The Sales Report, by Sales Homie

☎️ Cold Calling Beats AI-Written Emails 6 to 1

Sales Homie — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, September 4, 2026

Another Friday! With summertime ☀️ leaving us in the rearview mirror, the days are getting darker more quickly. But that doesn’t mean your prospect funnel has to fade into the sunset! 🌅 Ramping up engagements between now and the holiday season will ensure early 2027 successes.

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) How Technology Is Changing B2B Appointment Setting 📲

Modern appointment setting runs on tools that connect data with action. That includes customer relationship management software, email sequencing platforms, calling tools, data enrichment services, and analytics dashboards. Each one handles part of the puzzle…Read more here. 👈🏻

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

“To be early is on time; to be on time is late.” ⏰

When you plan to arrive for a first-time engagement, make sure that you’re early. “To be early is on time; to be on time is late.” First impressions are the hallmark of putting a good taste in the mouth of the person who agreed to meet with you! Not only is it respectful to show up on time, but it’s also imperative that you arrive not flustered, calm, and ready to show up in your “best self.” You can’t do that when you’re speeding and comin’ in hot from a rush commute!

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

Fractional Sales Leadership, placing a seasoned Sales Executive at any level (Manager, Director, Vice President, Chief Revenue Officer) into your department. For organizations seeking a consultant, Sales Homie offers Consulting Services tailored to meet your organization’s specific needs.

In need of targeted recruiting for your business development teams? Sales Homie Recruiting builds sales teams that drive results for their organizations. Our retained searches offer 180-day placement guarantees, detailed 30-, 60-, and 90-day onboarding plans, and additional benefits.

Coaching and Training programming includes membership in one of our Sales Squads, a sales peer-group ecosystem, individual Sales and Business Owner Coaching, and our quarterly sales education series, the Revenue Hangout.

For more information, please visit our website. Interested in becoming a Fractional Sales Advisor with Sales Homie? Send us a note.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) The Thought Leader Economy: Why Influence Is The New Capital 🏛️

Thought leaders never know who might take notice of their work and the doors that can be flung open as a result. You may see more opportunities to speak to groups that could benefit from your message. You could be asked to join a University’s faculty or become part of a prestigious corporate board. But as with a financial investment, the return on influence doesn’t necessarily manifest overnight…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“In 2026, it takes an average of 8 cold call attempts before you connect with a buyer who pays attention to what you have to say.” (Hubspot)

The number might shift from 7 to 8 or 9, but what doesn’t change is the fact that cold calling, which is still considered a valid and useful way to fill your sales funnel, remains a tried-and-true method to forcefully introduce yourself to potential prospects. When you get strategic about how, when, and where you cold call, only then can your 7-, 8-, or 9-call attempts be cut in half (!!).

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

We’ve launched our podcast series, “Sell Like A Homie,” in August! The first drop is above, with more to come. In this episode, hear from Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO of Sales Homie, on his early career journey and how it helped shape the early stages of who Sales Homie has become!

You can follow Sales Homie on YouTube to not miss an episode, or simply keep subscribing to The Sales Report to find clips and links to recent episodes.

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

christian@saleshomie.com

Christian helps founder-led and growth-stage companies build scalable, predictable revenue systems. He partners with organizations to align messaging, strengthen outbound sales, and implement repeatable sales processes that drive long-term growth. With experience across enterprise technology, SaaS, operations, and professional services, Christian combines strategic insight with hands-on execution to turn sales into a disciplined, high-performing function.

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) Cold Calling Beats AI-Written Emails 6 to 1 ☎️

Human-to-human cold calling ranks as the most effective method for reaching new prospects, behind only client referrals, yet 46% of sellers give up too easily when cold calling, and 39% fear picking up the phone and making calls…Read more here. 👈🏻

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Private U.S. companies added jobs at a slightly slower-than-expected pace in August, with gains concentrated heavily in healthcare and a few other industries, ADP reported Wednesday.

The payrolls processing firm said firms added 38,000 workers, fewer than the upwardly revised 46,000 in July and below the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 47,000.

Though job creation remained positive, August saw the smallest gain since January, reflecting a broader slowdown in the labor market. Moreover, most jobs came from three sectors, while multiple others declined.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🙈 Do Your B2B Customers See The Value You Deliver?

