Thursday, November 05, 2026
You're doing the books, the invoicing and the tax, and strategy always loses the fight for your time. Here's the one-hour weekly habit that gets it back, no forty-page plan required.
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 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.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Self-funded expansion runs out of capital and management bandwidth before it runs out of market opportunity. Here's the franchise-readiness test and how to compare licensing against scaling it yourself.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Business coaching has borrowed a lot from therapy's language, and it's blurred an important line. A coach uses psychology to find what's blocking you — then converts it into a dated business action, every time. Here's where the line sits.