SBI BlogRevenue Growth Insights

In my first outside sales job, each district had a dedicated field training manager. At first, I was intimidated. Not on...

Another crazy week. Companies are reeling from the news. Continuity plans are being deployed. Sales teams are rallying a...

The calendar has quickly turned to February. Sales teams are shaking off their SKO hangovers and back building pipeline ...

Learn the Seven Distinct Styles of Adult Learning Most people intuitively understand that teaching a new concept to an a...

Developing Soft Sales Skills can be Detrimental to Your Next Sale Most instructor-led sales training programs focus on e...

You have an opening for a sales manager. Your rainmaker is vying for the role. He's great at personal selling and has he...

Like many at Brevet, I’m a former sales rep. And I’ve been to my share of good and bad sales kick-offs. While the intent...

Sales leaders standing up a sales enablement function don’t always know what a “rockstar” looks like. Thankfully, we’ve ...

For years we’ve shared our view on the flaws of a one-size-fits-all sales methodology. Our research shows that the best ...

Welcome to 2022 – the complexity and confusion of our world continues! Confidently navigating change is table-stakes for...

The concept of deal champion, advocate, or coach has been around a long time. Without question, they’re the most importa...

If you haven’t seen A League of Their Own, you’ve at least heard someone repeat Tom Hanks’ famous line: “There’s no cryi...

The Concept of One, Absolute Decision-Maker Buyer – The Economic Buyer – is Dead Bill, a rep for a software firm, was on...

There are four key components to effective sales strategy: Who you are selling to What you are selling How you are selli...

Companies continue to struggle to align their sales teams to modern selling situations. Customers have more information,...

They say all is fair in love and war. But that’s it – only in love and war. All is certainly not fair in sales. And that...

Consider this: Your company is growing and acquired several smaller players in your space in recent years. The newly com...

Why Cross Selling is Important Cross selling is the Holy Grail for most companies. Let’s face it, it’s the easiest way t...

Pro Tips for Mastering the Pricing Conversation Your rep is 50 minutes into the one-hour discovery call. They’ve done ev...

In California, we have a saying: ‘The future happens here first’. And that comment always seems appropriate at Dreamforc...

Challenger Sales Methodology Challenger Selling debuted in 2011, but the underlying research dates to the 2008 economic ...

Rolling Out Sales Effectiveness Programs Personal confession: I hate running. The heat, humidity, and hills here in Atla...

Situational Awareness in Business The barrage of noise in the sales enablement space is endless. New sales models. Diffe...

How to Measure Sales Training Effectiveness Sales Training Success: Your organization just poured big money into a sales...

Does Your Sales Team Need Advanced Sales Training? We met with a prospect last week to discuss plans for 2020. After des...

Let’s face it, your Sales Methodology is Broken No need to confess, we know the truth. You spent a king’s ransom to lice...

They go by many names: champions, mobilizers, sponsors, coaches. We can debate the nuances between them, but we can all ...

The following list of sales tips can help you better manage your selling time, write more effective emails, improve your...

Earlier in my career, I worked for a large logistics company. As a young rep, I quickly learned how to navigate through ...

An Effective Cross Selling Strategy is Rooted in Early Conversations Cross Sell. Land and Expand. Enterprise Selling. Ac...

Have You Assessed Your Sales Operations Strategy Recently? When you hear ‘Sales Operations’ what do you think? For many,...

Marketing and sales enablement have poured millions of dollars into building sales playbooks. The intent was good. The r...

Sales Training on a Global Scale One of the statements we’ve heard a lot from our clients is: “We want to deploy a globa...

Sales is a lot like football. On any given day, a well-executed game plan can let a sales rep sell just about anything. ...

Great sales leaders demonstrate three traits consistently: They are great sellers They are great coaches They are great ...

Is Virtual Sales The Right Solution? Like a freight train barreling down the tracks, the Virtual Sales Organization is a...

Hitting Your Sales Targets Summer is essentially over. Some don’t want to think about it, while others embrace it. The f...

For a growing company, more than half of revenue comes from existing customers. The CRO has clear revenue generation pro...

One of my clients was recently in the market for a new software platform. Like most buyers, this executive did extensive...