Sales Homie — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, August 28, 2026

Welcome back to Friday, the best day of the week! School 📝 is back in session, which means your buyers are bound to refocus on something other than summer vacations and days out of the office. How will you capitalize before the holiday season arrives? 🦃 🎅🏼

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) 9 B2B eCommerce Growth Strategies for Building a Scalable Business 🐟

The modern B2B buyer expects more than a functional website. Business customers want easy product discovery, relevant recommendations, straightforward ordering, and fast access to help. Yet B2B purchases remain complex, often involving larger order values, multiple decision-makers, negotiated terms, and long-term relationships. Sustainable growth therefore requires more than attracting traffic…Read more here. 👈🏻

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Selling resources 📚 > selling expertise 🤓

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website. Interested in becoming a Fractional Sales Advisor with Sales Homie? Send us a note.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) The Sale You Lost Before Your Rep Knew It Existed 🛑

Your rep didn’t lose the deal. Your rep was never truly competing. This is not an occasional frustration. It’s a structural feature of how industrial buying decisions are made and how industrial sales teams routinely stumble. It also explains a pattern that most sales leaders would rather not confront…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Optimistic sales professionals outperform pessimistic counterparts by 57% even when the pessimistic reps have stronger product knowledge.” (Hubspot)

As your Mom always said, ‘keep an open mind, and be kind.’

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

chanda@saleshomie.com

With more than 20 years of sales leadership experience, Chanda helps organizations build scalable revenue strategies, strengthen sales teams, and create predictable growth. Having led sales organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, Chanda brings hands-on expertise in sales process design, coaching, onboarding, and go-to-market execution. By combining strategic leadership with an operator's mindset, Chanda helps businesses create accountability, optimize performance, and accelerate sustainable revenue growth.

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) Do Your B2B Customers See The Value You Deliver? 🙈

Most B2B companies have long harbored a costly blind spot: a gap between the value they create for customers and the value those customers can see, measure, and defend. For many, early strong growth masks the problem until sales slow or competitive alternatives drag down margins. Closing that gap is an executive decision, and one most leadership teams have never explicitly made…Read more here. 👈🏻

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Government debt has eclipsed $40 trillion, passing yet another staggering benchmark for red ink, according to the Treasury Department.

The total U.S. IOU hit $40.05 trillion as of Tuesday, some four and a half years after topping $30 trillion. Years of escalating budget deficits, driven higher by stimulus funding during the COVID pandemic, have brought the public share of the debt to near 100%.

With the Fed hesitant to move on rates in the absence of more information on inflation and the labor market, the government has seen its borrowing costs soar. Interest on the debt has totaled nearly $1.2 trillion this year and is the largest budget expenditure outside of Social Security and Medicare.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🏁 B2B Growth Doesn’t End at Closed-Won

Sales Homie — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, August 14th, 2026

TGIF! Who’s ready to rock the back half of Q3? 🥁 🎸 Also, the “Sell Like a Homie” podcast kicked off this week; more below!

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) The Marketing-to-Sales Handoff is Where Revenue Leaks 💦

You can build the most sophisticated signal orchestration capability in your market. You can identify target accounts with precision, track buying committees across multiple channels, and surface intent signals weeks before a competitor even knows there’s an opportunity. And then a sales representative gets a notification, waits 48 hours to follow up, calls with no context, and the moment is gone…Read more here. 👈🏻

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

This one can be chalked up to integrity.

In many sales verticals, personal and professional relationship development is the path towards sales success. And when you acquire a customer, that relationship almost always continues. So, you’d think that if you say you’re going to do something as you develop and continually cultivate these relationships, you should follow through on your promise(es), right?

Simple stuff.

But also very differentiating, believe it or not.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website. Interested in becoming a Fractional Sales Advisor with Sales Homie? Send us a note.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) AI is Now the First Gatekeeper in B2B Procurement 🚪

AI technology is becoming a primary gatekeeper in B2B procurement, influencing supplier shortlists even before buyers engage with them. This shift necessitates changes in strategies for procurement and sales leaders to remain competitive. Companies need to adjust their approaches to align with these AI-driven processes…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Nurtured leads produce 20% more sales opportunities than non-nurtured leads.” (Hubspot)

See how this connects to the sales tip from above? You’ve got to follow up on your engagements and deliver on what you say you’ll deliver. That’s called nurturing. And see what happens when you effectively nurture your leads?

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

chanda@saleshomie.com

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) B2B Growth Doesn’t End at Closed-Won 🏁

The post-sale experience is a shared commercial system that connects marketing, sales, product, service, customer success, and revenue operations around one objective: helping customers achieve, recognize, and communicate value…Read more here. 👈🏻

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

The U.S. budget deficit soared to its highest monthly level in more than five years amid a surge in Medicare costs, and as interest on the federal debt continued to weigh on the nation’s fiscal picture, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday.

