Sunday, October 11, 2026
Most SME owners build their people plan around courses. The research behind the 70-20-10 model says courses are the smallest lever you have, and it is worth knowing how shaky that research actually is.
"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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
...and you become the owner whose "not right now" leads get a scheduled next touch instead of being forgotten.