Author: stevek

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

One of the least discussed problems facing experienced business owners isn’t cash flow, staffing or productivity. It’s leadership fatigue.

After years of making decisions, solving problems and carrying responsibility, even very capable leaders can reach a point where the business starts to look more complicated than it really is.

The symptoms are familiar: more meetings, more spreadsheets, more KPIs and more analysis.

But sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of information.

It’s a lack of clarity.

Sometimes stepping away from the business is the best way to regain perspective and make better decisions.

Let me ask you something straightforward.

When you first started or took charge of your business, how did you make decisions?

If you’re anything like me, you made them fast.

You looked at the situation, trusted your gut and moved forward with conviction.

You didn’t always get it right, but you moved.

You had clarity about where you were going and what needed to be done.

Now fast-forward to where you are today.

When a problem crops up — cash flow, productivity, staff, sales — what’s the immediate reaction?

Is it to trust that original instinct?

Or is it to call another meeting, ask for another spreadsheet, demand three more KPIs and start digging through layers of data?

Over the last few years, I’ve sat down with dozens of exceptional, experienced business leaders.

People who have built great companies through experience, grit and talent.

And do you know what I’ve noticed, often over a good meal or a round of golf?

Sometimes You Don’t Need Another Answer

More often than not, they already know the answer to their biggest problem.

They don’t need another spreadsheet.

They don’t necessarily need another KPI.

They certainly don’t need another 50-page report telling them what they already know.

They’re tired.

And I think that’s something we don’t talk about enough.

When you spend years fighting daily fires, the windscreen gets dirty.

Everything starts looking like a crisis.

Every metric becomes critical.

Every problem demands your attention.

And that sharp, decisive edge you once relied on gets buried beneath the operational noise.

You haven’t necessarily lost your ability to lead.

You’ve just lost the space to hear yourself think.

So let’s take a breath and drop the guard for five minutes.

Ask yourself:

If you could only fix ONE operational headache in your business this month, which one would actually move the needle?

Are you genuinely stuck on the solution, or are you simply too exhausted from running the daily machine to execute it?

What’s the one report or meeting in your weekly calendar that adds almost no value, but you keep doing out of habit?

When was the last time you took yourself completely out of the building for a day — no laptop, no dashboards — just to think?

Management thinking often tells us that when a business is struggling, we need more control, more data and more tracking.

My experience tells me that sometimes we need something much simpler.

Distance.

Simplicity.

Perspective.

I’ve spent a lot of my working life helping business owners identify problems and work out what needs to change.

But there’s something I’ve learned along the way.

Even the best business mind in the world can’t solve a problem for someone who isn’t ready to listen.

And perhaps that’s true for all of us.

Sometimes the hardest thing isn’t finding the answer.

It’s clearing enough space to see the answer we already have.

And perhaps I should be honest here.

I haven’t been immune to this myself.

After many years of helping business owners identify problems, find solutions and push for change, I think I’ve experienced a little leadership fatigue of my own.

Not because I’ve stopped enjoying business. Quite the opposite.

I’ve simply become increasingly aware that I want to spend my energy differently.

Sometimes clearing the windscreen isn’t about finding a better route.

It’s about deciding which road you actually want to be on.

So…

How does your windscreen look right now?

Are you making decisions with the clarity and conviction you once had?

Or has the noise of running the business started to obscure the road ahead?

I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts.

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

Welcome to the sixth and final instalment of our series on what truly makes a great B2B salesperson.

Over the past five weeks, we’ve taken a sledgehammer to a few persistent sales myths. In week one, we debunked the myth of the “gift of the gab.”

Last week, we dismantled the idea that closing isn’t the lone titan it’s made out to be.

Which brings us to the ultimate commercial question for any business leader:

How do you actually spot and hire these people?

The Commercial Reality of a Sales Hire

Let’s strip away the corporate speak. Recruiting a B2B salesperson isn’t just filling a vacancy; it’s a significant commercial investment.

When you hire a salesperson, you aren’t just committing to a base salary.

You’re committing to employer costs, vehicles, laptops, software licenses, travel expenses, management time, and—most importantly—the precious client relationships you place in their hands.

I’ve watched companies spend a small fortune making a salesperson “roadworthy” before realising they hired the wrong person in the first place:

• The laptop arrives.
• The phone gets connected.
• The crm seat is paid for.
• The product and sales training courses are booked.
• The expense claims start rolling in.

And because the business has invested all this capital, management feels trapped into trying to “make it work.” The biggest saving you can make in sales development is getting the recruitment decision right in the first place.

That’s not an HR exercise—that’s pure commercial risk management.

Ditch the “Pen” Exercise—Get onto the Factory Floor

I could never bring myself to ask a candidate to “sell me this pen.” If you do that, you aren’t testing B2B capability, you’re testing theatrical performance.

