Trish Bertuzzi wrote The Sales Development Playbook in 2016 and it’s still completely relevant and foundational for understanding how to run Sales Development.
I’ve recommended this to every new SDR manager I’ve coached in the last 10 years and will continue to do so.
Sure a lot has changed in Sal...
At the time, I’d spent 17 years in marketing, working shoulder-to-shoulder with sales, but I’d never run a B2B sales team.
I was consulting on demand gen for a company part-time. The CEO, Peter Weyman (who I’d worked for years earlier at CardScan), asked me to come on full-time and take over the B2...
Daren Jennings once called me “a man of a million hobbies.” Fair.
That curiosity led me to question the idea that talent is something you’re simply born with. I never bought it.
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle dispels the myth. It shows how skill is built — with deep practice, the right environmen...
When coaching sales reps, don’t try to fix everything.
Look for one change that:
- Creates the biggest immediate impact
- Is realistically coachable right now
That means:
- Studying your reps closely (calls, meetings, recordings)
- Giving specific, actionable direction—not vague advice. However, ...
Here’s when… (watch the video)
Storytelling moves deals. You know that already.
But outbounders need short stories.
Prospects don’t have the time or attention for anything drawn out like you might use once a deal is in progress.
Not case studies.
20 seconds. Pain → Action → Win.
Reps should have a library of these ready for ca...
A few years back I told our recruiter to stop bringing in out-of-state sales hires — and to drop the college-degree requirement entirely.
Instead: go find local hospitality workers.
She was stunned. Then it clicked.
Here’s why:
- The company was in Rhode Island. Out-of-state grads loved Newport ...
Cold calls come with objections. Guaranteed.
So stop hoping they won’t show up. Expect them.
That shift alone keeps your heart rate down and stops the panic reflex that wrecks most calls:
voice shoots up, pace accelerates, you ramble, or you tap out early.
Expecting the objection flips the script. Y...
Two forces make sales–marketing alignment more urgent than any time in my career:
1. Outbound is harder than ever.
Noise is high. Connect rates are low(er). Pure hustle isn’t enough.
2. AI is everywhere.
Your competitors are wiring AI into targeting, enrichment, routing, scoring, messaging, and exec...
I read Adam Grant’s Give and Take around 2015, a few years into running my consulting business.
I was wrestling with a basic question:
How much should I give away?
Share freely on LinkedIn? Help anyone who asked? Or guard the “secret sauce” and only open the vault for paying clients?
My instinct was...
I’m terrible at shutting my brain off. But every time I do, the big ideas show up or the big course-corrections become obvious.
The grind tricks you into thinking you’re being productive. Step away long enough and two things surface fast:
- You’ve been burning cycles on low-value work.
- Or there’s ...
“It depends.”
A phrase we should hear more often from advisors, consultants, and colleagues.
There’s no universal fix for every business problem. If someone claims there is, they don’t understand how business actually works.
Should you adopt MEDDICC? It depends.
Should account managers sell back...
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