SalesStartups
Founders, are you working for free? Why?
When a prospect demands a free trial, that's a red flag. Here's how to turn free into a paid pilot with clear success criteria, or walk away with your time intact.
October 23, 2026Read more
Insights & Ideas
The Conscientious Capitalist Blog
Practical strategies for ethical, sustainable B2B growth.
SalesStartups
4 Steps for Developing Your Prospect Profile
A thorough and honestly developed prospect profile helps you tell the difference between buyer types -- and how to answer the tough questions most buyers will ask.
October 16, 2026Read more
SalesLeadership
Conscientious Selling: Why Truth Matters
As children, we're taught to tell the truth. As adults, that lesson too often gets abandoned just to make a sale.
October 9, 2026Read more
LeadershipSales
Product Knowledge by Itself Won't Make You a Salesperson
Most founders wouldn't hire a salesperson to run their dev team — yet plenty assume a developer or engineer can step into sales and succeed. Product knowledge alone isn't enough. Here's what actually is.
Oct 5, 2026Read more
AI
To Use Code or Cowork?
That was my question today. What I learned seemed worth sharing. TL;DR: Code and Cowork are silos. What the hell, Anthropic?
August 28, 2026Read more
AICulture
You are more than the human in the loop
You are smarter, more imaginative, and will almost always have way better ideas than AI. It may have access to the entirety of digitized human knowledge, but you're still in charge.
August 25, 2026Read more
CapitalismCulture
Doing Well and Doing Good is Good for Business
Doing well and doing good aren't mutually exclusive. Servant leadership offers the principles for doing both.
August 5, 2026Read more
AIMarketing
Your prospects don't need you
B2B marketers and sellers, Forrester has located your prospects. They're where you thought they'd be.
July 7, 2026Read more
AIProspecting
How AI is changing B2B prospect behavior
...and what GTM strategies need to do in response.
July 6, 2026Read more
ProspectingSales
When prospects treat you like sh*t
Don't let their bad day become yours.
June 17, 2026Read more
ProspectingSales
B2B Founder's Guide to Making Your First Sales
The Pivotal First Sales: Shaping Your B2B Startup's Future.
June 5, 2026Read more
AICulture
Agentic AI meets VH1 popup videos
Real-time factchecking a la VH1 popup videos — an AI use case whose time has come.
June 1, 2026Read more
AILeadership
AI in the B2B sales process part 3: Reframing the sales org
The final post in a 3-part series on McKinsey's report on how generative AI could reshape B2B sales — Pathway Three: Radically reframing the modern sales organization.
February 24, 2025Read more
AILeadership
AI in the B2B sales process part 2: A new growth paradigm?
AI is a tool, not a replacement for effective sales leadership and process discipline. Here's my take on McKinsey's Pathway Two.
February 9, 2025Read more
AICapitalism
AI in the B2B sales process - thumbs up or thumbs down?
As a prospect — and we're all prospects to someone — what's been your experience with how AI is being incorporated into the sales process?
January 26, 2025Read more
CultureEthics
Top 5 B2B Sales Tips from 2024
The 5 most popular B2B sales tips posts from 2024 — designed to help B2B leaders and salespeople be more successful and more conscientious.
December 18, 2024Read more
CultureEthics
Mastering Ethical LinkedIn Prospecting: Building Trust
For B2B tech leaders, LinkedIn is a goldmine for prospecting — when done right. Here's how to build real relationships with people, not just prospects, through honest and authentic outreach.
December 1, 2024Read more
CultureEducation
Top 10 Reasons to Have Sales Playbooks
Hero sales don't scale. Sales playbooks will change that. Here are 10 reasons every B2B company needs one, no matter what stage of growth you're in.
November 17, 2024Read more
SalesTraining
5 Tips for Making More Sales, Faster, and More Predictably
Speeding up sales while making them predictable is the holy grail for businesses of all sizes. Here are five practical tips from 35 years of strategic B2B sales experience.
October 25, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
10 Tips for Overcoming Your Fears of Rejection When Prospecting
It's natural to want to avoid rejection. After 35 years in strategic selling and sales leadership, here are 10 tips for overcoming your fears of rejection when prospecting.
October 18, 2024Read more
CapitalismCulture
Where's the Controversy When It's Good for Business?
I was wondering why DEIA is 'controversial' with some people when McKinsey, BCG, HBR and others say it's good for business. I'd rather have the dialog with you.
October 11, 2024Read more
CultureEthics
Conscientious Selling: Why Truth Matters
As children, we're taught to always tell the truth. And yet as adults, this lesson is all too often abandoned to make a sale. Here's why truth matters in sales.
October 4, 2024Read more
SalesStartups
Your Prospect Doesn't Care That You Went to the Same School
When it comes to cold calling or outreach, your prospect doesn't care that you both went to Penn State. What they care about is solving their business problems and maximizing the value of their time.
September 27, 2024Read more
MarketingSales
How Sales Training Makes Success More Predictable
For founders of early-stage and emerging startups, the one crucial area that will determine your company's trajectory is sales. Here's how sales training makes success more predictable.
September 20, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
Exponential Growth: A Realistic Path to Startup Success?
You don't need exponential growth to be successful. Here's some counterintuitive advice from three decades of working with startups on building a business that lasts.
September 13, 2024Read more
SalesStartups
Sales Is Not a Numbers Game: Strategizing Quality Over Quantity
Strategic sales isn't just about numbers — it's about precision, strategy, and focusing your efforts on your best prospects. Here's why "smiling and dialing" was never a good idea.
