Joe Collins's Blog
November 12, 2025
How to Use This Book: A Guide for Sales Leaders
Let's be honest about why you picked up The Revenue Locks. You're losing three out of four qualified deals, and it's killing you. Not just your quota, but your credibility. Every board meeting, every forecast review, every pipeline discussion ends with the same question: "Why aren't we winning more?"
In my first article, I explained why I wrote this book: to solve the 75% problem plaguing B2B sales. In the second article, I broke down the Four Locks that engage in every buyer's brain before logic even kicks in.
Now here's what actually matters: using this framework as a diagnostic tool on Monday morning.
Because here's the truth I've learned from 11+ years of consulting: most revenue leaders read books, get inspired, then go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. The 75% problem stays at 75%.
What actually changes outcomes? Looking at your current pipeline right now and asking the hard questions.
Diagnosing Locks in Real Deals
Pick your three most important deals. For each one, ask yourself: Which locks are engaged?
Not "what do we need to prove" but "what's the buyer defending against?" If you can't answer that with specificity, you're already losing.
That deal you think is stuck in legal? It's not. The Urgency Lock is engaged because no one connected the pain to a real deadline—what I call the Three Clocks in the book.
That "sure thing" that went dark last quarter? The Impact Lock never opened because your proof was about someone else's victory, not theirs.
The RFP where you're the incumbent but somehow at risk? The Difference Lock slammed shut because you started sounding like everyone else. Your language drifted into what I call the commodity zones.
Every stalled deal, every "no decision," every loss to an inferior competitor comes down to a lock that stayed engaged. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
How to Coach Your Team
This book works best as a coaching framework, not a training event. Here's how the best revenue leaders I've worked with use it:
1. Start with one deal per rep
Don't try to fix the entire pipeline at once. Pick one critical opportunity. One where you're already in motion but something feels off.
2. Map the locks
Which lock is engaged? Use the frameworks in the book—the Blue Diamond (Chapter 6), the Unicorn Test (Chapter 3), the Three Clocks (Chapter 5)—as diagnostic tools. What's actually happening in the buyer's brain?
3. Stop pushing on locked doors
Most sellers, when they sense resistance, push harder. More meetings. More proof. More pressure. This makes the locks tighter. Instead, step back and identify which key you need.
4. Practice the transitions
The most critical moments are the transitions: from the Blue Diamond to your Green Diamond (where only you can win), from generic proof to relevant proof, from your timeline to their Three Clocks. These transitions require different language than what your team is currently using.
At ACES Growth, we help clients identify exactly which phrases trigger locks and what to say instead. Our Noise Report shows them which language they think is differentiating but actually shows up as 80-90% common across their competitive set. Knowing this problematic language—and more importantly, what to say instead—is the difference between locks that stay engaged and locks that open.
The Opportunity Hidden in Crisis
I started this series with a harsh truth: accepting a 75% failure rate as normal isn't normal, it's a crisis.
But here's the opportunity: if everyone is losing 75% of their deals, what happens when you start winning just half? Your win rate goes from 25% to 50%. You double your revenue without adding a single rep, without spending more on leads, without begging for budget.
That's not a marginal improvement. It's a transformation.
Your Next Step
The executives who win with this framework don't treat it as interesting reading. They use it as a diagnostic tool. They teach their managers to spot locked doors before it's too late. They stop fighting the buyer's brain and start working with it.
Your buyers' brains are running a defense system that evolution spent millions of years perfecting. You can keep fighting it with features and discounts, or you can understand it and work with it.
The locks are real. They're engaged right now in every deal in your pipeline. The only question is whether you'll keep pushing on locked doors or start using the right keys.
Want to go deeper? Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit acesgrowth.com. Whether you've got questions, insights, or want to share what you're seeing in your own pipeline, I'd love to hear from you.
Joe Collins is the founder of ACES Growth and author of The Revenue Locks. His firm helps B2B companies diagnose and unlock the psychological barriers preventing buyers from choosing them in must-win deals.
In my first article, I explained why I wrote this book: to solve the 75% problem plaguing B2B sales. In the second article, I broke down the Four Locks that engage in every buyer's brain before logic even kicks in.