In addition to the big single-month jump, the collective red ink across the first 10 months of the government’s fiscal year rose to nearly $1.8 trillion and surpassed the same period in 2025. The July shortfall totaled $432.3 billion, up some 48% from the same period a year ago and the largest monthly deficit since March 2021.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

👨🏻‍💻 The Modern Salesperson is Becoming a Data-Entry Clerk

Sales Homie — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, August 7th, 2026

Welcome back to Friday! The new school year is right around the corner. ✏️ How are you engaging your prospects before they disappear for a couple of weeks as school, new family routines, and new normals get fired up?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) Every Dollar Spent On Marketing Is A Bet. Do You Know The Odds? 🎰

Every piece of content, every event booth, every co-branded email costs money and time. The question is not how much you can do; the question is which bets have the best odds of moving a deal forward…Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Can I make 5 more calls before ending my day? Yes.

Can I stay 15 more minutes at this networking event and meet 2-3 more people? Yes.

Can I follow up with former customers to show continued value and ask for referrals? Yes.

Sales is both a numbers and a strategy game. And the success that you take from it has a direct output to the energy and effort that you put into it.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website. Interested in becoming a Fractional Sales Advisor with Sales Homie? Send us a note.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Winning The Modern Buyer Requires More Than Competitive Pricing 🏆

As customers become increasingly informed through artificial intelligence (AI), digital platforms, and instant access to information, businesses must move beyond competing on price and instead focus on building trust, delivering personalized experiences, and creating long-term value…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Just 30% of companies have formal referral programs, despite the economics being clear that referrals can be a top 3 source of new business for any rep, in any industry.” (Hubspot)

Don’t fret if your company doesn’t have a referral program. The best thing about being in sales? You can be creative! Mock one up yourself. Make sure all of your prospects and customers know about it. Set up a few simple tracking mechanisms in your CRM (or build an AI tool?) and wiz-bam! You’re out-working 70% of the market.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

Sales Homie will be launching our podcast series, “Sell Like A Homie,” in August! We’re recording our first episodes and will be launching soon. We’ll be digging into all things sales with different guests, bits, facts, and strategy sharing.

You can follow Sales Homie on YouTube to not miss an episode, or simply keep subscribing to The Sales Report to find clips and links to recent episodes.

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

Christian Delzer - Sales Homie
Chaska, Minnesota

christian@saleshomie.com

Christian helps founder-led and growth-stage companies build scalable, predictable revenue systems. He partners with organizations to align messaging, strengthen outbound sales, and implement repeatable sales processes that drive long-term growth. With experience across enterprise technology, SaaS, operations, and professional services, Christian combines strategic insight with hands-on execution to turn sales into a disciplined, high-performing function.

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) The Modern Salesperson is Becoming a Data-Entry Clerk 👨🏻‍💻

Pipedrive, the easy and intelligent CRM for small and medium-sized businesses, released its CRM Trends Report 2026, revealing that despite years of advances in CRM software and AI, administrative work continues to dominate the modern sales role. The survey of 1,000 U.S. sales and marketing professionals found that nearly four times as many respondents are focused on logging calls, emails, and meetings as advancing prospect conversations and closing deals, while 42% say non-revenue-generating tasks consume at least 40% of their day...Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Pricing data from June indicated that outside of some select items where costs continue to grow, inflation is trending back towards the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal. The Dallas Fed’s measure, in fact, puts the one-month annualized rate for June at just 1.4%, down a whopping 1.3 percentage points from May and at its lowest level since November 2020.

While Fed officials are quick to stress that they don’t focus on one month of any data point, the trend in the trimmed mean could get some attention, particularly in light of Chairman Kevin Warsh’s intention to reexamine how the central bank views inflation and what data points it employs.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🏗️ How to Build a B2B Sales Pipeline with No Brand or Budget

Sales Homie — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, July 31st, 2026

On this day in 1792, the cornerstone of the first U.S. Mint was laid in Philadelphia. 💵 This was the first building authorized under the U.S. Constitution, formalizing the nation’s independent currency and commerce systems!

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) How AI Agents Will Reshape B2B Sales In The Next Five Years 🕵🏻‍♂️

An AI agent is autonomous software that can take a goal, break it into steps, and execute those steps without someone clicking buttons along the way. In a sales context, that might mean an agent that spots a buying signal, researches the account, drafts a personalized outreach sequence, and books a meeting, all before a rep even opens their laptop…Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Success in sales boils down to three key areas:

Can you influence someone?

