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.
Most sales teams celebrate wins and file losses under “not a good fit” without another word. That's backwards. A win tells you what worked once. A lost deal, examined properly, tells you exactly where your sales process breaks — and it will break the same way on the next ten deals unless someone stops to look.
If your team keeps hitting “how do I improve sales in a small business,” the honest answer usually isn't a new script. It's that nobody has ever systematically reviewed why deals actually die.
“They went with someone else,” “budget wasn't there,” “not the right timing” — these are the default explanations sales teams reach for because they're comfortable and unfalsifiable. Nobody has to change anything if the loss was simply bad luck. But when you actually dig into most lost SME deals, the real cause is almost always something specific and repeatable: a follow-up that came too late, a proposal that didn't match what the buyer actually said they needed, a handoff that dropped momentum at exactly the wrong moment.
The average B2B sale now requires multiple touchpoints before a decision is made — most SME salespeople stop following up long before the buyer is actually ready to decide, then blame timing for a loss that was really about persistence.
Run this on every deal you lose above a meaningful value threshold, within a week of the loss while detail is still fresh:
1. Pinpoint the exact stage it died. Not “we lost the deal” — the specific moment: after the proposal, after the second meeting, after a long silence. The stage tells you where the process itself is weak.
2. Separate preventable from unpreventable. Some losses genuinely are timing or budget. Most aren't. Be honest about which ones your team could have influenced with a different action.
3. Ask the buyer directly, if you can. A short, low-pressure “so we can improve, what tipped it” call gets more honest answers than most owners expect — and the pattern across five or six of these calls is more valuable than any internal guess.
Run the autopsy quarterly across all losses and you'll usually find one or two repeatable failure points causing the majority of them — exactly the kind of leverage point the Simple-Growth System™ is built to find and fix.
“Kevin doesn't just present — he electrifies the room and drives massive, real-world value! He drops game-changing insights and actionable shortcuts that show businesses exactly how to turn everyday customers into raving, loyal fans — and acquire new ones faster than ever thought possible.”
— Gareth Bayliss, Sales Manager, The Icehouse
Sales teams resist this because a loss review feels like assigning blame. It isn't, when it's run right — it's diagnostic, not disciplinary. The reason most SMEs never build this habit isn't reluctance to improve, it's that nobody owns the process of stepping back and looking at the pattern across deals rather than the deal in front of them today. That's a structural gap an outside coach closes quickly.
The business owners who keep filing losses as “bad luck” will keep losing the same way next quarter — the ones who run the autopsy won't.
...and you become the owner who knows exactly why you lose deals and fixes it before the next one.
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
Category managers at major retailers are making their Q1 2027 ranging decisions right now. Most FMCG founders find out too late. Here's the Buyer-Ready Proof Pack framework that gets you into the conversation.
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
Most businesses plan for Q4 in January — after it's already over. The owners who consistently outperform their peers write their Q4 plan in September, while there's still time to act on what they find.
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
A new survey shows the average small business owner is running five jobs at once — and burning 200+ hours a year proving it. Here's the two-hat framework that gets your time back within 90 days.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
New 2026 consumer data shows most shoppers are value-seekers, not bargain hunters — yet 95% still rate brand trust as important. Here's the six-point test your FMCG brand must pass to earn the sale without discounting.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
New 2026 grocery data shows branded FMCG products are being promoted twice as often as private label — and still losing share and loyalty. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith on why discounting harder is the wrong fix, and what pricing architecture looks like instead.
Monday, September 07, 2026
A 2026 Fed survey of 6,525 small businesses found owner confidence at a 6-year low — while actual revenue, employment and profitability held steady. Why the gap, not the economy, is the real risk for SME and FMCG owners.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Burst campaigns reset to zero every time. Here's why a sustainable weekly cadence beats an intense one-month push, and how to protect it through the slow months.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most SME sales forecasts are built by adding up pipeline value — and it's almost always wrong. Here's how exit criteria, deal age, and weighted forecasting fix it.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most of what fills an owner's calendar isn't driving results. Here's how to run a structured 80/20 audit that identifies the real 20% — and what to do with the rest.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
One-on-one coaching diagnoses and designs strategy. A peer accountability group enforces it. Here's why the combination produces follow-through that neither achieves alone.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Organic growth isn't the only path. Here's how well-chosen SME acquisitions can compress years of growth into one transaction — and where most owners get the due diligence wrong.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most SME roadmaps fail from what they never remove, not what they add. Here's the three-question kill list to run before your next planning cycle — and why pruning, not adding, is what actually frees up growth capacity.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Paid social and search rent attention you don't own. Your email list is the one channel most SMEs already have permission to use — and almost never invest in properly. Here's how to turn it into a real asset.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The call is usually already lost in the first five minutes. Here's the agenda-set and diagnostic sequence that fixes it — at the team level, not just for one rep.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Delegation doesn't fail because your team can't do the work — it fails because nobody defined what "done" looked like before the task started. Here's the four-part handoff that fixes it.