Now here's what actually matters: using this framework as a diagnostic tool on Monday morning.
Because here's the truth I've learned from 11+ years of consulting: most revenue leaders read books, get inspired, then go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. The 75% problem stays at 75%.
What actually changes outcomes? Looking at your current pipeline right now and asking the hard questions.
Diagnosing Locks in Real Deals
Pick your three most important deals. For each one, ask yourself: Which locks are engaged?
Not "what do we need to prove" but "what's the buyer defending against?" If you can't answer that with specificity, you're already losing.
That deal you think is stuck in legal? It's not. The Urgency Lock is engaged because no one connected the pain to a real deadline—what I call the Three Clocks in the book.
That "sure thing" that went dark last quarter? The Impact Lock never opened because your proof was about someone else's victory, not theirs.
The RFP where you're the incumbent but somehow at risk? The Difference Lock slammed shut because you started sounding like everyone else. Your language drifted into what I call the commodity zones.
Every stalled deal, every "no decision," every loss to an inferior competitor comes down to a lock that stayed engaged. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
How to Coach Your Team
This book works best as a coaching framework, not a training event. Here's how the best revenue leaders I've worked with use it:
1. Start with one deal per rep
Don't try to fix the entire pipeline at once. Pick one critical opportunity. One where you're already in motion but something feels off.
2. Map the locks
Which lock is engaged? Use the frameworks in the book—the Blue Diamond (Chapter 6), the Unicorn Test (Chapter 3), the Three Clocks (Chapter 5)—as diagnostic tools. What's actually happening in the buyer's brain?
3. Stop pushing on locked doors
Most sellers, when they sense resistance, push harder. More meetings. More proof. More pressure. This makes the locks tighter. Instead, step back and identify which key you need.
4. Practice the transitions
The most critical moments are the transitions: from the Blue Diamond to your Green Diamond (where only you can win), from generic proof to relevant proof, from your timeline to their Three Clocks. These transitions require different language than what your team is currently using.
At ACES Growth, we help clients identify exactly which phrases trigger locks and what to say instead. Our Noise Report shows them which language they think is differentiating but actually shows up as 80-90% common across their competitive set. Knowing this problematic language—and more importantly, what to say instead—is the difference between locks that stay engaged and locks that open.
The Opportunity Hidden in Crisis
I started this series with a harsh truth: accepting a 75% failure rate as normal isn't normal, it's a crisis.
But here's the opportunity: if everyone is losing 75% of their deals, what happens when you start winning just half? Your win rate goes from 25% to 50%. You double your revenue without adding a single rep, without spending more on leads, without begging for budget.
That's not a marginal improvement. It's a transformation.
Your Next Step
The executives who win with this framework don't treat it as interesting reading. They use it as a diagnostic tool. They teach their managers to spot locked doors before it's too late. They stop fighting the buyer's brain and start working with it.
Your buyers' brains are running a defense system that evolution spent millions of years perfecting. You can keep fighting it with features and discounts, or you can understand it and work with it.
The locks are real. They're engaged right now in every deal in your pipeline. The only question is whether you'll keep pushing on locked doors or start using the right keys.
Want to go deeper? Connect with me on LinkedIn or visit acesgrowth.com. Whether you've got questions, insights, or want to share what you're seeing in your own pipeline, I'd love to hear from you.
Joe Collins is the founder of ACES Growth and author of The Revenue Locks. His firm helps B2B companies diagnose and unlock the psychological barriers preventing buyers from choosing them in must-win deals.
The Four Psychological Barriers That Cost You Must-Win Deals
In my previous article, I shared why I wrote The Revenue Locks: to solve the 75% problem that plagues B2B sales. Now let's dive into what these locks actually are and why they're so devastatingly effective at killing your deals.
Here's what you need to understand first: buyer trust is inherently low. Buyers know salespeople are paid to sell. They've seen discounts that "expire" and then reappear. They've lived through solutions that overpromised and underdelivered. Each experience hardens their skepticism. Over time, buyers become almost trained to spot patterns and bucket sellers before the meeting is even over.
This low baseline of trust is the invisible current running through every lock. If you don't acknowledge it and work with it, the locks only tighten.