The average tenure of a sales VP is incredibly brief – about 18 months. That’s not a lot of time to make a big impact. W...

Sales Compensation Trends In the coming weeks companies will start the cycle of updating their sales compensation progra...

Sales Enablement Roles and Responsibilities “So, what exactly do you do?” These six words will open Pandora’s Box. Ask a...

We were recently with a Chief Revenue Officer who was complaining about her reps’ bad customer conversations. She talked...

Back in 2015 we compiled a set of mind-blowing sales statistics. Since then, hundreds of thousands have read that blog. ...

It All Begins With The Modern Selling Mindset Modern buying has fundamentally shifted all aspects of traditional sales. ...

Many of us use this time each year to reflect on our sales goals for the next 12 months. These objectives can be both pe...

So how can we Improve Sales Results with shorter Prospecting calls? Long meetings that drag on are rarely productive. Th...

We don’t want to think about it: having another recession. The sting of the last one still bites a little, even though s...

Halo Effect In Business If someone's first experience with you is positive and they see you in a good light, it’s hard t...

Wolf of Wall Street Sales Training & Lessons Does Hollywood paint a realistic picture of business? In short, probabl...

It’s been over a year since sellers started navigating a new selling paradigm. Terms like "virtual selling" and "remote ...

Sales Enablement Maturity Model “If you’ve seen one sales enablement team, you’ve seen one sales enablement team.” Despi...

Smarter Inspection is Mission-Critical Today In a world of abundance, a few botched deals are simply speed bumps. But to...

Four Steps to Sales Enablement Maturity Many CSOs ask us to rate the effectiveness of their sales enablement functions. ...

Names are curious things. On the one hand, they can be harmless, even meaningless. On the other hand, they can be profou...

The Chief Sales Officer’s role has dramatically changed in the past several years. What qualified for the role before no...

Any good sports manager knows his players. He knows when to pull in the right person for the right situation. If it’s th...

Introducing More Sophisticated Sales Enablement Solutions Sales enablement teams continue to make themselves essential t...

There are various interpretations of what “quarantine” or “shelter in place” mean. Some think it’s ok to still go out-an...

How do I manage a Millennial? Different age groups have their own norms. Most speak their own dialogue and refer to diff...

Everyone just left the hotel. You had the entire sales team in town to jumpstart and kickoff 2018. You had a big keynote...

In every sale, there’s likely someone with the potential to be your Coach or Champion. If this individual also has the b...

We've talked with many sales leaders over the last few weeks about sales training. Pressure to hit the 2018 number, comp...

A Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) gets paid a lot of money. Sometimes they may even be more compensated and earn more salary...

In military strategy, flanking is attacking the opponent from the side. It’s effective because the enemy’s strength is u...

We’ve gathered the most surprising, horrifying, and enlightening sales stats on cold calling statistics, social selling,...

Most B2B revenue leaders know their teams aren't closing enough deals. Diagnosing and fixing the underlying cause is cha...

Most account managers spend their time on the wrong accounts and the wrong conversations. The accounts that demand the m...

As a deal moves through the sales pipeline, buyers often ask for discounts because they see it as an obvious issue. The ...

The ongoing conversation around technology adoption reveals a truly startling statistic for 2026. Only 18% of CEOs curre...

Business services providers routinely deploy aggressive M&A playbooks to capture top-line scale, driving sector acti...

Active listening is foundational to successful selling. It helps you truly understand their customers’ needs, build stro...

When a buyer says, “Your price is too high,” the salesperson’s instinct is to offer a discount. The hope is that by quic...

Every experienced sales professional has been there: your deal is progressing, you have a great relationship with your c...

AI spend is up. Tool counts are rising. And GTM as a percentage of revenue across PE-backed SaaS portfolios has barely m...

Most value propositions are built for the wrong audience. A sales professional who has spent months developing a technic...

Transforming Buyers into Lifelong Partners Business leaders frequently ask how to integrate these professionals effectiv...

There is a 22-point gap between CEOs who call account expansion critical and CEOs who trust their teams to execute it. T...

Sometimes we have problems, but we don't do anything about them. Other times, our problems are so urgent that we take im...

The end of the quarter is one of the busiest periods for any sales organization. Salespeople spend the final days of the...

