Tuesday, November 10, 2026
You're making this week's decisions on last month's numbers. Here's the one-page habit SME owners use to see what's happening before it costs them.
You walk into the negotiation already planning your fallback position. You have decided, before the buyer says a word, what discount you will offer if they push back, what terms you will loosen, what you will give away to keep the deal alive. This is negotiating against yourself, and it is quietly costing SME owners more margin than any buyer ever has.
This shows up hardest in FMCG and retail supply relationships, where a stockist or distributor holds real leverage — shelf space, listing fees, payment terms — and the supplier walks in assuming they must soften the deal to get in the door. The named enemy is not the retail buyer. It is the supplier's own pre-emptive concession, made in their head before the meeting even starts, based on a fear that has never actually been tested in that room.
The pattern is identical in professional services and trades: a founder quotes their real price, senses hesitation that may not even be real, and immediately drops the number — before the prospect has raised a single objection. You have just taught every future buyer that your first price is negotiable, and you have done it for free.
The fix is a disciplined sequence that forces the other side to make the first concession, not you.
1. State the full price first, in full confidence, with no qualifying tone — Say the number and stop talking. Silence after a price is not a problem to fill; it is the buyer doing the thinking you want them to do.
2. Let them name the objection before you respond to one — If they say nothing, the deal may already be closer than you think. If they push back, you now know the real obstacle, instead of guessing and discounting against a fear that was never there.
3. Trade, never give — If a concession is genuinely warranted, it comes attached to something in return: volume commitment, faster payment terms, a longer contract. A concession with nothing attached teaches the buyer that your price was never real.
“Kevin has some amazing ideas around marketing, things we would have never thought of ourselves. He also helped us through the process of getting into supermarkets. He has gone above and beyond what he needed to!”
— Amy Nixon, Icehouse Coaching Programme
Most SME owners know intellectually that they should hold their price. They do it anyway because the fear of losing the deal feels bigger in the moment than the cost of the margin they are quietly giving away. Nobody sees the discount that was never necessary — it simply disappears into a lower number on an invoice, quarter after quarter, until it has cost the business tens of thousands of dollars nobody ever flagged as a loss.
This is where an outside eye on your sales conversations changes the outcome. A coach who has sat on both sides of the negotiating table — buying and selling — can hear exactly where you are conceding before you have even noticed you are doing it.
If you can already picture the number you will drop to before the buyer even objects, that is the first habit Kevin helps you break.
...and you become the owner who holds your price and trades for every concession.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
A business with four equal customers loses 25% of revenue the day one leaves. Here's the customer-concentration math most SME owners never run, and three moves to fix it.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
A lot of owners try the wrong format, see no shift, and decide coaching doesn't work for them. Here's what a peer room is actually good for, what 1:1 coaching is actually good for, and a 3-check way to pick.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
HBR's review of meeting research found about 70% of meetings kept employees from the work they were meant to enable. Here's Verne Harnish's meeting rhythm, sized for an SME before year-end.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Reps close 2.9x more deals at month-end and lose 11.4x more margin doing it, one major study found. Here's why the plan is the problem, not the rep, and three fixes.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
45% of US consumers used AI for a local business recommendation this year, up from 6% last year. Here's why schema markup won't fix your AI visibility, and what will.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Jim Collins found that companies which broke away from average performance could name, with brutal precision, what they could be best in the world at. Here's the three-circle test and the goal that pairs with it.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Big-brand positioning is a decision, not a budget. Five questions, a one-sentence position and a five-touchpoint audit you can run this week.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Which jobs should a US small business hand to AI first? Published US data, a five-check test and a 30-day plan to pick one job, track one number and keep the decisions that matter.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Most small business owners already believe AI works, but barely one in ten has invested in using it properly. Here is the simple ladder for turning casual AI use into real, compounding productivity gains.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Vet and allied health practices rarely have a clinical problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, keep patients returning and build a 90-day growth plan.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME owners are fixing the wrong problem. Here's the 3-step method that finds the one constraint actually holding your growth back, before you spend another dollar.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A third of US small business owners say they don't know whether they have the tools — AI included — to grow next year. That's not a confidence problem, it's a visibility one, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Confidence up a quarter, down the next, tariffs easing then tightening — waiting for certainty is its own decision, and usually the wrong one. Here's a simple way to keep deciding well when the ground keeps moving.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
There's one role almost every SME owner has avoided filling for a year or more — while quietly doing it themselves instead. Here's the Who Not How framework, and the three-step test that makes the hire obvious.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
They nodded, asked great questions, said it's exactly what they need — then disappeared. Here's why warmth isn't a buying signal, and the three-message sequence that gets stalled deals talking again.