Category: Business

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

Following last week’s conversation on leadership fatigue, clarity, and “When was the last time you cleared your windscreen?”, it became clear how easily daily operational fog takes over.

When you are operating with low clarity and high fatigue, managing your time feels almost impossible.

This is particularly critical if you are running a business in your 60s. At this stage of life, time is no longer just about output—it’s about leverage, energy management, and protecting your quality of life.

You have decades of experience, but you shouldn’t be burning the candle at both ends or working the same reactive hours you did in your 30s.

Managing your energy is just as important as managing your bottom line, ensuring your business works for you rather than consuming your time.

That is why I am revisiting a core topic: Struggling with time management—where six hours a week can change your personal and professional life completely.

It breaks down into a simple, non-negotiable balance:

• 3 protected hours for your business to target key goals, clear operational clutter, and regain strategic momentum.
• 3 protected hours for yourself to recharge physical energy, clear your mind, and maintain the stamina required to lead effectively.

Below is the updated guide on how to put this 6-hour framework into practice.

Time Management for Small Business Owners – What 40 Years Taught Me (And Why 6 Hours a Week Is Enough)

Time management is one of my favourite subjects, yet it is one of those concepts we all think we understand—until we actually audit where our hours go.

For small business owners and mature entrepreneurs, real change does not require a drastic lifestyle overhaul.

A simple, disciplined approach—protecting three focused hours for business development and three dedicated hours for your own physical and mental well-being each week—can significantly improve productivity, reduce stress, and restore clarity.

My own wake-up moment came years ago while working in sales management for control and automation systems at a German engineering firm.

I was seconded into a six-month time and motion study analysing sales engineers, middle managers, and busy professionals across three subsidiaries.

What we discovered back then remains true today, even in our era of apps, CRMs, and AI:

Most people do not have a time problem; they have a focus and energy problem.

What the Data Showed Us About Productivity

Back then, we tracked how professionals actually spent their days: how they planned, how they routed appointments, and how much time was spent reacting versus being proactive.

Despite all of today’s modern digital tools, one truth remains:

The day will automatically fill with reactive noise unless you deliberately take control of it.

The 6-Hour “Business & Personal Fitness” Framework

To break out of constant firefighting and leadership fatigue, split your focus into two equal, protected pillars: 3 hours for the business, and 3 hours for yourself.

Pillar 1: 3 Hours for the Business (Stepping Off the Treadmill)

Spread across three 1-hour sessions each week, this is non-negotiable proactive time for business development and growth.

• No emails.
• No firefighting.
• No “just quickly answering this first.”

Use this time exclusively to build long-term value, rather than just maintain daily ops:

• Following up warm leads and high-value prospects.
• Reconnecting with existing clients and past contacts.
• Chasing outstanding quotes with genuine engagement.
• Asking lost prospects: “What would we need to change to win your business in the future?” (The answer is rarely just about price—it usually reveals where value was missed).

Pillar 2: 3 Hours for Yourself (Rebuilding Energy & Clarity)

Just as your business needs targeted attention, your body and mind require dedicated maintenance—especially for business leaders over 60. Split into three 1-hour sessions:

• Brisk countryside walks or uninterrupted outdoor movement.
• Structured resistance work or light strength exercise.
• Pure downtime away from all screens and operational demands.

A tired, distracted business owner makes poor strategic decisions. No business system can fix low personal energy.

Why 3 + 3 Works for Sustainable Business Growth

You don’t build fitness from one heroic workout, nor do you transform a business in one burst of motivation. Consistency trumps intensity every time.

• 3 hours of business focus keeps revenue opportunities from slipping through the cracks, builds trust before price is discussed, and creates predictable momentum.
• 3 hours of personal focus sharpens cognitive clarity, reduces leadership fatigue, and restores the stamina needed to lead effectively.

A Simple Daily Framework: The Four D’s of Time Management

When operational tasks start piling up during the rest of your week, run them through this time-tested decision filter:

• Do: If it is urgent and critical, handle it immediately.
• Delegate: If someone else can do it (or if it can be automated with tools), hand it off.
• Defer: If it matters but isn’t pressing, schedule a firm slot in your calendar.
• Delete: If it does not align with your core goals, eliminate it entirely.

Tools, CRMs, and planners don’t fix time management. Decisions do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is time management different for business owners in their 60s?

In your 60s, energy management becomes as vital as time management. Priorities shift toward sustainable growth, protecting health, and achieving lifestyle freedom rather than working 60-hour operational weeks.

Why separate business development time and personal health time so strictly?