The share of SaaS organizations shipping AI capabilities increased from 70% to 93% within a single year. This rapid mark...

Customer churn is a growing (and expensive) problem for SaaS companies. According to recent SBI research, Net Revenue Re...

53% of executives remain confident in achieving 2026 targets, as overall commercial growth sentiment reaches a two-year ...

When a salesperson on the team is underperforming, coaching is often prescribed as the answer. Schedule joint sales call...

Most sales managers were great salespeople before they were promoted. That's usually why they got the job. And in many c...

GTM investment is up. Growth is down. And the most common intervention, replacing the chief revenue officer, is not chan...

Most GTM teams believe they are implementing AI. The results suggest they are not. Adoption is high, and activity is inc...

AI is Now Your Newest Teammate: The 'Agentic Journey' in Customer Success We recently returned from the Pulse conference...

Discounting is expensive, yet in many sales transactions today it’s still the norm. All too often, salespeople give disc...

Revenue Reporters or Revenue Leaders? How High-Impact Sales Managers Build a Revenue Operating System Most sales manager...

For two decades, SaaS growth followed a predictable sequence. Customer acquisition drove internal headcount, and that hi...

Go-to-market AI strategies are largely failing to produce tangible financial results. Currently, only 18% of sales organ...

Revenue Operations leaders are navigating a rapidly shifting landscape in 2026. Artificial intelligence adoption is acce...

Bigger TAM, Worse Results: The Coverage Trap Killing Revenue Growth On paper, things looked promising. A billion-dollar ...

3 Ways Revenue Outperformers Are Accelerating in the Turns Professional drivers understand that winning happens in the c...

The Sales Manager’s Dilemma Imagine this: it’s the last week of the quarter, and you’re staring at a revenue gap that wa...

The Enablement Execution Gap Companies invest millions in sales teams, technology, and processes; enablement serves as t...

Sales organizations constantly look for ways to scale success, and the frontline manager serves as the ultimate force mu...

Operationalizing AI for Faster Onboarding and Better Coaching Sales organizations face a critical moment with artificial...

Source: SBI Growth Advisory (2026), The Great Unbundling: Why Your NRR Is Declining Even as Customers Extract More Value...

When we brought together enablement leaders for SBI’s Q1 2026 Enablement Growth Forum, a familiar pattern showed up with...

B2B revenue teams still over-rotate on the sale and under-invest in what happens next. We celebrate the "hunter," alloca...

Sales professionals often view procurement as the place where deals go to die. We see them as margin killers. We see the...

If you're relying on satisfaction scores to guide your NRR investments, you're building on quicksand. Here's why: 84% of...

Scroll through LinkedIn. Try to find five posts that do not mention artificial intelligence (AI). You cannot do it. The ...

The market has undergone a fundamental shift. We have moved from a world that prioritized revenue growth above all else ...

Most sales leaders would never put an untrained pilot in a cockpit. However, every day, organizations allow new sellers ...

$350B worth of 2025 technology acquisitions will fail – highlighting a practical guide to harmonizing your post-M&A ...

Selling really is more complex than it used to be. Buying groups are bigger. Risk is higher. Priorities change weekly. I...

The beginning of the year carries more weight in PE-backed companies than most teams acknowledge. The plan is finalized....

As a sales manager, you have a limited amount bandwidth to go on joint sales calls with your sales reps. While going on ...

Industry Context The healthcare IT sector faces mounting pressure from regulatory changes, digital transformation demand...

Frontline managers are the leverage point of every sales organization. Yet, we continue to bury them in administrative d...

There is a pervasive, dangerous myth in B2B sales: the legend of the "Born Negotiator." This is the "Closer" who swoops ...

There is a misconception about "unglamorous" industries. People look at a company like Restaurant Technologies (RTI). Th...

If Q4 2025 taught us anything, it is that the middle ground is collapsing. Across the four major research studies that S...

Despite aggressive commercial spending, growth is slowing across the board. Revenue growth has contracted from 22% in 20...

When you put a group of enablement leaders from companies like Red Hat, Salesforce, IBM, Cato Networks, DocuSign, and Sp...

Industry Context The restaurant services industry operates on route-based distribution models where profitability depend...

