Monday, November 09, 2026

The Icehouse publishes a price, dates and a turnover range for its Owner Operator Programme. Here is what that buys, who it suits, when one-to-one coaching fits better, and how co-funding may apply.

Ask most SME sales teams what they sold last month and you'll get a strangely narrow answer — the same two or three offers, on repeat, regardless of what's actually in the catalogue. Most sales teams sell what's easy to explain, not what's most valuable to the customer — and that habit is quietly capping revenue in businesses that have spent years building a broader, higher-margin range nobody is pitching. If your highest-margin products or services are gathering dust while reps default to the same familiar offer, you don't have a demand problem. You have a comfort-zone problem.

The Problem Reframe: The Comfort Zone Sale

The enemy is what Kevin calls the Comfort Zone Sale — the offer a rep can explain in one sentence, price without hesitation, and close without needing to ask a single diagnostic question. It feels efficient. It is actually expensive, because it trains customers to associate your business with your cheapest, simplest offer, and it leaves your best-margin work permanently unsold. This is a well-documented pattern in complex and solution-based selling: the more a sale requires understanding a customer's situation before recommending the right fit, the more reps default to the option that needs the least understanding. It's the entire reason methodologies like SPIN Selling exist — to force a structured conversation about situation, problem, implication, and need-payoff before a rep is allowed to reach for the easy answer.

You can see how this plays out in considered, complex sales environments in HubSpot's breakdown of complex selling — the pattern holds whether you're selling enterprise software or premium FMCG ranging.

The Framework: Full Menu Selling

Full Menu Selling is the discipline of making sure every customer conversation actually covers what you sell — not just what's comfortable to sell.

1. Map the menu — list every product or service line and rank it by margin, not by how often it's currently pitched. The gap between the two rankings is your revenue leak.

2. Build the bridge question — give reps one specific question per high-margin line that naturally surfaces whether the customer needs it (“Are you still handling X in-house, or has that become a headache?”). One question is enough; it doesn't need to be a script.

3. Track the mix, not just the total — stop measuring reps only on revenue. Add a simple product-mix metric to the weekly pipeline review so the comfort-zone habit becomes visible, not invisible.

“Kevin is an absolute powerhouse! He doubled our business's profits in the first month alone with lots more of his recommendations still to be rolled out.”

— Curtis Hacon, Give A Sh!T

The Execution Gap: Why Reps Default to the Easy Sale Anyway

Owners often assume this is a training problem. It rarely is — most reps already know the full range. The real obstacle is that the comfort-zone sale is safer for the rep personally: it closes faster, gets fewer objections, and doesn't risk the awkwardness of a customer saying no to something unfamiliar. Fixing this requires accountability from outside the sales team itself — someone tracking the product mix, asking why the highest-margin line hasn't been pitched in a month, and making that conversation routine rather than confrontational.

Quick Wins This Week

  • Rank your product or service lines by margin and compare it to what's actually being pitched.
  • Write one bridge question for your highest-margin, least-pitched offer.
  • Add product mix as a line item in your next pipeline review.

Key Takeaways

  • Identify the gap between what's most profitable and what's most pitched.
  • Equip reps with one bridge question per high-margin line, not a new script.
  • Measure product mix weekly, not just total revenue.
  • Expect resistance — the comfort-zone sale is safer for the rep, not the business.

If your best-margin products are the ones your team pitches least, that's the first gap Kevin helps you close.

...and you become the owner whose team sells the full menu, not just the easy offer.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Nearly half of NZ SME owners are planning Christmas trading changes, MYOB research found, and most of it is a discount. Here's how to build memory before you build the offer.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

46% of New Zealand business owners aren't paying themselves, Xero research found. Here's the Profit First fix that changes the order money moves through your business, not the hours you work.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

The share of businesses reporting serious dead stock has doubled since 2024, new research found. Here's why rising revenue can still mean tightening cash, and the three numbers that catch it early.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

42% of business owners named efficiency their top 2026 priority, a US survey found. Here's Michalowicz's Clockwork system for building a business that doesn't need you in every decision.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

B2B win rates fell to 19-21% in 2025. Here's why a quiet Q4 pipeline is usually a budget deadline in disguise, and the three moves that use it instead of waiting for January.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Chemical and industrial distributors rarely have a product problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, escape the price war and build a 90-day plan.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

97% of small business owners believe branding matters to their success — only 18% have an actual strategy for it. Here is the 3-question Brand Key test that closes the gap without a rebrand.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Roughly 90 percent of companies never achieve sustained profitable growth. Here's Jim Collins' Hedgehog Concept for telling which growth opportunities are actually worth chasing.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

68 percent of US Google searches now end with no click at all. Here's what that means for small business marketing, and the fix that doesn't depend on getting the click back.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Most strategic plans are tactics with better formatting. Here's the one-sentence test, borrowed from Sinek's Golden Circle, that tells you if yours has a real why behind it.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

A private, unwritten goal succeeds about 35 percent of the time. One with a weekly accountability check-in succeeds more than 70 percent of the time. Here's why that gap exists.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Roughly 65 percent of small businesses are tied so closely to their owner they'd struggle to run without them. Here's Gerber's E-Myth framework for finally getting out of the technician's chair.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

42 percent of B2B businesses do nothing proactive during the pre-Christmas slowdown. Here's what the ones who keep selling do differently, and why January rewards them for it.

Monday, October 19, 2026

Is Vistage worth it? A fair, source-linked look at what peer advisory groups offer US business owners, a checklist for deciding, and how one-on-one coaching differs.

Monday, October 19, 2026

Most small business owners know they don't compete on price, but can't say, in one sentence, what they compete on instead. Here's the three-step framework that fixes it.