Do you know how to effectively communicate with someone?

Can you lay out a scenario that displays change, or present a solution for how a prospect solves their biggest need/challenge?

That’s it. Really, nothing else!

Sure, there’s having market or industry knowledge for whatever it is you’re selling, but beyond that, the way that you form relationships, and how you’re able to influence those relationships, through effective communication while showing (not telling!!) the prospect how your solution solves their pain/fills their gap?

You’ll have the successes you’re seeking.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website. Interested in becoming a Fractional Sales Advisor with Sales Homie? Send us a note.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Why Your Startup Sales Deck Keeps Losing Enterprise Deals 💻

The deck that impressed investors does nothing in front of a procurement committee at a large bank or healthcare system. An enterprise buyer isn’t evaluating your market size or your vision. They’re asking three things: does this solve our specific problem, will this vendor exist in three years, and can I…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“On average, only 25% of marketing-generated leads are high enough quality to go directly to sales.” (Hubspot)

Ahh yes, the importance of lead qualification reigns supreme! No different than when you have someone accept your LinkedIn Connection Request (this isn’t a lead…), every lead in the door isn’t ready to have a business conversation about your products or services. Another reason why having a pre-sales process that helps to qualify any and all leads is where most organizations succeed, or miss the mark.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

Christian Delzer - Sales Homie
Chaska, Minnesota

christian@saleshomie.com

Christian helps founder-led and growth-stage companies build scalable, predictable revenue systems. He partners with organizations to align messaging, strengthen outbound sales, and implement repeatable sales processes that drive long-term growth. With experience across enterprise technology, SaaS, operations, and professional services, Christian combines strategic insight with hands-on execution to turn sales into a disciplined, high-performing function.

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) How to Build a B2B Sales Pipeline with No Brand or Budget 🏗️

Building a B2B sales pipeline without a brand or a marketing budget is entirely possible, but it requires a specific playbook that most companies skip entirely...Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Economic growth was weaker than expected in the second quarter, though underlying drivers were mostly solid. At the same time, inflation in June held well above the Federal Reserve’s goal and complicated the central bank’s policy path, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

A separate report showed that the personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the Federal Reserve’s primary forecasting gauge, fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.7%. The readings were in line with forecasts.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🤯 3 Essential Business Basics Too Many Owners Forget

Sales Homie — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, July 24th, 2026

Are you prepared for one more Friday of July? Yes, only one more, already. 🤯 It’s been a fast-moving summer. 🏎️ Has your new prospect pace kept up with the speedy seasonal days?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) What a Great VP Sales Does In Their First Week - Watch For It 👀

Not at 90 days, not at 6 months. By day 30, the split is visible. And if you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it. Just about every Founder and CEO who has been through it agrees. A lot of Executives challenge it. But it’s just as true today in the Age of AI. Maybe even more so, as there just isn’t enough time to scale slowly, or hope someone who is scaling slowly will eventually get there…Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Think for a second how crucially important this is for all sales professionals! When trust and likability top the charts from a buyer’s perspective on important (non-negotiable?) traits in and from a company representative, you can’t afford to miss the mark.

Ways to have a high-impact first impression?

Smile. Eye contact. Confident handshake. Using pleasantries. Being genuine and/or authentic. Being human (not robotic). Put together (not dressed sloppily). Etc.

Alternatively, be careful presenting yourself as a Founder or Business Owner. Although you might represent yourself in shorts and flip-flops, those you’re trying to associate with, or what to partner with, might be turned off by you, just as easily as you’re sizing them up. It can go both ways!

What’s the remedy? Take 10 minutes before your day starts and understand who you’ll be meeting with throughout your schedule, and assume they’ll have the highest expectations on who they’re meeting. It’s easy to dress down your own persona after you’ve established an entry-level relationship. It’s almost impossible to recover the other way around.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) The Human Edge In The Age Of AI Sales 🤖

The sales conversation has changed, but not in the way most people think. The real tension in today’s sales isn’t whether AI belongs in the process; it’s where human involvement still creates value…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“75% of B2B buyers say they take longer to make purchasing decisions today than they did two years ago, pushing outside teams towards more touchpoints, not fewer.” (Hubspot)

Have you heard the phrase ‘swing through the ball,’ or ‘complete the follow-through’ as it relates to various sports? In order to have maximum impact, or velocity, there’s a fundamental motion or action that has to take place. Stopping that natural motion upon releasing the ball, or making contact with a ball and immediately stopping your swinging motion, will dramatically impact the results of that hit, or throw.

