Monday, November 09, 2026
US owners lose 33 working days a year to financial stress (Xero, 2026). Sean Ellis's North Star Metric shows SME owners how to grow without it costing their evenings.
Last updated 12 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: New Zealand and the United States.
You send the follow-up email. Then the second one. Then you wonder whether a third makes you look keen or desperate. You're doing this for every single lead, the same way, regardless of whether they were ever going to buy. You want a sales process that closes more deals with less of your time and dignity spent chasing. What you've actually built is a system where the effort is identical for a hot buyer and a tyre-kicker, which means you're exhausted and your best prospects are getting the same generic nudge as everyone else.
Persistence is good advice for roughly half of what you're doing wrong. The other half is this: chasing a lead harder doesn't make them more likely to buy — it just makes you more available to say yes to the wrong deal out of relief that someone finally replied. Top performers don't treat every conversation as a chase. They treat it as a chance to say something the buyer hasn't already heard from the other three suppliers quoting the same job.
Researchers Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson studied thousands of sales conversations and found the highest performers follow a different pattern than the “relationship builders” everyone's taught to be: they teach the buyer something new about their own problem, tailor it to that buyer specifically, and take control of the conversation rather than following wherever the buyer leads.
Kevin once needed shoulder surgery and was told the country's best surgeon for the job had a three-week wait. He waited. He paid exactly what was asked, with no negotiation, because a true specialist doesn't chase patients — people queue for them. That's the mindset shift behind this kind of selling: the moment you're the one doing all the chasing, you've already told the buyer you need them more than they need you. The businesses that close confidently are the ones who've earned the right to set the terms of the conversation, not just answer whenever the buyer finally replies.
Try this on your pipeline this week: pick the three leads you've been chasing hardest and ask, honestly, what new insight you've actually taught any of them. If the answer is none, you haven't been selling — you've been reminding. Swap your next follow-up for one specific, useful insight about their business, and end it by naming the next step yourself.
“Dynamic, empowering, and absolutely transformative! Kevin leaves every audience armed for victory.”
Darilyn Kane
Coaching and Advisory Lead, The Icehouse
Chasing feels like effort, and effort feels like it should be rewarded. This isn't for you if your sales process genuinely depends on high-volume, low-touch follow-up — that's a real model for some businesses. For everyone selling considered, higher-value work, the lead you're chasing hardest is often the one you've taught the least.
A sales approach from researchers Dixon and Adamson built on teaching the buyer something new, tailoring it to them, and taking control of next steps, rather than just building rapport and waiting.
Because it treats every lead the same regardless of fit, and signals that you need the sale more than they need you.
Open with a specific, useful insight about the buyer's business or problem, not a pitch about your product.
No — follow up, but make each one earn its place with new insight, and always name the next step yourself.
This is a method article and does not rely on a market statistic. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Last updated 12 November 2026.
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