High-volume, transactional consumer sales might rely on instant pitch tricks, but B2B operates on a completely different frequency.

It’s about complex ecosystems, multi-layered trust, and technical problem-solving.

Sales technique can be taught. Product features can be learned. crm discipline can be enforced. What you cannot easily teach someone is how to be genuinely interested in other people.

Instead of sitting in a sterile boardroom across a glass table, get them out of the office.

Walk them through the design room, take them onto the factory floor, or walk the warehouse together.

Then, stop evaluating their sales skills and start observing their human baseline:

• Are they naturally curious? Do they notice their surroundings and ask interesting, unprompted questions about how things work?
• How do they treat people? How do they interact with the shop-floor staff, the engineers, or the receptionist?
• Are they active listeners? Are they genuinely processing what you say, or are they just waiting for their turn to speak?
• Are they comfortable in their own skin? Can they hold a intelligent conversation without trying to dominate it?

Can they become an Extension of Your Brand

I often tell business owners that their sales staff are an extension of their product or service.

Your website is an extension of your business. Your brochure is an extension of your business. So is the person who walks through your customer’s door. In fact, the human being is considerably more critical:

• A website can’t misunderstand a customer.
• A brochure can’t talk over a client.
• An advert can’t make a customer feel like their operational headache is unimportant.

A salesperson can do all three in twenty minutes. A technically brilliant salesperson who makes clients feel uncomfortable will actively damage your brand.

Conversely, someone who is knowledgeable, curious, listens properly, and is easy to deal with adds massive value to an otherwise standard product.

Case Study: From 12 Salespeople to 4 High Performers

I saw this play out first-hand with a technical manufacturer. They had twelve salespeople operating nationally, supported by sales managers and a sales director.

Despite all that resource and overhead, the business wasn’t making a decent profit.

The instinct in businesses like this is often to ask whether they need a different sales strategy, more training, or even more reps.

We looked at the human raw material instead.

Out of those twelve, we identified four people who had what mattered: curiosity, listening skills, genuine empathy, and the potential to become exceptional technical problem-solvers.

So, we shifted strategy. Rather than continuing to carry the cost of a large sales operation, we concentrated on those four.

Was it instant or painless? No. It took two years.

There were severance packages to deal with and tough decisions to execute.

But we paid those four what they were worth, supported them properly, and armed them with the technical and sales frameworks they needed.

The result? Sales are now booming and profitability has improved dramatically.

And here is the ultimate proof point: the business is now looking to recruit two more specialist sales engineers.

Not twelve. Not because someone decided that twelve salespeople sounded like the right-sized sales team, but because the business finally understood what it actually needed.

That is the difference between blindly buying salespeople and building a high-performing sales team.

Spot the Material, Then Arm Them

In my years managing technical sales teams, finding the balance always came down to one truth: if you don’t have the right raw material, you can’t mould the salesperson.

Your job isn’t to hire a pre-packaged corporate mouthpiece who knows all the buzzwords.

Your job is to find someone who is naturally likeable, inherently curious, and possesses the humility to listen—and then arm them.

Give them the technical foundation. Provide the market context. Back them up with solid operational systems.

Give them the sales frameworks. But above all, give them the room to apply their authentic personality to the role.

When you hire for raw character and train for technique, interviewing stops being a test of rehearsed answers—and starts becoming a genuine, enjoyable business conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I evaluate technical aptitude if I’m hiring someone for “raw material” rather than past industry experience?

A: Don’t quiz them on technical specs they haven’t been taught yet. Instead, present them with a simplified, real-world customer problem during the interview and ask how they would break it down. You aren’t looking for the correct technical solution; you’re observing their logical reasoning, their willingness to ask clarifying questions, and how comfortably they admit what they don’t yet know.

Q: Isn’t taking candidates onto the factory floor or warehouse a bit informal for a executive sales role?

A: That’s precisely why it works. Boardroom interviews breed rehearsed, scripted answers. Moving a candidate through an operational environment strips away the polish and reveals their actual personality. How they engage with staff, whether they pay attention to the machinery or product flow, and how curious they are in an unfamiliar setting tells you far more about their emotional intelligence than a résumé ever will.

Q: How long should it take to “arm” a raw candidate before expecting a return on investment?

A: In complex B2B sales, expect a 3 to 6-month ramp-up period before they operate fully independently. However, you should see clear indicators of progress within the first 30 days—specifically around product literacy, active listening during shadow calls, and the quality of questions they ask internal technical teams.

Q: What is the single biggest warning sign during an interview that a candidate lacks the right raw material?

A: The biggest warning sign isn’t confidence or even a poor answer. It’s a lack of curiosity combined with an inability to listen, accept challenge or take responsibility.