Business growth and personal vitality are interdependent. If you focus solely on the business while neglecting your health and clarity, burnout sets in. If you focus solely on well-being without driving the business, stress accumulates from lack of progress.

Is 3 hours a week really enough time for business development?

Yes, provided those 3 hours are completely uninterrupted. Three hours of deep, proactive outreach and strategy accomplish far more than 20 hours of distracted, reactive work.

How do small business owners stop firefighting from interrupting protected time?

Treat these hours like an unmovable appointment with your most important client. Block them in your calendar, turn off notifications, and step away from your inbox.

Final Thought

If you do one thing this week to clear your windscreen, let it be this:

👉 Block out six individual 1-hour slots in your calendar—three for your business, and three for yourself.

Small, consistent actions—taken deliberately—always yield the biggest return.

Ropho – Practical business thinking for people who value experience over noise.

🟦 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.

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

(Week 5)

Last week, we talked about asking better questions and building trust.

Most people think closing is the most important part of B2B sales.

I don’t.

In my experience, by the time you ask for the business, the sale should already have been won.

Early in my career, my sales manager used to say, “I need our best closers on this deal.”

Back then, we were trained on all the classic toolbox tricks: the Alternative Close, the Assumptive Close, the Impending Event Close. We were taught clever verbal manoeuvres designed to corner a buyer into saying yes.

Looking back, I think we were concentrating on the wrong end of the sales process.

The close isn’t where the sale is won. It’s simply where all the preparation that came before it comes together.

If you’ve applied the Look, Read, Watch, Listen habits from the start of this series, you’ve already laid the groundwork.

• You climbed the Ladder of Approach (Week 3), systematically uncovering and resolving objections with each department before moving up to the next rung.
• You asked deep diagnostic questions (Week 4) to quantify site constraints, operational risks, and the true cost of failure.

I’ve never believed great salespeople are brilliant closers. I believe they are brilliant preparers.

They research better. They ask better questions. They listen more carefully. They build trust and technical credibility.

By the time they ask for the business, the decision has practically been made.

Great B2B Sales Aren’t “Closed”—They Are Concluded

When the groundwork is done, the dynamic of the final meeting fundamentally changes. You aren’t trying to persuade a senior decision-maker to buy something they might not need.

Because you’ve already spoken to the people who will use or manage the solution every day, the final meeting rarely becomes a sales presentation.

It becomes a confirmation that everyone is ready to move forward.

That’s exactly what your Ladder of Approach is about.

“What a fascinating operation you have here. Having spoken to your teams across engineering, operations, and procurement, I feel we’ve thoroughly addressed the core pain points and site constraints they raised. As I understand it, they’ve shared their findings with you and recommended moving forward with our proposal.”

Notice the shift? You aren’t saying, “Let me convince you.”

You are asking, “Have we covered everything you need to move forward?”

What to Do When They Hesitate

If the answer is hesitation, do not panic. And above all, do not start offering discounts.

When technical trust has been established, price is rarely the real hurdle. A hesitation at this final stage isn’t a rejection—it’s just an unaddressed concern floating to the surface.

Resist the urge to push. Instead, ask one clean, open diagnostic question:

“It sounds like there’s still a hesitation. What’s the main hurdle standing between where we are right now and getting this project started?”

More often than not, they’ll tell you what’s really holding things up.

It might be a…..

A board sign-off.

A budget meeting next month.

Someone being on holiday.

Another department that suddenly needs to be involved.

Don’t see that as a setback. You’ve simply discovered the next conversation that needs to happen before the project can move forward.

That’s business. It happens more often than you might think.

Remember the Ladder of Approach we talked about in Week 3?

Sometimes you discover there’s one more rung you didn’t know existed.

That’s not a failed sale; it’s simply the next step.

The Sale Is Only the Start

The purchase order is not the end of the relationship; it is the absolute beginning.

Great businesses don’t just win customers—they keep them.

The salesperson who stays involved after the order, ensuring commitments are delivered and initial hiccups are resolved, is the salesperson who creates customers for life.

The best salespeople don’t “close” customers. They build enough trust that the customer simply chooses to move forward.

Looking Ahead to Week 6…

Now that we’ve deconstructed the entire sales process—from initial research to concluding the deal—we are left with a critical question for business leaders:

How do you actually hire someone who can do this?

Next week, we’re taking a fast-paced, practical and slightly controversial look at sales recruitment…and why the infamous “Sell me this pen” interview test is testing the exact opposite of what makes a great B2B salesperson.

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

In my early days as a Sales Manager, our German Sales Director asked me a question that I couldn’t answer:

Why was our UK sales team struggling to break into a particular market sector when our colleagues in Germany were extremely successful?