95% of AI pilots fail to produce any measurable P&L impact. That finding from MIT's July report should concern every...

Most teams have AI tools, but without enablement stepping in to guide how reps actually use them, seller productivity wo...

Stagnant Growth Year-over-year growth in new patient acquisition had plateaued for this healthcare services company. The...

Pricing has become an increasingly prevalent topic among our clients and one of the highest-priority items for operators...

As we wrapped our final RevOps Leader Roundtable of 2025, one thing was clear: the pressure on revenue teams isn’t going...

Industry Context The telecommunications industry faces mounting pressure to modernize legacy infrastructure while accele...

In private equity, you win or lose based on what you know before you sign. The difference between a home run and a write...

Industry Context Energy software firms are under pressure to pivot from perpetual licenses to ARR-driven models. Boards ...

Most CMOs still measure success by pipeline, leads, and brand reach. That worked when budgets were growing and new logo ...

At this year’s ATD SELL 2025 conference, one message came through loud and clear: the imperative to move beyond training...

The Crisis: You're Always Too Late Most companies discover customer problems when it's already too late to fix them. The...

The Personalization Paradox Every CSM knows personalized engagement drives better outcomes. Customers who receive releva...

The Scaling Paradox Your revenue target just doubled. Your CEO wants to know: how many more reps do we need? Most sales ...

Industry Context Global GTM transformations are notoriously difficult. Centralized rollouts often create bottlenecks tha...

A strong Value Creation Plan (VCP) provides the strategic blueprint for the entire hold period. It identifies the most i...

The Surface vs. Reality Problem Management presents a growth story: "Strong pipeline. High win rates. Happy customers." ...

As a CFO, you're tasked with doing what most SaaS leaders are struggling to achieve in 2025: Deliver growth. Improve eff...

When your market is mature and hypercompetitive, standing still is the fastest way to fall behind. I recently spoke with...

Every Monday morning, the same ritual: your CRO asks if you'll hit the quarter. You look at your pipeline, run the math,...

Industry Context Enterprise software firms racing to subscription models often stumble on execution. Rapid acquisitions ...

Markets are volatile, tariffs unpredictable, and boardrooms louder than ever about one thing: proof of productivity. For...

Your sales team is busy. CRM logs show calls, emails, meetings. Activity dashboards are green. So why aren't you hitting...

Our observations of market conditions ahead paint a stark picture for commercial leaders: profitable growth is increasin...

Every CRO I know is chasing the same goal: a forecast they can trust. Quarter after quarter, even strong sales teams fin...

Every sales leader faces the same brutal reality: your team spends too much time on leads that won't close, while high-v...

Every sales and marketing leader faces the same paradox: you have more data about your prospects than ever before, yet y...

With the right information and strategic bets in place, leaders prime their organizations for revenue excellence. But ev...

Effective annual planning often makes the difference between achieving your growth goals and falling behind the competit...

Every year, thousands of companies spend millions of dollars on sales kickoff (SKO) events and concentrate on talking at...

The Problem: Vanity Metrics Marketing teams track thousands of metrics but struggle to prove business impact. Your CMO r...

The Problem: Marketing Waste B2B marketers waste up to 60% of their budget on audiences that will never convert. Traditi...

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) has become a key challenge for SaaS growth. Since Q1 2023, average NRR has dipped from 110% ...

The Pricing Balancing Act Most pricing strategies fail because they over-optimize for one dimension. Price too high for ...

A Disciplined Start Defines the Trajectory The first 100 days set the pace for the entire hold period. PE sponsors and C...

The $18M Mistake A PE firm acquired a SaaS company for $85M based on strong revenue growth and solid EBITDA margins. Fin...

The Portfolio Paradox A mid-market PE firm had eight B2B software portfolio companies. All had strong products. All stru...

In complex B2B sales, MEDDPICC has become the gold standard for opportunity inspection. It’s a powerful tool that helps ...

Recent economic pressures have begun to stabilize, yet most mid-market companies are still struggling to achieve growth....

When we brought together enablement leaders for SBI's Q3 Enablement Growth Forum, one theme rang loud and clear: the old...

If you’re stepping into a new commercial leadership role, you’re not being given time to learn the business. The expecta...

