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Tom Fishburne’s cartoon captures a trap B2B software founders can fall into: adding capabilities until the original customer problem gets buried. That creates a sales problem, too. Your website describes everything the software can do. Your demo shows every feature. Your outreach lists capabilities. Meanwhile, the buyer is trying to answer:“Can this solve my problem, and is solving it worth the cost and effort of changing?” In my experience, more features don’t automatically

Winning a major new customer can change a small B2B software company. I’ve seen it happen firsthand. Years ago, I worked with a small B2B software company that needed new customers. We identified the right target companies, reached the right decision-makers, created sales opportunities and ultimately won a major new account. It was exactly what targeted outbound is supposed to do. The customer became an important source of revenue. But there was a bigger lesson that wouldn't

Years ago, I was helping a group of SDRs when one of them had a conversation with a prospect. The prospect told him they weren't going to do anything. The SDR took them at their word and moved on. Two months later, he called the company again. They had bought from a competitor. True story. There was an important sales lesson in that experience that I've never forgotten. The prospect probably wasn't misleading the SDR when they said they weren't going to do anything. They were

There is a lot of talk in B2B sales about generating more leads. More leads. More replies. More meetings. More pipeline. But none of those things necessarily mean you have a sales opportunity. A prospect replying to an email isn't a sales opportunity. A decision-maker agreeing to a meeting isn't a sales opportunity. Someone showing interest in your product isn't necessarily a sales opportunity. And putting a company into your CRM certainly doesn't make it one. So What Is a Sa

When you're trying to win a dream account, it's natural to think about your competitors. Who else is selling to them? What product are they using today? How does your solution compare? But increasingly, your biggest competitor isn't another vendor. It's the status quo. Today's decision-makers are under tremendous pressure to deliver better results, faster, with fewer resources and at lower cost. They're already overloaded. That changes the sales equation. Change Has a Cost Ev

For most of my sales career, I've believed that one of the biggest mistakes in complex B2B sales is entering an opportunity too late. I used to say: If you're first invited to the competitive party when the buyer is ready to compare vendors, you're already late. Your strongest competitor may have helped set the table. I've seen this play out repeatedly. A company issues an RFP or begins evaluating three or four vendors. On the surface, it looks like an open competition. But i

AI is changing what B2B products can do at an extraordinary pace. New models are released. New capabilities become possible. Features that looked differentiated six months ago can quickly become commonplace. That creates a difficult question for B2B CEOs and sales leaders: If our product keeps changing, should our sales story keep changing too? Not necessarily. The problem starts when a company's sales story and positioning is built primarily around its product features and