The Relevance Lock
This lock engages in the first five minutes when sellers dive straight into their pitch. You want to be efficient, cut to the chase, get to business: "Let me tell you how we solve inventory management problems."
But here's the trap: you're not the only one who can solve inventory problems. Every competitor can work here too. When you dive straight to your solution, the buyer thinks "Oh, here's another typical seller rushing right into the pitch."
The Relevance Lock opens when you start in the buyer's complete world, what I call the Blue Diamond. Their competitive pressures. The board demanding growth while cutting budgets. The team pushing back on changes. The career ambitions they don't share with vendors. That's where buyers actually live.
Starting here surprises buyers in the best way. You're immediately different from "most sellers" because you're talking about their actual world, not your product. You're earning the right to eventually pitch.
The Impact Lock
This lock stays closed because of what I call the Proof Paradox. Buyers are simultaneously dreamers (wanting to believe your solution will work) and defenders (protecting themselves from making another expensive mistake).
When you share generic ROI calculations or case studies about other companies, you trigger the Unicorn Bias: "That's not us. Our situation is different." The Impact Lock tightens.
It opens when your proof connects to their specific situation. Not "companies like yours saved 20%" but "given your Latin America expansion timeline and these new tariffs you mentioned, here's what happens if you delay six months versus starting now."
The difference between generic proof and relevant proof is the difference between an open door and a locked one.
The Difference Lock
Here's where most differentiation strategies fail. What I call "Potato Chip Differentiation"—crunchier, saltier, more flavorful—doesn't actually differentiate anything when every competitor uses the same language.
At ACES Growth, one of our most valuable tools is the Noise Report. It analyzes your language and identifies which phrases you use that your competitors also use. The results usually shock clients: language they thought was differentiating shows up as 80% or 90% common across their competitive set.
Real differentiation lives in what I call Victory Verbs: the specific, measurable outcomes only you can deliver because of how you do what you do. Not features. Not benefits. Victories that matter to this specific buyer.
The Difference Lock opens when you can articulate outcomes that competitors genuinely cannot deliver, using language they genuinely don't use.
The Urgency Lock
This is the most misunderstood lock. Most sellers think urgency means "act now before this offer expires"—what I call Infomercial Urgency. But buyers see through this immediately, and it actually increases their skepticism.
Real urgency isn't about your timeline. It's about theirs. What I call the Three Clocks: the internal deadline (the project they committed to), the competitive deadline (what their competitor is doing that they're not), and the opportunity deadline (the revenue window that's closing).
The Urgency Lock opens when you connect your solution to one of these real clocks that's already ticking in the buyer's world. Not manufactured scarcity. Real consequences of delay.
Why These Locks Win
These locks exist because evolution spent millions of years perfecting the brain's defense system. Buyers aren't being difficult. They're being human. Their brains are designed to protect them from bad decisions.
The problem is that traditional sales techniques fight against these locks instead of working with them. More aggressive pitching. Harder pushes on objections. Discount pressure. All of this makes the locks tighter.
The executives who win with this framework stop fighting the locks. They understand that the buyer's brain isn't the enemy—it's the terrain. Once you understand the terrain, you can navigate it.
In my next article, I'll show you exactly how to use The Revenue Locks as a diagnostic tool on real deals in your pipeline. How to spot which locks are engaged before it's too late. How to coach your team to open locks instead of triggering them.
Because knowing the locks isn't enough. You need to know how to actually open them.
Joe Collins is the founder of ACES Growth and author of The Revenue Locks. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit acesgrowth.com.
Here's what you need to understand first: buyer trust is inherently low. Buyers know salespeople are paid to sell. They've seen discounts that "expire" and then reappear. They've lived through solutions that overpromised and underdelivered. Each experience hardens their skepticism. Over time, buyers become almost trained to spot patterns and bucket sellers before the meeting is even over.
This low baseline of trust is the invisible current running through every lock. If you don't acknowledge it and work with it, the locks only tighten.
The Relevance Lock
This lock engages in the first five minutes when sellers dive straight into their pitch. You want to be efficient, cut to the chase, get to business: "Let me tell you how we solve inventory management problems."
