Tuesday, October 27, 2026
They nodded, asked great questions, said it's exactly what they need — then disappeared. Here's why warmth isn't a buying signal, and the three-message sequence that gets stalled deals talking again.
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.
Wednesday, September 09, 2026
A new survey shows the average small business owner is running five jobs at once — and burning 200+ hours a year proving it. Here's the two-hat framework that gets your time back within 90 days.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
New 2026 consumer data shows most shoppers are value-seekers, not bargain hunters — yet 95% still rate brand trust as important. Here's the six-point test your FMCG brand must pass to earn the sale without discounting.
Tuesday, September 08, 2026
New 2026 grocery data shows branded FMCG products are being promoted twice as often as private label — and still losing share and loyalty. Kevin D'Ambros-Smith on why discounting harder is the wrong fix, and what pricing architecture looks like instead.
Monday, September 07, 2026
A 2026 Fed survey of 6,525 small businesses found owner confidence at a 6-year low — while actual revenue, employment and profitability held steady. Why the gap, not the economy, is the real risk for SME and FMCG owners.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Burst campaigns reset to zero every time. Here's why a sustainable weekly cadence beats an intense one-month push, and how to protect it through the slow months.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most SME sales forecasts are built by adding up pipeline value — and it's almost always wrong. Here's how exit criteria, deal age, and weighted forecasting fix it.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most of what fills an owner's calendar isn't driving results. Here's how to run a structured 80/20 audit that identifies the real 20% — and what to do with the rest.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
One-on-one coaching diagnoses and designs strategy. A peer accountability group enforces it. Here's why the combination produces follow-through that neither achieves alone.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Organic growth isn't the only path. Here's how well-chosen SME acquisitions can compress years of growth into one transaction — and where most owners get the due diligence wrong.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most SME roadmaps fail from what they never remove, not what they add. Here's the three-question kill list to run before your next planning cycle — and why pruning, not adding, is what actually frees up growth capacity.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Paid social and search rent attention you don't own. Your email list is the one channel most SMEs already have permission to use — and almost never invest in properly. Here's how to turn it into a real asset.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Most sales training focuses on the pitch and the close. The call is usually already lost in the first five minutes. Here's the agenda-set and diagnostic sequence that fixes it — at the team level, not just for one rep.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Delegation doesn't fail because your team can't do the work — it fails because nobody defined what "done" looked like before the task started. Here's the four-part handoff that fixes it.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Self-funded expansion runs out of capital and management bandwidth before it runs out of market opportunity. Here's the franchise-readiness test and how to compare licensing against scaling it yourself.
Sunday, September 06, 2026
Business coaching has borrowed a lot from therapy's language, and it's blurred an important line. A coach uses psychology to find what's blocking you — then converts it into a dated business action, every time. Here's where the line sits.