• Was the competition stronger in the UK?
• Was our product less suitable?
• Or was something else going on?

That question stayed with me for almost a year.

Then, during an annual appraisal, I accompanied one of our best salespeople on a customer visit.

Halfway through the meeting, it suddenly dawned on me what we’d been doing wrong.

We weren’t losing because we had the wrong product. We were losing because we were asking the wrong questions.

The sector happened to be the UK water and sewage industry—which has always had its own unique structure and commercial pressures (a story for another day).

The important lesson wasn’t the industry itself – it was that we had been asking questions based on what we wanted to sell, rather than what our customers needed for their own unique circumstances.

That single realisation changed the way I approached B2B selling for the rest of my career.

The Foundation of B2B Trust

Building trust is the single most important element of establishing a long-term partnership with potential clients.

Customers rarely buy because you gave the best presentation.

People don’t buy products.

They buy confidence.

Confidence that you’ve understood their business, anticipated their problems and can deliver what you’ve promised.

Building that trust starts long before you talk about your products—it starts with the quality of the questions you ask.

In today’s economic climate, with rising operational costs, buyers are often tempted to go for the cheapest or most aggressive upfront price.

However, the Ladder of Approach (which we covered in Week 3) gives us the framework to uncover a client’s real pain points, needs, and hidden concerns. We do this by asking targeted, diagnostic open questions.

When you ask better questions, you stop being a salesperson trying to push a product and start acting as a trusted technical adviser.

Example 1: Specifying High-End Architectural Glazing

To see how this works in practice, consider a company I advise that supplies high-end sliding and bi-fold doors to the luxury residential construction market.

Their primary target on the Ladder of Approach is often the Architect.

Architects don’t care about a flashy sales pitch. They care about design integrity, regulatory compliance, client satisfaction, and avoiding expensive site delays that ruin their reputation.

If you approach an architect trying to “sell” a door, you’ll quickly get pushed down to procurement or shown out the door.

If you ask precise, diagnostic questions that uncover hidden site risks, you build instant technical credibility.

Uncovering Design & Aesthetic Intent

• The Weak Question: “What size doors are you looking for on this project?”
• The Trust-Building Question: “When you visualised the transition between the internal living space and the terrace, what sight-lines and frame profiles were you hoping to achieve without compromising thermal performance?”
• Why it works: It proves you care about their aesthetic vision, not just selling aluminium and glass by the square metre.

Diagnosing Technical & Structural Realities

• The Weak Question: “Do you have the opening measurements ready?”
• The Trust-Building Question: “With these large span openings, what structural deflection tolerances have been engineered into the lintel, and how are you planning to handle flush threshold drainage against driving rain?”
• Why it works: You are highlighting nightmare site scenarios before they happen. For anyone who isn’t a structural engineer, an uncalculated overhead load can press down onto the top frame, pinching the tracks and causing heavy glass panels to jam, squeak, or fail entirely.

Ropho Business Insight: In my work with this manufacturer of these exact doors, they were experiencing severe sales bottlenecks.

The issue wasn’t the product quality—the doors were built to the highest specification.

The failure came down to two things:

Their sales team wasn’t qualified to ask the technical questions architects needed to hear, and their third-party installers lacked the specialised skills required for large-scale installations.

(For more on solving this, see my digital toolkit s on training sales staff with the right tools to close deals and avoiding bad third-party hires).

Mitigating Commercial & Delivery Risk

• The Weak Question: “When do you need these delivered?”
• The Trust-Building Question: “Looking at your build schedule, at what point does the weather-tight milestone hit, and what margin have you built in for lead times so the interior fit-out isn’t delayed?”
• Why it works: You are actively safeguarding their timeline and helping them manage the main contractor’s expectations.

Example 2: Industrial Automation in Manufacturing & Food Processing

In my career, selling programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and variable speed drives (VSDs) into factory environments—particularly food processing—taught me an entirely different layer of trust-building.

In high-speed manufacturing, nobody cares about technical specs on a datasheet for their own sake.

What keeps a Factory Manager or Engineering Lead awake at night is unplanned downtime, energy waste, and harsh environmental failures.

If you walk into a food plant talking about product features, you’re just another component vendor. If you ask targeted operational questions, you become a partner who protects their production targets.

Diagnosing Downtime & wash-down Vulnerabilities

In food processing, equipment gets blasted with high-pressure, hot chemical washdowns every single night. Standard IP-rated gear often fails under these aggressive routines.

