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sales discipline

What An MBA Didn’t Teach You About Sales

The sales profession is challenging. You need to work hard at it to succeed. You need to learn from the best. You need to improve your skills continuously. If you think you can sell since you are a hit at parties and have a lot of friends, you may soon find that you are a failure as a salesperson. Blunt truth:

because the sales profession is so hard, you have to focus on doing everything in sales very well, or you will be considered a failure.

I call this blog, Skinned Knees because I try to relate all of the learning that I have done over the past 4+ decades (while skinning my knees in the learning process).

I hope that you learn from my mistakes so that your business will grow!

Compelling Events: Shorten Sales Cycles & Improve Forecasts

Deals move when the buyer’s business calendar forces a decision.

A real compelling event is the operating discipline that separates pipeline from possibility. It gives urgency a business reason, attaches dates to consequences, and forces both sides to decide whether the opportunity deserves serious time, resources, and executive attention.

Many salespeople confuse need with urgency. That mistake creates bloated forecasts, stalled proposals, and too many “just checking in” follow-ups. A prospect can have a real need and still have no reason to act now. They may need

  • better integrations,
  • stronger reporting,
  • reduced churn,
  • tighter compliance,
  • faster workflows,
  • a cleaner technology stack.

Those needs matter, but they can live on a roadmap indefinitely.

A compelling event changes the conversation because something meaningful happens by a specific date.

  • An audit is scheduled.
  • A contract expires.
  • A board commitment has been made.
  • A market launch is tied to revenue.
  • A facility lease ends.
  • A regulatory requirement becomes enforceable.
  • A major customer is at risk.

These events create pressure because delays have consequences beyond the buying team’s preferences.

That is the standard. A compelling event has a date, an owner, and a consequence.

The Difference Between Interest and Commitment

Interest sounds productive in a sales conversation. Commitment behaves differently.

Interested buyers will schedule meetings, request demos, review capabilities, and discuss future-state improvements. Committed buyers will help you understand the decision path, expose internal constraints, validate timing, and clarify what happens if the outcome is missed.

The difference matters because your forecast depends on the customer’s decision reality, not your sales activity.

A compelling event gives you that reality. It tells you why the buyer is engaged now, who owns the risk, what business outcome must be protected, and which internal processes must be navigated to get there. Without that clarity, the opportunity may still be real, but it should be treated as unproven.

Sales leaders should inspect this with discipline. “They are excited” is not a compelling event. “Budget season” is not enough. “They want to modernize” is too soft. The better question is: what changed in their business that makes inaction costly?

That question protects your time and the buyer’s time.

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Validation Events: The Unsung Hero of Sales Process Discipline

In the complex world of B2B selling, trust is built in stages. The challenge in all sales campaigns is ensuring the prospect trusts they are making the best decision for their business.

  1. Do they trust that the salesperson is giving them all of the information?
  2. Do they trust that the company will support them after the sale?
  3. Do they trust that the product will perform as they expect it to perform?

As I have explained in my book, Eliminate Your Competition, as well as the blog for that book and in this blog, the prospect needs to trust all three elements the salesperson is selling:

  1. They need to trust the product.
  2. They need to trust the company behind the product.
  3. They need to trust the salesperson.

Prospects listen to your sales message, review your materials, and hear your claims, but none of that guarantees belief or trust. Trust is validated when your claims are validated. That’s why validation events are crucial to any rigorous sales process.

In The Qualified Sales Leader, John McMahon stresses the importance of customer-driven validation. He cautions sales leaders against relying on internal optimism or anecdotal “good signals” from prospects. Instead, McMahon emphasizes observable proof—real buyer behavior that confirms alignment, commitment, and value. Validation events are when the customer takes action to validate that what you’ve promised is accurate and valuable.

An excellent sample sale process flow looks like this:

  1. Discover
  2. Scoping
  3. Economic Buyer Meeting
  4. Validation Event
  5. Business Case and Final Proposal
  6. Negotiate and Close

As you can see, the Validation Event is the last step before creating the final business case, which will be bundled with your final proposal.

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