Blog
B2B Sales
Practical takes on B2B sales, fractional CRO leadership and go-to-market, from 20-plus years carrying the number on five continents.
Buyers don't buy logically. They buy emotionally, then justify it.
B2B buyers decide on feeling and use logic to defend the choice afterward. A message that makes them feel nothing kills the deal at the polite brush-off.
Why Great Products Fail to Sell , And What Actually Fixes It
I've spent 20 years in B2B sales across five continents.
I launched my company by visiting a customer, not posting from an office.
I launched TheDealMentor.AI at a customer's site instead of from my office. In 20 minutes we built their ICP, battle cards and cold outreach sequences.
QVC invented live shopping. TikTok killed it. Your sales motion has an expiry date.
QVC invented live shopping and filed for Chapter 11 after its buyers moved to TikTok. Your sales motion has an expiry date too. Here is how to test it.
A Torah scroll on a soldier's back, and what it taught me about business.
A soldier carried a Torah scroll into Lebanon. Sales runs on the same rule: you win long term by being true about what your product can and cannot do.
20 years as a CRO taught me founders lose deals for the same three reasons.
I've watched brilliant founders lose deals they should have closed. I've watched great reps underperform because nobody built them a system. I've watched.
Aston Martin is betting everything on one car. So are most founders.
Aston Martin is betting its recovery on one $1M car. Founders make the same bet on the next launch, but revenue comes from demand and a working sales motion.
France cut off arms to Israel. Israel's answer: build it ourselves. A lesson in suppliers.
Israel's response? Find better suppliers. Build more. Depend less. Israel's Ministry of Defense just announced it's halting all defense procurement from France.
UVision is heading to Nasdaq at $3.5B. It never had a sales problem.
UVision knew what it sold, to whom and why. If your revenue has been flat for six months, you likely have a strategy problem dressed up as a sales problem.
OpenAI is burning $14B a year and buying distribution. The Uber playbook for AI.
And offering ~17.5% guaranteed? returns to firms like TPG and Advent International. That's not funding. That's a land grab. They're not raising capital..
A Volkswagen plant may start building Iron Dome parts. They read the signals early.
A Volkswagen plant may build Iron Dome parts because someone read demand early. Most companies wait for a crisis to force the pivot. You can move first.
Every problem has a clear, simple, obvious answer. And it is usually wrong.
Clean. Obvious. And usually completely wrong. H.L. Mencken said it best over a century ago: *"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear.
Target nearly broke itself with a series of perfectly logical decisions.
Target didn't lose customers because of Amazon or Walmart they lost them because leadership made a series of perfectly logical decisions that completely.
B2B Pricing for the US Market: Why Your Home Price Is Too Low
Companies enter the US market with home-market prices and lose money and customers at the same time. How to price right for the American market.
Deals close when you understand the buyer's pain, not when you talk about your product.
Your deals don't close because you talk about yourself and your product. Got this message today: We have all the problems you talk about. This is not rare. I.
A fake war story explains why your sales forecast is fiction.
A sales forecast gets cleaner and more optimistic at every step from rep to board. Here is how to check each deal against reality before you plan on it.
Honda burned $16B. Not a failed startup, a failure to read the market in time.
Honda wrote off $16B because it misread demand and timing, and its cars were fine. Most B2B pipelines that never turn into revenue hide the same mistake.
The Coin Flip VP of Sales
A company picked its VP of Sales by coin flip, and 40% of the sales team did not know they were in sales. Why founders hand revenue to whoever loses.
Most sales forecasts are bullshit.
Most sales forecasts are bullshit. Even at the billion-dollar level. Mattel just proved it.
Outsourced VP of Sales: The Smart Way Into a Market Without Burning a Fortune
Why B2B companies skip the full-time VP of Sales and outsource sales leadership instead: the upside, the risks, and when it actually fits.