• The Weak Question: “What IP rating or drive specs do you normally order?”
• The Trust-Building Question: “During your nightly washdown routines, where are you seeing the most frequent drive or sensor failures on the line, and what is that doing to your morning startup times?”
• Why it works: You immediately link electrical hardware directly to operational delays and maintenance headaches that the Engineering Manager deals with every day.

The Golden Rule of B2B Diagnostics

Whether you are talking to an architect about luxury bi-fold doors or an engineering lead about PLCs and drives, the fundamental rule remains identical:

You are not selling the product; you are solving the disruption that happens when the wrong product is chosen.

When you ask questions that prove you understand their daily realities, you climb the Ladder of Approach effortlessly.

They realise you aren’t just selling—you’re safeguarding their project, their production, and their reputation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What if the customer just wants a price right away?

Acknowledge their request immediately, but explain that to give an accurate, honest figure that won’t incur hidden site costs or variation fees later, you need to clarify two or three key details about how the product will actually be installed or operated.

How do I avoid sounding like an interrogator during discovery?

Frame your questions with context. Before asking a technical question, explain why you are asking: “To make sure we don’t run into issues with weather seals during installation, can I ask…” This shifts the tone from an interrogation to a collaborative problem-solving session.

What is the single biggest mistake salespeople make when asking questions?

Not waiting for the full answer.

Most salespeople can remember times early in their careers when they talked too much, jumped in before the customer finished explaining their pain point, or simply failed to listen.

Ask a great open question, sit back, and let the customer speak.

The Final Reflection

Trust isn’t built by showing how smart your product is. It is built by proving how thoroughly you understand their problems before you ever offer a solution.

Alongside my Look, Read, Watch, Listen strategy checklist, preparation before, during, and after sales meetings is essential for meaningful follow-ups.

When training sales teams, I still use a structured meeting scoring system to measure diagnostic effectiveness—a tool I use to this day.

If you diagnose thoroughly, the sale takes care of itself.

I’ve never believed great salespeople are brilliant closers.

I believe they’re brilliant preparers.

They research better.

Ask better questions.

Listen more carefully.

They build more trust.

By the time they ask for the business, the decision has almost been made.

That’s what we’ll explore next week.

🟦 Business After 60 Conversation

“Didn’t we cover research last week?”

Fair question.

Last week, we covered the basics, knowing your products inside out, finding the Managing Director, checking Companies House, checking turnover, scanning LinkedIn, and looking for recent news.

All of that matters. But here is the thing – that tells you what a company does. It doesn’t tell you how the company actually works.

That is where many salespeople—and business owners—come unstuck.

The most valuable research isn’t sitting on a website. It’s the information you only discover by asking better questions and understanding how the organisation really works.

What Company Research Leaves Out

1. Can They Actually Become a Good Customer?

Just because you can win the business doesn’t mean you should.

Before investing weeks of effort, you need to answer a few fundamental questions:

• What are their payment terms?
• What is their normal payment cycle?
• Are they known for paying on time, or do they squeeze suppliers?
• Will taking on this account damage your cash flow?

If your standard terms are 30 days but theirs are 90, you’ve just given away two months of free credit before you’ve even agreed on a price. That isn’t a sales win; it’s a financial risk.

2. Forget the “Decision Maker”—Build the Ladder of Approach

A lot of traditional sales training focuses on hunting down the single “decision maker.” In reality, very few major purchases rest on one person’s shoulders.

Your real job is finding everyone who influences the decision.

Imagine selling machinery or capital equipment into a factory. The internal ladder might look like this:

• Managing Director
• Operations Director
• Production Manager
• Engineering Manager
• Maintenance Team
• Operators
• Purchasing / Procurement

Every single person on that list can either help your sale along… or quietly kill it behind closed doors.

I learned this lesson the hard way over thirty years ago. I was working as a young automation sales engineer for a major German manufacturer.

We were chasing a breakthrough contract with what was potentially the single biggest user of that product in the UK.

Accompanied by our UK Sales Director, we set off for Belfast, which during the Troubles, was a carefully planned, high-stakes trip in itself involving long drives, ferries, and security checkpoints.

As the sales engineer responsible for securing the opportunity, I genuinely believed we’d covered every angle.

We hadn’t.

What had I forgotten? The Production Team.

We got right in front of the board, made our pitch, and watched the whole deal stall out.

The Design Team loved it, but because we hadn’t bothered to talk to the people on the factory floor who actually had to run and live with the machinery, the internal push-back killed the deal right there on the spot.

All that travel, all that planning, completely wasted.

That painful journey home was when I first realised, there is always a ladder of approach.

