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Growth and direction · peer advisory council

Sales and business development

“Leads are fine. We just don’t close enough of them.”

What it often sounds like at the table

Sales problems aren’t always sales problems. Sometimes it’s lead flow. Sometimes it’s follow-up, pricing, positioning, or nobody consistently asking for the next step. With owners from different industries around the table, someone has often solved a version of your problem in their own business. Because nobody in the room competes with you, they’ll tell you exactly how they did it.

You might recognize this if…

  • Revenue swings month to month with no clear reason.
  • Proposals go out and go quiet.
  • You’re still the best salesperson in the company.
  • Pricing conversations make your team nervous.

Questions the room might ask you

  1. Where exactly are you losing deals, before the proposal or after it?
  2. Who follows up, and when?
  3. When did you last raise prices, and what happened?
  4. What would it take for someone other than you to close?
How the council works on it

What happens when you bring sales and business development to the room.

  1. You put it on the table

    You lay out the situation in your own words, with the numbers and history that matter. Ten or so owners give it their full attention.

  2. Questions before advice

    The room asks questions like the ones above until everyone, including you, understands the real issue. Often that’s where the breakthrough happens.

  3. Experience, not opinions

    Owners who have faced something similar share what they did and what they would do differently. No competitors sit at the table, so nobody holds back.

  4. You make the call

    The group doesn’t run your company. You decide what to do, with a lot more perspective than you walked in with.

  5. Say it out loud

    You name your next step before you leave. Next month, the room asks how it went.

What you leave with

The one or two places in your sales process to fix first, often with a practical idea borrowed from another owner’s playbook.

Bring this to the table Why it matters: Relationships that become bigger than the meeting

Related conversations

Growth and expansionGrowth exposes what a smaller company could get away with.Strategic planning and executionThe hard part isn’t ideas. It’s choosing, and following through.Evaluating new opportunitiesSome opportunities are great. Some are expensive distractions.

Prefer to work on sales and business development privately instead of in a group? I also do this one-on-one (opens JeffreyRands.com in a new tab).