Mike Schultz's Blog

A sales kickoff (SKO) is an event, often held at the start of a fiscal year or quarter, during which an organization shares goals and strategy for the upcoming year and motivates their sales teams. During the event, sellers might receive training on new skills, tools, or products and services.

When sales performance is under pressure, many organizations look first to pipeline. Are there enough qualified opportunities? Is there enough coverage? Is there enough activity to support the number?

That focus is often warranted. Without enough qualified opportunities, growth becomes difficult. Pipeline matters. It always has.

But the data suggests there’s more to the story.

Sales organizations spend millions enabling their sellers. They train them on methodology, messaging, playbooks, tools, and frameworks designed to improve how they engage buyers.

Organizations often assume that once sellers are trained, better execution will follow. Often, it doesn't. The issue usually isn’t the training itself. It’s what happens after training—whether managers reinforce it, coach to it, and help sellers apply it in the field

Ever find yourself in a promising sales conversation that stalls the moment budget comes up? Or bogged down by a pipeline full of leads that never seem to close? More often than not, the culprit isn't your pitch itself, but your sales lead qualification process.

A methodical approach to determining early on if a prospect is worth pursuing conserves time and energy for deals you can win. Traditionally, the BANT framework has often been considered the gold standard for a well-structured qualification process.

But in today's rapidly evolving marketplace, where B2B buyers are constantly bombarded by new offerings, many sellers are finding that BANT lacks the flexibility and nuance to consistently identify their best opportunities. In conditions like these, a newer approach to qualification, FAINT, can help fill these gaps.

This article covers what effective lead qualification really means, the frameworks that make it work, and how to build a process that puts the right leads in front of your team.

Buyers today are more skeptical than ever.

That skepticism doesn’t just make selling harder. It frequently leads to stalled deals and “no decision” outcomes.

When buyers don’t feel confident they can justify a decision, defend it internally, and deliver results, they often choose to do nothing.

Sales transformation used to be episodic. You’d roll something out, stabilize, and move on.

That’s not today’s reality.

Many revenue organizations are working in permanent beta with new processes, plays, tools, and messaging stacked on top of org shifts and changing market conditions—while everyone is still expected to hit the number.

Gartner’s research captures the strain: only 11% of sales organizations drive commercial success while executing a transformation, and most sellers report feeling overwhelmed by the skills and technology required to do their job.

Your biggest growth opportunities are often hiding in plain sight within the accounts you already serve. The key to unlocking them isn’t selling harder—it’s collaborating better.

External Value Labs are structured, client-facing sessions where you and your buyers work together to identify new ways to create value. They move beyond presenting ideas to co-creating them, turning collaboration into tangible progress clients want to own.

In complex deals today, you’re selling into a moving system of stakeholders, not a single buyer. Buying groups are expanding while executive and stakeholder turnover rises. Major decisions often involve double-digit stakeholders across functions, regions, and levels. Unfortunately, many commercial models still behave as if one champion is enough.

Most teams serve their accounts’ known needs well enough, but few set aside structured time to co-create new value for these clients. That’s where Value Labs come in. In a focused, facilitated session (internal, or with account stakeholders), your team clarifies a growth challenge, explores what will make or break success, generates bold ideas, and commits to an action plan with owners and dates. The results are stronger relationships, bigger deals, and faster expansion inside current accounts. 

If you’re like most CSOs I talk to, too much of your revenue is coming from too few places. Revenue concentration risk (depending too heavily on a small set of customers, products, or markets) is a serious issue.

Gartner’s Chief Sales Officer Quarterly (3Q25) highlights just how vulnerable many organizations are when a disproportionate share of growth comes from few sources. What looks like focus on paper often turns into concentration risk in real life.