Thursday, November 12, 2026
You keep hearing "we went with the cheaper option." It feels like a price problem. It's actually a sameness problem — and a one-sentence fix, borrowed from first-principles thinking, can solve it before your next quote.
Last updated 15 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States.
This is a story about an owner who wants every real opportunity followed through to a yes — but who finds out a deal went cold three weeks after it actually went cold, because nobody was asking the questions that would have surfaced it in real time. You pitched. They sounded keen. You moved on to the next thing, like you always do, and assumed silence meant "still thinking it over." It didn't. It meant gone, and you were the last to know.
A 2026 survey of 404 US sales and marketing managers, run by Centiment for Zapier, found 92% say qualified leads are regularly dropped every month (Zapier, US, 2026). That's not mostly a follow-up problem. It's a qualification problem — leads get pitched the same generic pitch regardless of what's actually going on for that buyer, so the real signal of whether they're genuinely close gets buried under enthusiasm that was never tested.
Neil Rackham's SPIN Selling, built on research into what actually separates sales conversations that close from ones that stall, gives a simple sequence of questions that surfaces the truth before you've spent your best pitch on someone who was never going to move.
Kevin's seen the payoff of asking two sharp questions instead of chasing a dozen vague ones. Working with a group of six physio clinics, the fix wasn't a bigger reporting pack — it was a single Monday morning email tracking exactly two numbers: capacity against an 85% target, and income against forecast. Everything else was noise. The clinics that knew, every single Monday, whether those two numbers were on track made faster, calmer decisions than the ones still trying to read a dashboard of twenty metrics to find the one that mattered. Sales conversations work the same way — two sharp questions beat twenty generic ones, every time.
"Dynamic, empowering, and absolutely transformative! Kevin leaves every audience armed for victory."
Darilyn Kane
Coaching and Advisory Lead, The Icehouse
Asking a hard implication question feels slower than launching straight into the pitch you've already rehearsed, even though it's the fastest way to find out whether the pitch is even worth giving. This isn't for you if you're already qualifying every lead with real questions before you pitch — some owners genuinely do this instinctively, and their pipeline reflects it. It's for the owner whose "pipeline" is really just a list of people who once sounded interested, with nobody quite sure which ones are actually still live.
You can't close a deal that was never real. You can find that out in week one instead of week eight — and spend the time you save on the ones that were.
A questioning sequence from Neil Rackham — Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff — designed to surface a buyer's real urgency and the true value of solving their problem, before a seller commits to a full pitch.
If you can't answer what happens to them if the problem stays unsolved for six months, and what solving it is actually worth to them in their own words, you haven't qualified the lead yet — you've only pitched to it.
It risks losing leads that were never going to convert, which is the point. It rarely loses a genuinely interested buyer — a well-asked implication question usually increases urgency rather than creating it.
If you don't know which deals in your pipeline are actually still live, that's the first thing to find out.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME growth targets are last year's number plus a round figure nobody can defend. Here's how to build a target from capacity, market, and unit economics instead — one your team can actually plan against.
Friday, September 04, 2026
A new survey found 56% of small business owners hit a major cash flow crisis in their first three years, and 80% still face it yearly. The fix isn't a better bookkeeper — it's a rolling cash system.
Friday, September 04, 2026
88% of founders admit stress causes poor decisions, but only 19% have the delegation skills proven to fix it. Why the fix for founder burnout is a decision-rights system — not rest.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Launching new lines the moment your core product works feels like growth. The data says it's usually what causes the plateau.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Being the best operator built your business. Staying the best operator is now the ceiling on how big it can get.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Buying a new platform feels like progress. Usually it's avoidance — the process was broken before the software, and stays broken after.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Your top performer's secret isn't a better pitch — it's a question sequence that gets the prospect to close themselves.
Friday, September 04, 2026
You don't need a national ad budget to get cut-through — you need dominance in the community your customers already trust.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most strategy fails in translation, not ambition. Here's how to cascade a boardroom goal all the way down to a Monday task list.
Friday, September 04, 2026
56% of US shoppers have quit buying a brand over shrinkflation. Why quietly shrinking packs costs FMCG brands more than an honest price rise — and how to build a value-change system instead.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most FMCG brands that succeed regionally never make the jump to national shelf space. Here's what the brands that do scale nationally build before the big order arrives — capacity, standardisation, and sell-through data — and why the brands that don't fail fast once they win it.
Friday, September 04, 2026
The owners who get the most from coaching don't walk in with good news — they walk in with a real problem. Here's why the progress-report habit quietly wastes coaching sessions, and what to bring instead.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most productivity advice optimises the calendar you already have. The real fix is deciding what doesn't belong on it. Here's the 90/10 diagnostic for finding — and protecting — the small share of your week that actually drives growth.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The outcome is usually decided in the first five minutes. Here's the diagnostic-first opening sequence that changes conversion rates without changing your product or your price.
Friday, September 04, 2026
Most SME marketing leads with product specs. Buyers respond to stories. Here's the system for finding, capturing, and multiplying the customer stories you already have — with an FMCG-specific angle on letting the shelf and repeat-purchase data talk.