But here's the trap: you're not the only one who can solve inventory problems. Every competitor can work here too. When you dive straight to your solution, the buyer thinks "Oh, here's another typical seller rushing right into the pitch."
The Relevance Lock opens when you start in the buyer's complete world, what I call the Blue Diamond. Their competitive pressures. The board demanding growth while cutting budgets. The team pushing back on changes. The career ambitions they don't share with vendors. That's where buyers actually live.
Starting here surprises buyers in the best way. You're immediately different from "most sellers" because you're talking about their actual world, not your product. You're earning the right to eventually pitch.
The Impact Lock
This lock stays closed because of what I call the Proof Paradox. Buyers are simultaneously dreamers (wanting to believe your solution will work) and defenders (protecting themselves from making another expensive mistake).
When you share generic ROI calculations or case studies about other companies, you trigger the Unicorn Bias: "That's not us. Our situation is different." The Impact Lock tightens.
It opens when your proof connects to their specific situation. Not "companies like yours saved 20%" but "given your Latin America expansion timeline and these new tariffs you mentioned, here's what happens if you delay six months versus starting now."
The difference between generic proof and relevant proof is the difference between an open door and a locked one.
The Difference Lock
Here's where most differentiation strategies fail. What I call "Potato Chip Differentiation"—crunchier, saltier, more flavorful—doesn't actually differentiate anything when every competitor uses the same language.
At ACES Growth, one of our most valuable tools is the Noise Report. It analyzes your language and identifies which phrases you use that your competitors also use. The results usually shock clients: language they thought was differentiating shows up as 80% or 90% common across their competitive set.
Real differentiation lives in what I call Victory Verbs: the specific, measurable outcomes only you can deliver because of how you do what you do. Not features. Not benefits. Victories that matter to this specific buyer.
The Difference Lock opens when you can articulate outcomes that competitors genuinely cannot deliver, using language they genuinely don't use.
The Urgency Lock
This is the most misunderstood lock. Most sellers think urgency means "act now before this offer expires"—what I call Infomercial Urgency. But buyers see through this immediately, and it actually increases their skepticism.
Real urgency isn't about your timeline. It's about theirs. What I call the Three Clocks: the internal deadline (the project they committed to), the competitive deadline (what their competitor is doing that they're not), and the opportunity deadline (the revenue window that's closing).
The Urgency Lock opens when you connect your solution to one of these real clocks that's already ticking in the buyer's world. Not manufactured scarcity. Real consequences of delay.
Why These Locks Win
These locks exist because evolution spent millions of years perfecting the brain's defense system. Buyers aren't being difficult. They're being human. Their brains are designed to protect them from bad decisions.
The problem is that traditional sales techniques fight against these locks instead of working with them. More aggressive pitching. Harder pushes on objections. Discount pressure. All of this makes the locks tighter.
The executives who win with this framework stop fighting the locks. They understand that the buyer's brain isn't the enemy—it's the terrain. Once you understand the terrain, you can navigate it.
In my next article, I'll show you exactly how to use The Revenue Locks as a diagnostic tool on real deals in your pipeline. How to spot which locks are engaged before it's too late. How to coach your team to open locks instead of triggering them.
Because knowing the locks isn't enough. You need to know how to actually open them.
Joe Collins is the founder of ACES Growth and author of The Revenue Locks. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit acesgrowth.com.
Why I Wrote The Revenue Locks
I spent years reading academic research on how the brain makes decisions. My background is in psychology, and I've spent three decades studying decision-making and persuasion. But when I turned to sales books for practical application, I kept hitting the same wall: they felt shallow. Powerful principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience were being stripped of their nuance, reduced to catchy acronyms and oversimplified techniques that fell apart in complex B2B deals.
This disconnect between theory and reality wasn't just frustrating. It was costing companies millions.
For 11+ years as a consultant at Corporate Visions, I had a front-row seat to this problem. I trained 14,000+ sellers across six continents, worked with 250+ companies including 30+ Fortune 500 organizations, and watched the same pattern repeat across every industry: revenue leaders were trying everything (new methodologies, better tools, more training), yet win rates stayed stubbornly stuck around 25%.