Whether it’s just two people in a small business or six different departments in a major corporation, skipping a rung to get to the “big boss” will almost always catch up with you.

3. Who Benefits… and Who Loses?

Every business has competing internal priorities, and every change creates friction.

• If your system saves time for the Production Manager, does it create a headache for Maintenance?
• If your proposal makes Purchasing look good on cost, does Engineering hate the quality compromises?

Uncovering these internal tug-of-wars during your discovery phase is real business research.

4. Respect the Unofficial Influencers

Beyond the formal structure, every business has key influencers who don’t show up on an organisation chart:

• The Receptionist or Executive PA who guards the diary.
• The Stores Manager who knows which suppliers actually deliver on time.
• The Production Supervisor who knows what breaks down.
• The veteran engineer who has been there thirty years and whose opinion everyone trusts.

Ignore them at your peril.

5. Why the Ladder Works: Two Real-World Scenarios

Whether you are dealing with an inbound lead or cold outreach, climbing the rungs systematically is what closes deals.

Scenario A: The Warm Lead or Referral

Even when a client comes to you with a clear pain point, you still have to cover every rung to ensure smooth sailing at the final sign-off.

Take a recent electrical contractor client of mine chasing a long-term local authority contract.

The sales cycle stretched over nine months because of the sheer number of departments involved: Procurement, Planning, Technical & Regulatory, and Logistics.

To win, they had to build trust across every department. Skipping a single rung could have scuppered the entire project.

The discipline of B2B sales is moving methodically from one level of influence to the next.

“Now that we’ve agreed on how our solution solves the bottleneck in your department, are you happy for us to present these findings to the Design Team next?”

At every level you’re gaining agreement, uncovering concerns and refining your proposal. By the time you finally reach the boardroom, very few surprises remain.

Many salespeople skip the ladder because they’re taught to get to the Managing Director as quickly as possible.

It feels efficient. In reality, it often creates resistance.

People who feel ignored during the process have an unfortunate habit of raising objections at exactly the wrong moment.

Scenario B: Proactive Outreach

The same logic applies when your research identifies a potential problem you know you can fix.

By mapping out the influencers beforehand, you aren’t just cold pitching the board—you are reaching out with specific, targeted insights for each level of the organisation.

(We break down how to secure those initial meetings in Episode 2, with detailed frameworks available in our subscriber toolkits).

Applying the Four Pillars

The framework I introduced in Week 1 becomes even more valuable once you’ve secured the meeting and started to understand how the organisation really works.

LOOK

Look beyond the organisation chart. Observe the business itself. How do departments interact? Who seems to carry influence? Which areas appear busy, well organised or under pressure? Often, the physical environment tells you as much as the annual report.

READ

Continue researching throughout the sales process. Read technical specifications, procurement policies, industry publications and anything that helps you understand the customer’s commercial and operational priorities. Research shouldn’t stop once the appointment is booked.

WATCH

Watch how people behave during meetings. Who asks the technical questions? Who remains quiet? Who does everyone turn to before making a decision? The most influential person in the room isn’t always the one sitting at the head of the table.

LISTEN

Listen carefully to the language people use. Listen for frustrations, repeated concerns and throwaway comments. They often reveal more about the real buying process than the formal agenda ever will.

The Four Pillars aren’t simply a way to prepare for meetings. They’re a practical way of understanding how businesses really make decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Why isn’t finding the Managing Director enough?

In many B2B organisations, the Managing Director may approve the purchase, but they rarely make the decision in isolation. Production, Engineering, Purchasing, Finance and the end users all influence the outcome. Understanding who shapes the decision is often just as important as knowing who signs the order.

---

What is the ‘Ladder of Approach’ in B2B sales?

The Ladder of Approach is a practical way of identifying everyone involved in a buying decision. Rather than focusing on one individual, it encourages you to understand the people who use, specify, influence, approve and ultimately authorise the purchase.

---

How do I identify the real influencers inside a business?

Start by asking simple questions. Who will use the product every day? Who maintains it? Who specifies it? Who controls the budget? Who has the final authority? You’ll often discover that influence extends well beyond the organisation chart.

---

Can this approach work for small businesses as well as large organisations?

Yes. The ladder may only involve two or three people in a smaller business, but the principle is exactly the same. Before presenting your solution, understand who will be affected by the decision and whose support you’ll need.

The Takeaway

Research doesn’t stop when you’ve found the Managing Director’s name on LinkedIn.

It finishes when you understand how decisions are really made inside the organisation.

In my experience, companies rarely buy because one person says yes. They buy because nobody important is left saying no.