Thursday, October 29, 2026
HBR's review of meeting research found about 70% of meetings kept employees from the work they were meant to enable. Here's Verne Harnish's meeting rhythm, sized for an SME before year-end.
Walk into most SME sales reviews in the final week of any month and you'll hear the same phrase: "I can get this one over the line if I knock ten percent off." It sounds like good instinct — closing the deal, hitting the number. It's usually the single most expensive habit a sales team has.
A study by InsideSales Labs, examining 9.8 million sales opportunities across 151 companies over nine quarters, found reps close 2.9 times more deals in the final days of a quarter — and lose 11.4 times more margin doing it, with win rates falling by more than 12 percentage points against the rest of the month. The researchers put the average cost to a single company at roughly $98 million a year in lost revenue. Separately, a Bessemer Venture Partners survey found 73% of SaaS executives admit to offering steeper discounts specifically toward the end of a reporting period to hit their numbers (that figure comes with no published sample size, so treat it as directional). Scale the dollar figure down to SME size and the behaviour is identical.
I've built and reviewed commission plans across nine businesses of my own and in coaching 200+ businesses one-on-one across 30+ industries. The pattern is always the same: show me a team that discounts heavily at month-end, and I'll show you a commission plan that pays the same bonus whether the deal closed at full price or twenty percent off.
Most owners assume a team that discounts too much has a training problem or a confidence problem. Usually it has neither. It has a plan that pays purely on revenue booked, with no reference at all to the margin that revenue actually carries. A rep paid the same commission on a full-price deal and a heavily discounted one is behaving entirely rationally when they discount to close faster — the plan is simply telling them, in the clearest language a business ever speaks, that margin doesn't matter.
"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
Rewriting a commission plan feels like picking a fight with the exact people responsible for this month's revenue, at the exact moment you can least afford a dip in morale. So the plan survives another quarter, and another. An outside adviser can design and defend the change without it reading as a personal attack on the team that built your current number — usually the difference between a plan that actually gets fixed and one that gets talked about for another year.
If your best reps are also your biggest discounters, that's not a coincidence — and it's the first thing we fix.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Eighty-four percent of small business owners sacrifice health or relationships to their business, new 2026 data shows. Here is the Transferability Number test that shows why, and what to fix first.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You're about to have your busiest quarter of the year. If nobody's planned for it, your bank balance is about to go the wrong way at exactly the moment the business looks like it's winning.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Ask most owners what they do and they'll answer instantly. Ask them why their business exists, beyond making money, and watch the pause. That pause is costing you customers, hires and referrals.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Ask your team to name the business's single most important goal this quarter. Five different answers from five people means you have one problem, not twelve: nobody knows what the goal actually is.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You trained your team to build rapport and never push, and your best customer last quarter still went with the competitor who pushed them to rethink the brief. Here's why relationship-selling is the weakest profile in B2B sales.
Monday, October 05, 2026
You've boosted the posts, hired the agency, rewritten the website twice, and the phone still isn't ringing. Before you spend another dollar, ask whether a stranger could explain what makes you different in one sentence.
Monday, October 05, 2026
Your competitor just launched the move you'd been 'finalising' for six months. Here's the fifty-year-old decision framework that fixes the real problem: not your strategy, your decision speed.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
EOS, Scaling Up, Vistage, ActionCOACH or Simple-Growth? A fair comparison with best-for and not-ideal-if for each option, a fit matrix and a nine-question quiz.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
What does a business coach cost in New Zealand? Published monthly and hourly ranges, cheaper options, how RBPN co-funding can help, and a checklist for judging value.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
New 2026 global research shows trust alone only earns a brand 48 percent acceptance into new territory - relevance takes it to 71 percent. Here is the two-question test that finds the real gap before you spend on expansion.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The personal touch that built your reputation at ten staff quietly becomes the bottleneck that breaks it at thirty. Here is how to turn a habit into a system before it costs you.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Most owners check star ratings and warm adjectives before hiring a coach. Here is the three-detail test that tells you whether a review is evidence or decoration.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The Christmas shutdown is about eleven weeks away. Here is the one-page-per-role handover document that decides whether you actually switch off this year.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
The biggest sales research study ever run found the best reps ask, they don't tell. Here is the SPIN method, and the four questions that come before any pitch.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
No ad budget doesn't mean no reach. Here is the Dream 100 method for finding the audiences that already trust your exact customer, and earning your way in.