Blog
Sales Teams
Practical takes on B2B sales, fractional CRO leadership and go-to-market, from 20-plus years carrying the number on five continents.
Sales Comp Plans That Actually Motivate
A good comp plan is simple enough a rep can calculate their own check. Here is how to set base, variable, OTE, and quota by role, and the mistakes to avoid.
How to Scale From Founder-Led Sales to a Real Sales Team
Founder-led sales does not scale by hiring. Codify the founder's motion into a playbook, hire to that profile, install management and cadence. Order matters.
Intel Almost Killed RealSense. Then It Fixed Its Sales and Sold for $600M.
Intel nearly shut RealSense down. Spun out, it went from $8M a quarter to a $600M sale. The technology did not change. The way it sold did.
Your First Sales Hire Keeps Failing. Here Is Why.
If your first sales hire failed and the second is struggling, look at the system before the rep: wrong profile for your stage, no playbook, no management.
How to Hand Off Founder-Led Sales Without Killing the Pipeline
Most founder-led sales handoffs fail because founders dump leads on a rep with no motion. Here is how to transfer the sale without killing your pipeline.
When to Hire Your First Salesperson (Founders Wait Too Long, Then Panic)
Revenue milestones do not tell you when to hire your first salesperson. A repeatable motion you can hand off does. Here is what ready actually looks like.
A Client Hired Me to Grow Them 30X. Here Is the Honest Answer.
A company hired me to grow them 30X. It can be done, but only if you work backwards from the number and fund the machine that produces it.
BioCatch Sold to Visa for $2.4 Billion. The Lesson Is Not the Technology.
BioCatch went from $7M to $100M ARR before Visa paid $2.4 billion. The lesson for founders is not the tech. It is the repeatable sales machine that scaled it.
I Stopped Calling Myself a Sales Trainer. Here Is Why.
Most sales training is a two-day sugar high that wears off by Wednesday. I have trained 2,000 salespeople, and the training was never what moved revenue.
I Built a Sales Floor for an Offer Everyone Had Already Been Pitched a Dozen Times
Free money, a deadline, and a market so flooded with cold callers that nobody believed it. How I built a sales team from zero when trust was the hard part.
Building a Sales Operation in the United States
How to build and run B2B sales in the US market: the buyer culture, the pitfalls, and the sales team, subsidiary and support operation I build and run there.
Building a Sales Operation in Germany
Selling B2B in Germany: how German buyers actually buy, the Mittelstand, and the sales team, subsidiary and support operation I build and run there.
Building a Sales Operation in the United Kingdom
Selling B2B in the UK: how British buyers actually buy, and the sales team, subsidiary and support operation I build and run there.
Building a Sales Operation in Japan
Selling B2B in Japan: how Japanese buyers actually buy, consensus and trust, and the sales team, subsidiary and support operation I build and run there.
Building a Sales Operation in France
Selling B2B in France: how French buyers actually buy, language and relationships, and the sales team, subsidiary and support operation I build and run there.
Building a Sales Operation in the Netherlands
Selling B2B in the Netherlands: how Dutch buyers actually buy, and the sales team, subsidiary and support operation I build and run there.
SentinelOne hit $1B in revenue, then laid off 300 people. Growth is not the goal.
SentinelOne passed $1 billion ARR and still cut 10% of its workforce. Growth does not fix an inefficient company, it makes the problem bigger.
Building a Sales Operation in China
Selling B2B in China: how Chinese buyers actually buy, why relationships and local presence matter, and the sales operation I build and run there.
Building a Sales Operation in South Korea
Selling B2B in South Korea: how Korean buyers actually buy, why hierarchy and relationships matter, and the sales operation I build and run there.
Target just had its best quarter in 4 years. The reason is positioning, not price.
Target grew 5.6%, its best result in four years, by going back to why people shop there. Most B2B growth problems are positioning problems too.