Something New

For the past several months, I've been working on something.

I've been talking to colleagues, validating ideas with current and former clients, and pressure-testing a concept that kept showing up in nearly every conversation I had about sales performance.

It's finally ready.

Two Big Blind Spots

Companies have salespeople who succeed, sometimes spectacularly, but they can't explain why. Their knowledge lives in instinct. In unconscious competence. In "intangibles" that never get written down.

And because they can't explain it, they can’t replicate it, train it, or scale it.

They're growing, but they don't really know why. Which means they can't control whether it continues.

These two blind spots hold good companies back, and they don't even realize it:

1. They don't really know themselves. They can't clearly articulate what they actually bring to the table, what makes them different, or why they win.

2. They don't really know their best customers. They've never systematically asked them why they buy, which makes it harder than it needs to be to find more like them.

These blind spots impose an artificial ceiling on growth. And that ceiling stays in place until something changes.

What I Built

I've repositioned my entire practice to help companies surface and fix these blind spots.

It starts with a self-assessment: 14 questions that take about 10 minutes.

It's free, and it's designed to show you what's right under your nose that's making growth harder than it needs to be.

Take the assessment here.

What's Coming

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to walk you through the framework. Three pieces that explain the work I do with clients and how you can start doing it yourself:

1. Excavate: The internal work that surfaces what your best people actually do

2. Validate: Confirm your assumptions with your best customers

3. Integrate: Systemize those behaviors, so they’re transferable, teachable, and scalable

Jeffrey Gitomer said that “most sales reps won’t do the hard work necessary to make the selling part easier.“

This is what that work looks like. Most companies skip it. The ones that don't have a serious advantage.

The Boardroom Work

The real work isn't in the field. It's in the room where you go 2-3 levels deeper on what actually makes you different, and why it matters to customers.

Most companies think they've done this work, but they haven't gone deep enough.

You know you're still on the surface when your differentiators sound like "relationships," "trust," and "we really care."

Those aren't wrong, but they're not different. All your competitors say the same thing.

The boardroom work is about excavating what's underneath - the behaviors, the instincts, the things your best people do that nobody's written down.

I wrote the full piece here.

This is the foundation.

Over the next few weeks, we'll go deeper, but it all starts with knowing where you stand.

Take the assessment. Read the blog. Let's get to work.

Cheers,
JB

PS: A couple of other things worth sharing…

I was on the Pipelineology podcast with Gary Ruplinger this week. We talked about the two blind spots, what happens when you actually ask your best customers why they buy, and a story about a customer who gasped when I told her I was leaving.

Here’s the link on Spotify.

And if you're on LinkedIn (are we connected yet?), check out this week's #ThankfulThursday post about Jason Bay.