Friday, November 13, 2026
Equal effort on every enquiry feels fair. It just means you spend as much time on tyre-kickers as real buyers. The Sandler method shows SME owners how to qualify pain before they pitch.
Last updated 14 November 2026. Published by Simple-Growth (Motherbase Limited). Market: United States.
This is a story about an owner who wants steady, predictable new business — but who's only getting it in bursts, because the only lever they know how to pull is spending more on ads. You run a promotion, enquiries spike, you feel like a marketer again. Then it goes quiet. You run another one. Same spike, same silence after. You're not bad at marketing. You've just been taught that marketing means buying attention one burst at a time, instead of building a line of people who already trust you and tell the next person before you've spent a cent.
PYMNTS Intelligence's SMB Growth Report found 63% of small businesses that gained new customers said word of mouth was key to that growth (PYMNTS, US, 2025). That's not a reason to stop advertising — it's evidence that the channel owners trust most to actually convert is the one almost nobody has a deliberate system for. Most SME marketing plans have a line item for ads and nothing at all for "who already has the attention of the people I want, and how do I earn five minutes of it."
Chet Holmes' Dream 100, later carried forward by Russell Brunson and Dana Derricks, is simple to describe and uncomfortable to actually do: list the 100 people, publications, podcasts, communities or partners who already hold the attention of your exact ideal customer, then build real relationships with them over months, not a single cold pitch.
Kevin's seen what happens when a business stops waiting for one big marketing push and starts building a steady pipeline of relationships instead — eleven separate revenue streams at a Wanaka bike park, each one with its own small, loyal audience. With 730 season passes to sell and 300 loyal regulars renewing without being asked, that left 430 to find in ten weeks — six a day, every day, not one campaign and a prayer. The mechanic's one job was simpler still: offer fifty customers a free bike check. Repairs went up. Rentals went up. Accidents went down. None of it came from an ad.
"Kevin D'Ambros-Smith was the first coach that helped us and he was so great. He understood the business straightaway, was able to identify some of the areas where we could grow it, and some of the things to park. I don't think the ROW branding would be nearly as strong without his input. He was just brilliant."
Sarah McGuinness
Founder & CEO, Revolutionaries of Wellbeing (ROW)
Relationship-building doesn't show results this week, and most owners are measured — by themselves, most of all — on this week's enquiries. So the slow compounding list gets shelved every time a quieter month creates panic, and the ad spend goes back up instead. This isn't for you if you're already building that list every week without being told to — plenty of owners are, quietly, and it shows in how calm their quiet months feel. It's for the owner whose marketing plan is really just "spend more when it's slow," because nobody's ever sat down with them and built the other list.
A method, originated by Chet Holmes and carried forward by Russell Brunson and Dana Derricks, of identifying the 100 people or platforms that already hold your ideal customer's attention and building genuine relationships with them instead of buying that attention directly.
No — it complements it. Ads can fill the gap while relationships compound, but a business relying only on ads will keep feeling the feast-or-famine cycle this approach is built to smooth out.
Months, not days — it's a deliberately slower, steadier channel than a campaign, which is exactly why it keeps working in the quiet periods that burst-based marketing can't cover.
If your marketing plan is really just "spend more when it's quiet," that's the first habit to replace.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
A lot of owners try the wrong format, see no shift, and decide coaching doesn't work for them. Here's what a peer room is actually good for, what 1:1 coaching is actually good for, and a 3-check way to pick.
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.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Reps close 2.9x more deals at month-end and lose 11.4x more margin doing it, one major study found. Here's why the plan is the problem, not the rep, and three fixes.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
45% of US consumers used AI for a local business recommendation this year, up from 6% last year. Here's why schema markup won't fix your AI visibility, and what will.
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Jim Collins found that companies which broke away from average performance could name, with brutal precision, what they could be best in the world at. Here's the three-circle test and the goal that pairs with it.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Big-brand positioning is a decision, not a budget. Five questions, a one-sentence position and a five-touchpoint audit you can run this week.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Which jobs should a US small business hand to AI first? Published US data, a five-check test and a 30-day plan to pick one job, track one number and keep the decisions that matter.
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Most small business owners already believe AI works, but barely one in ten has invested in using it properly. Here is the simple ladder for turning casual AI use into real, compounding productivity gains.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Vet and allied health practices rarely have a clinical problem. Here is how to find the real constraint, keep patients returning and build a 90-day growth plan.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME owners are fixing the wrong problem. Here's the 3-step method that finds the one constraint actually holding your growth back, before you spend another dollar.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
A third of US small business owners say they don't know whether they have the tools — AI included — to grow next year. That's not a confidence problem, it's a visibility one, and it's fixable in an afternoon.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Confidence up a quarter, down the next, tariffs easing then tightening — waiting for certainty is its own decision, and usually the wrong one. Here's a simple way to keep deciding well when the ground keeps moving.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
There's one role almost every SME owner has avoided filling for a year or more — while quietly doing it themselves instead. Here's the Who Not How framework, and the three-step test that makes the hire obvious.
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.
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME marketing describes the product and targets a demographic — and both miss why people actually buy. Here's the Jobs To Be Done framework, and how to find the job your business is really being hired to do.