Thursday, November 05, 2026
Still at the kitchen table at 9pm telling yourself this is temporary? The isolation of owning a business is common, measurable, and fixable — here's how.
Ask most SME owners how to improve sales and they'll say the same thing: more leads. It's the default answer, and it's usually wrong. More leads poured into a slow, leaky pipeline just means more deals sitting there going stale. The metric that actually predicts revenue growth isn't lead volume — it's sales velocity, and almost no SME owner has ever calculated theirs.
Sales velocity is a single number: how much revenue your pipeline generates per day. It's calculated as (number of open opportunities × win rate × average deal size) ÷ length of your sales cycle in days. The formula is used across enterprise sales teams and is explained in detail by HubSpot's sales research team — but it's rarely taught to SME owners, who default to counting leads instead. The problem with counting leads alone is that it ignores the two levers that usually matter more: how long deals take to close, and what percentage actually convert. A business that halves its sales cycle length doubles its velocity with the exact same number of leads it already had.
Once you know your velocity number, you can see exactly which lever is worth pulling — instead of guessing that "more marketing" will fix a sales problem.
1. Calculate your baseline — Multiply your open opportunities by your historical win rate and average deal size, then divide by your average sales cycle length in days. That's your daily pipeline value.
2. Find your weakest lever — Of the four inputs, which has moved the least in the last twelve months? For most SME sales teams, it's cycle length — deals drift because nobody owns pushing them forward.
3. Attack cycle length first — Set a hard maximum number of days a deal can sit in each pipeline stage before it triggers a follow-up action. This single change typically moves velocity faster than any lead-generation campaign.
“Kevin is an absolute powerhouse! He doubled our business's profits in the first month alone with lots more of his recommendations still to be rolled out.”
— Curtis Hacon, Give A Sh!T
Buying more leads is an action you can take this afternoon — book the ad spend, brief the agency, watch the numbers roll in. Fixing cycle length and win rate means confronting your own sales process, your own follow-up discipline, and often your own team's habits, which is a much harder conversation to have with yourself. It's genuinely more comfortable to blame lead quality than to audit why deals sit untouched for three weeks at "proposal sent." This is where an experienced outside operator changes the outcome — someone who can look at your pipeline for thirty minutes and tell you, without ego attached to your process, exactly which stage is bleeding velocity.
If nobody in your business can tell you your sales velocity number right now, that's the first gap Kevin closes with you.
...and you become the owner who knows exactly how fast your pipeline turns into revenue.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Doing every bit of marketing yourself with no plan? Learn Donald Miller's StoryBrand method for making your customer the hero, not your business.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
The business stops the moment you do? You haven't built a business — you've built a demanding job. Here's Goldratt's method for finding your one real constraint.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
Gallup found that 40% of US owner-employers hold a business plan, and owners with an informal plan reported more revenue growth than owners with none. Here is what that does and does not prove, and six moves to build your own. Checked 4 November 2026.
Wednesday, November 04, 2026
ActionCOACH offers a coaching network, the ABoS platform and two free weeks. Simple-Growth is one owner-run coach who finds your constraint first. Here is who each suits, what is public on cost, and six questions to ask. Checked 4 November 2026.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
Cosmetic and skin clinics rarely stall for lack of attention. Here is how NZ owners can find the real constraint, market within the rules and turn first treatments into long-term clients.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
AI tools are making every small business sound the same. Here is the 3-step Distinctive Brand Assets method for standing out even when a machine wrote the first draft.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
The Entourage or Simple-Growth: who each suits, what The Entourage publishes on price and proof, and seven questions to ask before you apply. Checked 4 November 2026.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
A New Zealand owner connected her ERP, email, website and analytics to AI. What changed, what the early numbers show, what we do not know yet, and what you can copy this month. Checked 4 November 2026.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
The spreadsheet's been updated four times and nothing new has changed in three weeks. Here's why waiting for certainty is the real growth-killer, not the risk itself.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
The thought isn't "how do I grow this" anymore, it's "can I keep doing this." That thought isn't proof you're failing — it's proof you're carrying it alone.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
Twenty minutes at the kitchen table turns into two hours, again. Here's why willpower isn't the fix — and the one question that actually frees up your week.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
"I'm also talking to someone else." Most owners improvise an answer in that moment and sound like everyone else. Here's how to have the answer ready.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
Half your customer base needs chasing, discounting or managing. The fix usually isn't your delivery — it's who your marketing is attracting in the first place.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
You've run the numbers four times and still haven't decided. It's not the decision that's the problem — it's that you're making it with no one to pressure-test your thinking.
Tuesday, November 03, 2026
An agency, a freelancer or doing it yourself with AI: who each suits, what one NZ agency publishes on cost, and six questions to ask before you pay anyone. Checked 4 November 2026.