Three out of four qualified deals were disappearing to competitors, no decision, or DIY solutions.
If this were any other part of the business (manufacturing, finance, operations), a 75% failure rate would spark an immediate crisis. But in sales, we're told to accept it as normal.
It isn't normal. It's a systemic problem.
The answer wasn't another sales process. After analyzing hundreds of deals, I found something deeper: invisible defense mechanisms in the buyer's brain that kill 75% of deals before logic even kicks in. I call them the Four Locks.
The Relevance Lock engages when sellers dive straight into their pitch instead of starting in the buyer's complete world. The Impact Lock stays closed when proof feels like someone else's victory, not theirs. The Difference Lock slams shut when sellers drift into generic language that sounds like every other vendor. The Urgency Lock remains engaged when no one connects the pain to a real deadline.
Every buyer has these locks. Every seller on your team triggers them. And until you understand how to remove them instead of fighting against them, you'll keep losing three out of four deals.
After leaving Corporate Visions in 2024, I founded ACES Growth to help B2B companies break through these psychological barriers. The Revenue Locks framework synthesizes what I learned from coaching hundreds of deals over nearly two decades, rooted in brain science and buyer psychology rather than seller tactics.
This book is that framework, stripped of consulting jargon and corporate fluff. It's a diagnostic tool for revenue leaders who are tired of accepting 75% failure rates as "just how sales works."
In my next article, I'll break down exactly what each of these Four Locks actually is and why traditional sales approaches make them stronger instead of opening them. And in the third piece, I'll show you how to use this book as a coaching framework to diagnose real deals in your pipeline right now.
The locks are real. They're engaged in every deal your team is working today. The only question is whether you'll keep pushing on locked doors or start using the right keys.
Joe Collins is the founder of ACES Growth and author of The Revenue Locks. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit acesgrowth.com.
This disconnect between theory and reality wasn't just frustrating. It was costing companies millions.
For 11+ years as a consultant at Corporate Visions, I had a front-row seat to this problem. I trained 14,000+ sellers across six continents, worked with 250+ companies including 30+ Fortune 500 organizations, and watched the same pattern repeat across every industry: revenue leaders were trying everything (new methodologies, better tools, more training), yet win rates stayed stubbornly stuck around 25%.
Three out of four qualified deals were disappearing to competitors, no decision, or DIY solutions.
If this were any other part of the business (manufacturing, finance, operations), a 75% failure rate would spark an immediate crisis. But in sales, we're told to accept it as normal.
It isn't normal. It's a systemic problem.
The answer wasn't another sales process. After analyzing hundreds of deals, I found something deeper: invisible defense mechanisms in the buyer's brain that kill 75% of deals before logic even kicks in. I call them the Four Locks.
The Relevance Lock engages when sellers dive straight into their pitch instead of starting in the buyer's complete world. The Impact Lock stays closed when proof feels like someone else's victory, not theirs. The Difference Lock slams shut when sellers drift into generic language that sounds like every other vendor. The Urgency Lock remains engaged when no one connects the pain to a real deadline.
Every buyer has these locks. Every seller on your team triggers them. And until you understand how to remove them instead of fighting against them, you'll keep losing three out of four deals.
After leaving Corporate Visions in 2024, I founded ACES Growth to help B2B companies break through these psychological barriers. The Revenue Locks framework synthesizes what I learned from coaching hundreds of deals over nearly two decades, rooted in brain science and buyer psychology rather than seller tactics.
This book is that framework, stripped of consulting jargon and corporate fluff. It's a diagnostic tool for revenue leaders who are tired of accepting 75% failure rates as "just how sales works."
In my next article, I'll break down exactly what each of these Four Locks actually is and why traditional sales approaches make them stronger instead of opening them. And in the third piece, I'll show you how to use this book as a coaching framework to diagnose real deals in your pipeline right now.
The locks are real. They're engaged in every deal your team is working today. The only question is whether you'll keep pushing on locked doors or start using the right keys.
Joe Collins is the founder of ACES Growth and author of The Revenue Locks. Connect with him on LinkedIn or visit acesgrowth.com.
