Monday, November 09, 2026

US owners lose 33 working days a year to financial stress (Xero, 2026). Sean Ellis's North Star Metric shows SME owners how to grow without it costing their evenings.

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.

Monday, October 19, 2026

A strong December can feel like proof you're growing. It can also be the reason nobody builds the pipeline that carries January. Here's the three-question check to run now.

Monday, October 19, 2026

A good coach doesn't start with your goals. They start with three numbers most owners can't answer on the spot, and that gap tells them exactly where to begin.

Monday, October 19, 2026

Most SME owners have tried an AI tool this year. Few can say, in hours, what it actually saved them. Here's the test that tells the difference, and the first step to take.

Monday, October 19, 2026

By the time a prospect calls you, they've already done most of their own research. Here's the sales approach built for exactly that moment, and why most SME pitches skip it.

Monday, October 19, 2026

Social platforms can change the rules on your reach overnight. Here's the one marketing channel no algorithm can take away from you, and why most SME owners still starve it.

Monday, October 19, 2026

A new survey says 53% of small business owners are stuck on finding customers. Here's the one-question test that finds out whether that's really your constraint, or just the easiest one to blame.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

ActionCOACH, Business Blueprint, government-backed advice and independent coaches compared fairly for Australian owners, with best-for and not-ideal-if for each.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

An executive coach develops you as a leader. A business coach works on the business itself. Here is how to tell which one an NZ SME owner needs before paying for either.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Most SME owners can tell you their revenue. Almost none can tell you which customers are actually making them a profit. New 2026 research shows why that gap is the real growth problem, and a three-step fix.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

The average small business gets 27 percent of revenue from one customer. Here is the three-question check that tells you whether your growth is real, or just concentration in disguise.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Coaching can return seven times its cost, PwC research suggests, but rarely from where owners expect. Here is where the real ROI on a business coach actually shows up.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Gallup found managers think they give weekly feedback, their teams say otherwise. See why your business systems depend on a conversation most owners are avoiding.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

56 percent of stalled B2B deals end in no decision, not a lost sale to a competitor. Here is why your prospects go quiet after saying yes, and the direct question that gets them talking again.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

The median landing page converts at 6.6 percent, and most SME websites never get close. Here is what the top quartile actually does differently, and why fixing it beats spending more on ads.

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Most growth plans start with last year's number plus a guess. Here is the three-number market-sizing check that separates a real plan from a wish list.