Thursday, November 05, 2026
Before you chase new customers, count how often the ones you have buy. Three numbers, one worked example from Kevin's Know Your Numbers training, and a 30-day test.
Most SME sales conversations lose money in the first sixty seconds — not because the price is wrong, but because of the order it gets said in. Lead with your price before the customer understands what they're actually buying, and you have just handed them the only number they'll remember, no matter how good the pitch that follows is. This is the price anchor mistake, and it is quietly costing SME owners margin on deals they should be winning at full price.
Behavioural economists have shown for decades that the first number mentioned in a negotiation — the anchor — disproportionately shapes everything that follows, even when both sides know the anchor is somewhat arbitrary. The original research on anchoring and adjustment found people's final judgments stay tethered to whatever number they heard first, even absurdly unrelated ones. In a sales conversation, that means whoever states a number first controls the emotional reference point for the rest of the conversation — and most SME salespeople hand that control to the customer, or burn it too early themselves, by quoting price before value.
The enemy is not your price. It is sequencing: quoting before the customer has built enough perceived value to receive the number without flinching.
This is the three-step order Kevin coaches sales teams to follow, every time, no exceptions.
1. Confirm the cost of the problem first — get the customer to say, in their own words, what the problem is currently costing them in time, money, or missed opportunity. This becomes your real anchor, and it is usually far higher than your price.
2. Present the solution before the number — walk through exactly what they get and why it solves the cost they just named. Price introduced here lands against their own stated cost, not in a vacuum.
3. State the price once, then stop talking — the most common self-inflicted wound in SME sales is filling the silence after the price with a justification or a discount nobody asked for yet.
"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 sales training covers the words to say. Very few cover the order to say them in, so salespeople default to whatever order feels least awkward — which is usually price early, to "get it out of the way." That instinct is the exact opposite of what wins the deal at full margin. It takes deliberate practice and, frankly, someone listening to your calls to catch the pattern, because it is nearly invisible to the person doing it.
This is a five-minute fix once someone points it out — and a fix most SME owners never make on their own, because nobody is reviewing their sales calls for sequencing, only for outcome.
If your sales team is quoting price before the customer has said what the problem is costing them, that's the first thing Kevin helps you fix.
...and you become the owner who wins deals at full price because the customer sees the value first.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Ninety percent of blog content gets zero traffic from Google, and most SME blogs are no exception. Here is the content-market fit audit that fixes it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Most SME owners benchmark against competitors whose real numbers they can never see. Here is the same-quarter self-benchmark that actually predicts growth.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Organic growth is always category growth plus share change. Here is the Share-of-Growth Audit that shows whether your revenue chart is real outperformance or a rising tide.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Habit research shows real change takes an average of 66 days, not three weeks. Here is the Commitment Corridor for judging whether coaching is working before you quit right before it does.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Workers lose roughly ten hours a week to manual, repetitive tasks. Before your next hire, run the Automate-or-Hire Filter to find out if the role should exist at all.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Half your sales team hitting quota means the other half is being carried by one or two people whose method has never been written down. Here is how to fix that before someone resigns.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Seventy six percent of purchase decisions happen at the shelf, not in the weeks of advertising before it. Here is the Shelf Impact Audit for FMCG brands that have never actually tested their own packaging.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Your dashboard has too many numbers and no owner for most of them. Here is the Focus Metric Framework SME owners use to find the one number that actually drives growth this quarter.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Twelve million American businesses worth nearly $10 trillion need new owners within a decade - and most of them, as currently run, cannot be sold. Here is the three-part test that tells you whether yours is one of them, and what to fix first.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Bain found a 5 percent lift in customer retention can boost profits 25 to 95 percent. Here's the Cohort Retention Audit that reveals whether your growth is real or just replacing lost customers.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Research shows much of the feedback we receive is too comfortable to change anything. Here's the Pushback Test that reveals whether your business coach genuinely challenges you or just agrees.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
APA-published research found task switching can cost up to 40 percent of productive time. Here's the Work-in-Progress Cap that stops SME owners starting everything and finishing nothing.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Gartner found B2B buyers now complete 80 percent of their journey before talking to a vendor. Here's the Pitch Refresh Audit that stops your sales team pitching to a buyer who already knows.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Nielsen found 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over any advertising. Here's the Proof Asset Audit that puts your own customers' stories to work instead.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Most leadership teams spend less than an hour a month on strategy, and half spend none at all. Here is the protected-time system that fixes it, and why accountability is the missing ingredient.