Keeping It Simple
The fastest, simplest ways to grow your business - no jargon, no fluff. Practical strategies that actually work for SME owners in the USA, New Zealand, and worldwide.
"Not right now" is not "no." Most SME sales processes treat it as one anyway — and that's where the majority of winnable deals quietly disappear.
The moment most pipelines actually leak
Walk through almost any SME sales process and you'll find the same failure point: not the first call, not the pitch — the follow-up after a prospect says they're not ready yet. The lead goes into a spreadsheet, or nowhere, and gets remembered only if the salesperson happens to think of them again. There's no system forcing the next touch. That's not a sales skill problem. It's a process problem, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
A follow-up cadence beats a follow-up hope
Every "not now" needs three things attached to it the moment it's said: a reason (budget, timing, needs approval, needs to see something first), a defined next trigger (a date, an event, a renewal window), and a scheduled next touch that happens whether or not anyone remembers to do it manually. Businesses that close more without spending more on leads usually haven't found new prospects — they've stopped losing the ones they already had by building a cadence instead of relying on memory.
Scripts that actually close, not scripts that pitch
The best follow-up isn't a check-in — "just circling back" is the fastest way to get ignored twice. It carries something new: a relevant piece of information, a case study close to their situation, or a direct, specific question tied to the reason they gave you last time. Three patterns that consistently work:
Retention is just follow-up that never stops
The same discipline that recovers a "not now" lead is what keeps existing customers. A scheduled check-in before a renewal, not after a complaint, is the difference between a business that grows on its existing base and one that's constantly refilling a leaky bucket with new leads.
If your pipeline has more "maybes" than you can remember to chase, that's not a sales talent gap — it's a system gap. Get in touch with Kevin D'Ambros-Smith to build the follow-up cadence your business is currently running without.
Kevin D’Ambros-Smith
Kevin is the founder of Simple-Growth and a business growth coach with experience at DDB, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has co-founded 9 companies, coached 200+ business owners one-on-one, and holds a 9.5/10 NPS. Every article on this blog reflects real-world experience - no theory, no fluff.
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