SBI’s latest CEO Value Creation Pulse: Correcting and Avoiding Future Planning Miscues reveals a sharp divide between co...

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is under pressure across the board. In SBI’s latest analysis of more than 150 B2B companies,...

Being a sales manager is tough. They face unique challenges like hitting revenue targets, managing a diverse team, navig...

Despite new research and tools, pricing remains one of the most underutilized levers for sustainable revenue growth. Man...

For most leadership teams, annual planning begins later than it should. The best planning processes take several months,...

Effectively managing the progression of opportunities and accurately predicting future sales performance is critical for...

What is more likely to accelerate SaaS growth in 2025: pricing data or gut instinct? SaaS companies that follow data-led...

In early June, SBI hosted three high-impact Sales Enablement workshops, one in San Francisco hosted by Laurel Tanner and...

The latest episode of The Sales Readiness Podcast features a high-energy conversation between Ray Makela, Managing Direc...

Frontline sales managers play a critical role in translating corporate strategy into field execution. Yet, despite their...

Even before the April 2025 tariff announcement and other recent shifts that have amplified economic uncertainty, CEOs we...

Lacking clarity on what investments are working and what aren't, is an issue. Across boardrooms and investor updates, th...

Every leadership team says they want sustained, profitable growth, yet very few achieve it. Even fewer understand why th...

In this episode of The Sales Readiness Podcast, Ray Makela, Managing Director of Talent Development at SBI, is joined ag...

AI is moving fast—faster than most sales teams are ready for. Tools that summarize calls, write emails and surface insig...

SBI’s May 2025 edition of the CEO Value Creation Pulse Report reflects a shift in how CEOs are responding to a more comp...

AI is now central to your SaaS product strategy, even if you’re not an AI-first company. From analytics and automation t...

Customer Success (CS) has long been misunderstood as a reactive support function. But as Annie Stefano and Ray Makela di...

Sales managers are at the center of sales execution, yet too often, they are expected to lead without being led. Recent ...

At SBI’s 2025 Spring Regional Summit, a select group of revenue operations leaders gathered for a focused Growth Forum h...

Enablement leaders agree: if you want to improve frontline performance, you need to start with the people leading the fr...

On the latest episode of the Sales Readiness Podcast, Ray Makela, Managing Director of Talent Development, was joined by...

Think having an internal pricing function makes you stand out? Think again. In 2025, 98% of SaaS companies designate res...

Managing a high-performance sales team can be challenging. One of the main challenges is that the job requires sales man...

If you follow professional football, then you know that Shedeur Sanders was the big story of the 2025 NFL draft. For you...

Sales organizations are investing heavily in sales training, yet the results tell a concerning story. Between 2021 and 2...

At both the World50 Connect and Recognize CEO Innovation Network events, artificial intelligence and tariffs were the do...

Two themes, both riddled with uncertainty, dominated the conversations at the World50 Connect and Recognize CEO Innovati...

Sales manager training is widely recognized as a key performance driver, yet many companies fail to invest in and delive...

As companies prepare for the second half of 2025, growth-minded leaders are facing a commercial landscape dominated by r...

67% of SaaS companies ignore value-based pricing, according to our latest 2024 State of SaaS report and research. They i...

A foundational yet often overlooked element of successful selling is relationship building and rapport. In the latest ep...

Modern sales organizations are more complex than ever. Teams are dispersed over states or countries, buying motions are ...

One of the biggest challenges for a sales organization is moving upmarket. For example, if you target the small- and med...

Cliff Simon, CRO of Carabiner Group, a part of SBI, represented SBI at ChiliPalooza, a dynamic, workshop-driven conferen...

If you’re not pricing correctly, you’re driving customers away. In an uncertain economy, your pricing strategy has a gre...

Sales enablement has boomed. The State of Sales Enablement Report for 2023 found that the number of businesses with a de...

The path to leadership is more than climbing the corporate ladder. True leadership comes with overcoming obstacles, crea...

Companies selling into a complex B2B sales environment are shifting away from traditional, stage-based forecasting model...

Historically, CEOs have treated enablement as a tactical function and support system for sellers rather than a strategic...

What is the most impactful yet underutilized growth lever for SaaS companies? Pricing. Research shows that every 1% incr...