Tuesday, November 10, 2026

78% of US seasonal businesses face a 3-month cash gap every year. A bike park's 11 revenue streams show SME owners how to smooth theirs.

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.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

A rival undercutting you doesn't mean 'grow harder' is the answer. Igor Ansoff's growth matrix shows SME owners the four real routes, and how to pick one on purpose.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

Still at the kitchen table at 9pm telling yourself this is temporary? The isolation of owning a business is common, measurable, and fixable — here's how.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

Still polishing a plan that's been 80% finished for three months? Toyota's Lean ECRS method and Kevin's own 'ship at 70%' rule, for recovering perfectionists.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

Busy one month, silent the next, and no idea which deals were ever real? Neil Rackham's SPIN questions surface the truth weeks before a quiet month does.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

Revenue's climbing and the bank balance still isn't. The real fix usually isn't your price — it's that your marketing never said who you're actually for.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

You're doing the books, the invoicing and the tax, and strategy always loses the fight for your time. Here's the one-hour weekly habit that gets it back, no forty-page plan required.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

Most owners do not lack ideas. They lack a weekly rhythm that turns a plan into action. A five-question check, who Making It Happen ($297) suits, who should skip it, and the real next step. Checked 5 November 2026.

Thursday, November 05, 2026

Vistage puts you in a group of 12 to 16 owners with a Chair. Simple-Growth is one owner-run coach who finds your constraint first. Here is who each suits, what is public on cost, and six questions to ask. Checked 5 November 2026.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Rocket Lab began in New Zealand and is now headquartered in Long Beach, California. Three source-linked lessons in outside thinking for US business owners, plus a five-question blind-spot test.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Only 39.7% of small businesses actually grew revenue last year, Federal Reserve data shows. If growth feels like the fix for your cash, team or time problems, the numbers say otherwise.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Revenue's up but your own pay still isn't? Mike Michalowicz's Profit First method flips the order so growth finally reaches your pocket.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Checking your banking app at 2am over an invoice that's two weeks late? You're not alone — and the fix needs a witness, not just a spreadsheet.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Finding out how last month went three weeks too late? One OKR, checked weekly, beats a dashboard nobody opens.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Riding a feast-or-famine sales cycle with no idea who to chase? The CLV/CAC method turns a quiet month into a plan, not a panic.

Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Doing every bit of marketing yourself with no plan? Learn Donald Miller's StoryBrand method for making your customer the hero, not your business.