Anthony Nicks

Fractional Sales Management with VP of Sales coaching a small B2B sales team during a deal review

Fractional Sales Management for SMBs | B2B Growth Engine

Why Fractional Sales Management Is the Smart Move for SMBs Selling B2B Most small and mid-sized businesses do not fail because their product is weak. They stall because sales leadership is part-time, reactive, or missing. If you are the owner or CEO, you already carry finance, operations, hiring, and customer issues. When sales lacks focused […]

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sales coaching session reviewing pipeline on whiteboard

Why Even Top Reps Need Sales Coaching And Mentors

Here’s the truth, elite performance doesn’t happen without coaching. Not in the NFL, not on the PGA Tour, and not in your sales team. Even your best producers need sales coaching and mentoring if you want repeatable, scalable growth. This article lays out why, how, and what to implement next The pro-sports reality: champions are

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Gordon Ramsay in Hell’s Kitchen compared to a sales manager leading a sales team meeting to illustrate sales team management parallels.

Hell’s Kitchen and the Reality of Sales Team Management

Eight years ago, I started cooking as a hobby. Like many, I gravitated toward Gordon Ramsay. He wasn’t just a chef; he was a force of nature. Watching Hell’s Kitchen drew me in because it wasn’t only about food, it was about leadership under pressure. Over time, I realized the parallels between a high-stakes kitchen

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R-style lead triage hero image showing Red, Yellow, and Green columns with sample lead cards and response-time standards, visualizing how leads are qualified, routed, and followed up quickly in a simple lead triage framework.

ER-Style Lead Triage: A Simple Lead Triage Framework That Saves Time

If everything is “hot,” nothing is. That’s the problem inside most SMB sales teams: reps chase noise, managers triage by gut feel, and the forecast bloats with activity that will never convert. Lead triage fixes that. Try this ER playbook, fast intake, clear severity, hard response times and you’ll protect your attention for the leads

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Sales onboarding training session for new sales hires

Sales Onboarding: Best Practices for SMB Growth

Why sales onboarding makes or breaks revenue A great salesperson dropped into a weak onboarding program will underperform. A strong onboarding process can turn an average hire into a reliable producer. Onboarding is not a one-week orientation. It’s a structured ramp from zero to independent performance, with clear milestones, coaching, and accountability. In SMBs, where

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Fractional Sales Manager guiding SMB CRM adoption strategy

CRM Adoption: Turning your CRM from a chore into a growth engine

What a CRM really is (and what it isn’t) A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is the operating system for your revenue team. At its best, it centralizes contacts, accounts, activities, opportunities, and forecasts so leadership can see the truth, managers can coach, and reps can sell with focus. At its worst, it’s a bloated

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Sales manager using sales pipeline management review techniques

Sales Pipeline Management: The SMB growth lever most leaders underuse

What sales pipeline management actually means Sales pipeline management is the discipline of how opportunities move from first contact to closed revenue. It is not just a list of deals. It is a system that defines the stages, the exit criteria for each stage, who owns what at each step, and how progress is measured,

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3D chessboard illustrating sales strategy with multiple layers

Why Sales Is Like 3D Chess: A Sales Strategy for Winning Complex Deals

Most people treat sales like checkers: move fast, grab a few pieces, celebrate the easy wins. Reality checks that fantasy. Modern B2B sales lives on multiple levels at once. You’re navigating buyers with competing priorities, internal politics, and competitors who never stop probing. If you want consistent results, you need a 3D chess sales strategy

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Sales manager reviewing sales compensation plans with team to align incentives and drive revenue growth.

Sales Compensation Plans That Actually Drive Performance

Why Sales Compensation Plans Fail Most business owners assume that throwing more bonus money at salespeople will fix underperformance. It doesn’t. A sales compensation plan only works if it aligns with outcomes that matter to the business, profitable, predictable growth. If your plan doesn’t drive the right behavior, it’s not a plan. It’s a liability.

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CEO reviewing a simple sales leadership dashboard with pipeline stages and KPIs

Why Sales Leadership, Not Just Salespeople, Determines SMB Growth

Why Sales Leadership, Not Just Salespeople, Determines SMB Growth Here is the uncomfortable truth for many small and mid-sized businesses. Revenue stalls are usually not a rep problem. They are a sales leadership and system problem. If your pipeline is thin, sales cycles are dragging, and forecasts keep missing, hiring another “rockstar” rep will not

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