Friday, September 04, 2026
Most owners build strategy around growth targets, not whether the business would survive a buyer's due diligence. Here's why the exit-ready test is the sharpest strategy audit you're not running.
Here's a question worth asking your sales pipeline honestly: how many of this month's deals did you go and start, and how many just turned up and you responded to? Most SME sales teams can't answer that, because nobody's tracking the difference — and the difference is bigger than almost anything else you could change about how you sell.
Not because inbound leads are bad — they're the easiest sale you'll ever make. The enemy is believing they're the whole strategy. Research summarised in WaveCnct's 2026 roundup of B2B sales data, drawing on analysis presented at the Emblaze Revenue Summit, found that seller-initiated opportunities — deals a salesperson proactively started — closed at roughly 33 to 41 percent, compared with 18 to 25 percent for deals that began when a buyer reached out first. That's close to double the win rate, for exactly the kind of deal most SME sales teams treat as the hard one and quietly avoid.
It isn't luck. A deal you started, you control from the first conversation — you set the agenda, you ask the diagnostic questions, you position the offer before a competitor gets in the room. A deal that found you has usually already been shaped by someone else's marketing, a competitor's pitch, or the buyer's own half-formed idea of what they want, and you're negotiating inside a frame you didn't build.
"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
The real obstacle isn't knowing proactive selling wins more. It's that reactive selling feels safer — nobody says no to a question they never asked. Proactive outreach means hearing "not interested" more often, and most sales teams quietly optimise for comfort over win rate without ever admitting that's what's happening. This is where a coach who reviews the actual pipeline numbers, not the mood in the room, changes the habit — because the data says more, faster, than any pep talk does.
You get Kevin's big-brand thinking applied to your business, so your pipeline is built by the deals you start, not just the ones that turn up.
Be the owner who starts the conversations that fill your pipeline.