –Identifying potential sales opportunities earlier gives the selling team a head start in the opportunity.  The sales team can try to shape and influence the customer’s perception on what to do and how to do it.

2.    To get in front of the buying process – According to Rolland Berger, 57% of the buying process is already completed before buyers reach out to sales teams for the first time. This limits the ability of sales teams to create meaningful differentiation.

Just waiting for the RFP to land in your inbox is strategically naive. Having an account plan means you can identify key people in the customer's business, build relationships and advance perceptions. When its time to sell, the connections will have already been made, hopefully before the RFP process blocks your access.

3.    To advance the perception of key players in the account – Buyers often struggle to see meaningful differentiation when selecting possible partners. The account plan allows you to create differentiation outside of the regular buying process. This authenticates you and gives you the ability to demonstrate real points of differentiation during your selling process.

The importance of strategy at the account planning level cannot be understated. Ask yourself, does your account planning process help you achieve these three key objectives?

The Strategic Opportunity Pursuit

Complexity occurs when there are three or more decision-makers involved in the decision-making process - the average is seven. The opportunity pursuit is complicated because each person has different experiences, levels of influence, beliefs, and perceptions. These are the key reasons why implementing a strategic selling process helps win more deals:

1.    Understand the strategic landscape of the opportunity

2.    Identify and map ALL the decision-makers and their perceptions

3.    Identify what alternative solutions are being considered

4.   Find sponsors and develop advocacy

5.    Create highly targeted actions to:

• Get the information you need to develop a clearer picture
• Qualify opportunities in/out to ensure optimal use of resources
• Align your internal team and resources collaboratively across the opportunity
• Get in front of decision-makers at the right time, with the right information and questions

We have seen exponential lift in sales metrics when businesses adopt a strategic approach to their opportunities.

It’s just evolution

Sales teams need to continuously develop their sales capabilities; many readers of this article will agree that continuing to think and act the same way WILL NOT get those next-level results.

A frequently held perception that we come across is that developing capabilities is about teaching more skills.  Skills are tactical and whilst still an imperative for the modern sales team, they also need a range of strategic capabilities as well.

We believe there are six essential competencies required throughout the sales organisation. How competent your sales teams are across these six capability areas will go a long way to determining whether you will be able to achieve your next-level results

If you are still unsure, get in touch and we will talk you through how we recently helped one client increase their win rate from 23% to 46%.

Until next time. Be well and stay safe!!