Four of the fastest humans on the planet couldn't pass the baton. A commission-driven team voluntarily split deals without being asked. The difference between those two outcomes is not talent — it's identity.

Most deal reviews are controlled by the rep. The manager hears the story they're meant to hear. Deal inspection done right flips that dynamic — and it starts before the conversation begins.

Most sales leaders manage results. The teams that sustain performance year over year manage something else entirely — rhythm. Here's what separates the teams that compound from the ones that just get through each quarter.

Every company claims to have a culture. Most of them declared it and waited for it to arrive. Culture doesn't arrive — it accumulates. Here's how high-performing sales teams actually build it.

Most leaders know the obvious ways a VP of Sales hire goes wrong. There's a third failure mode nobody names — and the leader doing it genuinely believes they already handed it over. This one's harder to fix because it doesn't feel like a problem.

The quota a rep receives on day one is the output of a dozen assumptions made upstream. Most companies never document them. That's the problem.

The problem with most hiring processes isn't that managers make bad decisions. It's that they're measuring the wrong things in the wrong order.

I joined Kevin Donville and Matt Long on Software Sales Simplified to talk about why fractional leadership brings clarity — and why hiring before building infrastructure is a founder's most expensive mistake.

The interview is not a hiring tool. It is a performance. And the person on the other side of the table has been rehearsing longer than you have.

SKOs are not a bad idea. But they are a very expensive way to paper over a problem that no three-day event can solve.

I recently sat down with Maheen Bari on the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast to discuss how growing companies can transition from founder-led sales to a repeatable, scalable revenue engine.

When 14 of 30 sellers made President's Club, nobody added headcount, changed the quota, or ran more training. We changed the structure. Here's what happened — and why the science behind it matters.

4 in 5 sales leaders missed their quarterly forecast last year. Most blame their team. The research — and a 14-deal collapse I lived through — points somewhere else entirely.

Coaching isn't the solution. It's the final step. And most companies skip everything that comes before it. Here's the hierarchy that actually works—and why your playbook is the foundation that makes coaching effective.

80% of companies fail to pass $30M because they can't transition out of founder-led sales at the right time. The failure isn't in the selling — it's in the letting go.

In 2024, sales quotas rose 37% while only 28% of reps hit their number — the lowest in six years. This isn't a motivation problem. It's a systems problem. And it's destroying sales teams from the inside out.

According to IKO System research, 48% of new sales hires fail and only 6% exceed expectations. Most companies treat this as the cost of doing business. But when each failed hire costs $120K-$240K and drags down your entire team's productivity, you don't have a talent problem — you have a systems problem.

Economic uncertainty doesn't create sales problems. It exposes the ones you already had. After 25 years and three major downturns, here's what actually works.

Research shows companies get manager selection wrong 82% of the time. Learn why promoting your top sales rep often backfires—and what to do instead.

Only 1% of small and mid-size businesses have a solid sales foundation. If you're running a company between $10M and $100M, there's a very good chance you're in the 99% — and it's costing you more than you realize.