September 6, 2024Read more
EdTechLeadership
Evolving from Selling to Solving
The most successful sales leaders know that effective selling is more about solving problems than pushing products. Here's how adopting an engineer's mindset transforms your sales results.
August 30, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
The Most Important Hire a Startup Will Make
Among the myriad of hires you will consider as a founder, the salesperson is arguably the most important. Here is why.
August 23, 2024Read more
MarketingSales
Power Messaging: Unlocking Success for Early-Stage Startups
Power Messaging is one of the most influential tools in a B2B sales professional's arsenal. Here's how this strategic approach to sales communication can transform your startup's growth.
August 16, 2024Read more
CultureEthics
How to Stop Magnetically Attracting Toxic Employees
A startup Founder's guide on how to repel toxic employees and prevent the manifestation of a miserable workplace culture — before they ever walk through the door.
August 9, 2024Read more
EthicsLeadership
The Crippling Cost of Unethically Closing Deals
Unethical sales practices may offer short-term gains, but they inevitably lead to long-term damage that will cripple a company's brand and reputation. Here's what nobody tells you until it's too late.
August 2, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
Balance Motivation, Simplicity, and Longevity in Commission Plans
Designing a commission plan requires balancing motivation, simplicity, and long-term relationship building. Here are key pointers for strategic startups building their first sales comp structure.
June 14, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
I Once Got Fired Because I Wouldn't Lie: A Cautionary Tale
After seven months as a sales manager — and after improving the team to 103% of quota — I was fired because I refused to lie. Here's what happened, and the lesson every leader should take from it.
June 8, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
Would you hire a salesperson as a developer, engineer, or teacher?
Four decades in business has taught me that not everyone can do sales. So where's the logic in asking your developers, engineers, or teachers to suddenly become your startup's salespeople?
May 31, 2024Read more
LeadershipMarketing
Discovering Your Hedgehog Concept: Blueprint for Startup Success
The Hedgehog Concept from Jim Collins' Good To Great helps startups find the intersection of passion, economic engine, and world-class capability. Here's how to apply it to your B2B startup.
May 24, 2024Read more
LeadershipStartups
More like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar
Jim Collins and James MacGregor Burns agree: the most effective leaders are not charismatic "great men" — they are humble, others-first leaders more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.
May 17, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
5 Tips for Interviewing Strategic Salespeople
How you interview and hire for the role of strategic salesperson will absolutely impact your success. Here are five tips to help you screen and hire the right sales talent for your startup.
May 12, 2024Read more
FundingLeadership
The Crucial Role of Customer Validation for B2B Startups
Customer validation is not an optional step — it's the essential strategy that secures investor confidence and paves the way for sustained sales growth by ensuring your product resonates with its intended users.
May 3, 2024Read more
LeadershipSales
Hero Selling, Scaling, and the 3 Big Questions
Founders are the ultimate hero sellers — but you can't scale yourself. Here's how to transition from hero sales to a repeatable sales engine by answering the 3 Big Questions every new sales hire needs answered.
Apr 26, 2024Read more
MarketingSales
5 tips for how to prospect in 2024: B2B Voicemail Edition
Bad voicemail prospecting is everywhere. Here's a real-world example of what not to do — and a 33-second script rewrite that actually works — plus 5 tips for telephone prospecting that build trust and get callbacks.
Apr 19, 2024Read more
AILeadership
Is AI supercharging sales laziness?
AI-generated prospecting messages are flooding inboxes — repetitive, hollow, and sometimes word-for-word identical. Is AI supercharging sales laziness? A plea to sales professionals to keep their humanity in the outreach process.
Nov 27, 2023Read more
MarketingSales
Go-to-market: Documenting Prospect Profiles and Buyer Types
Knowing what makes a good prospect means spending your time with people most likely to become customers. Here's the 4-step process for developing prospect profiles — from target audience to mapping benefits to buyer types.
Oct 5, 2023Read more
LeadershipMarketing
The 3 Big Questions to Answer FOR Sales
After 3 decades in strategic B2B sales, I've found that zeroing in on 3 Big Questions — Whom do I talk with? What do I say? Why should they care? — gives sales teams the focus they need to generate more predictable outcomes.
Sep 19, 2023Read more
LeadershipMarketing
Make Sales Predictable by Making It a Process
Sales is the alpha and the omega of any business. But without a defined, repeatable sales process — not just activities — you can't manage your funnel, predict revenue, or grow with confidence.
Sep 14, 2023Read more
Sales
A 'Sales Project Plan' keeps everyone on track and moving forward
Project plans are a great way to understand and manage all sorts of things that people and teams work on, and sales is no exception.
September 11, 2019Read more
MarketingSales
4 Steps for Developing Prospect Profiles
Developing profiles that describe your best prospects is part of an effective sales strategy. By knowing what makes for a good prospect, you can be confident you're spending your time with the people most likely to become customers.
September 5, 2019Read more
LeadershipSales
Good versus great sales training
The very best companies provide sales training programs custom-developed to account for who the company is, what makes them unique, and how they can best be consultative.
August 21, 2019Read more
Education
In defense of school teachers and public education
School teachers are among the single most important professions to a civil and progressive society.
July 22, 2019Read more
MarketingSales
10 Tips for Making the Most of Joint Customer Webinars
Practical strategies for getting maximum value from joint customer webinars in B2B sales.
July 15, 2019Read more
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