The same can be said for your selling motion. Simply because you’ve met your personal quota on the number of engagements, or worse, because you’ve already submitted pricing or a proposal to a prospect doesn’t mean that you immediately stop engaging and providing various types of valued engagements?! Sell through the proposal being submitted. Keep engaging after you’ve provided pricing. It takes more engagement today than it did a generation ago.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

Sales Homie will be launching our podcast series, “Sell Like A Homie,” in July! We’ll be digging into all things sales with different guests, bits, facts, and strategy sharing.

You can follow Sales Homie on YouTube to not miss an episode, or simply keep subscribing to The Sales Report to find clips and links to recent episodes.

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

Chanda Mundil - Sales Homie
Zionsville, Indiana

chanda@saleshomie.com

With more than 20 years of sales leadership experience, Chanda helps organizations build scalable revenue strategies, strengthen sales teams, and create predictable growth. Having led sales organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, Chanda brings hands-on expertise in sales process design, coaching, onboarding, and go-to-market execution. By combining strategic leadership with an operator's mindset, Chanda helps businesses create accountability, optimize performance, and accelerate sustainable revenue growth.

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) 3 Essential Business Basics Too Many Owners Forget 🤯

Like ballplayers at spring training, the smartest business owners keep drilling the basics instead of chasing the next shiny tactic. That discipline is what compounds over time...Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Fed funds futures are pricing in a roughly 82% likelihood that the central bank lifts borrowing costs at its September policy meeting, according to CME’s FedWatch tool. A week ago, those odds sat below 53%.

The central bank is still broadly expected to keep rates unchanged at the current 3.50% to 3.75% at its gathering next week. But even then, there’s a growing minority planning for an increase: Fed funds futures trading indicates a nearly 38% probability of a quarter percentage point hike, up from less than 12% a week ago.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

⚖️ B2B Customer Experience Is At An Inflection Point. Here Is The Question Every Leader Should Be Asking

Sales Homie — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, July 17th, 2026

Are these the dog days of summer? We think so! 🐶 If you’re in the Great Lakes Region, you’re dealing with wildfire smoke and haze. But does your new customer care? Most likely not. 🤷🏼‍♂️ Don’t forget to deliver on all the SOW details that enabled you to secure the opportunity!

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) Broken Technical Infrastructure Is Killing B2B Sales Pipelines. 🛢️

Many B2B teams react to a slowing pipeline by artificially inflating their cold outreach volume. More contacts get imported, extra sequences go live, secondary follow-ups are queued, and automated messages flood prospect inboxes, yet every outbound message needs to land securely in the primary inbox, articulate its purpose immediately, and give the target account an undeniable reason to…Read more here. 👈🏻

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Sales lesson? Sure. Life lesson? Absolutely.

It’s ironic how similar life lessons are to those for people working in sales, and how relatable they can be, or maybe a better word is interchangeable.

How are you supposed to improve your closing percentages if you don’t make any mistakes? As always, the key is to recognize failure and learn from it, developing new or updated techniques or strategies for “the next time.”

If you have a Sales Manager or the Owner of your company who frowns on mistakes, be sure to include them in any meetings or opportunity debriefs so they can see firsthand the value in learning from mistakes.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Why B2B Influencers Are Gaining Momentum 📸

B2C influencer marketing is often associated with celebrities and social media stars with big followings on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. They are often chosen by brands to drive quick sales. B2B influencer marketing takes a more considered approach. Because of the typically more “corporate” nature of the B2B sector, B2B influencer marketing leans into industry experts and thought leaders, chosen for their authority amongst the target audience. They may be journalists, analysts, or well-known industry speakers, and their endorsement is invaluable to B2B brands looking to…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Despite the noise, 69% of B2B buyers accepted a cold call from a new provider in the past. Outbound works when it’s targeted.” (Hubspot)

Like any engagement, a cold call has to be targeted and strategized on when your efforts pay off best. Monday morning at 9:15 a.m.? You’ll get hung up on. Thursday afternoon around 4:05 p.m.? Chances are you’ll catch the owner before they go home, since they hang around a little after their staff leaves for the day.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

Chanda Mundil - Sales Homie
Zionsville, Indiana

chanda@saleshomie.com

🔎 Discover Sales Homie’s Partnered Sales Advisors:

3) B2B Customer Experience Is At An Inflection Point. Here Is The Question Every Leader Should Be Asking ⚖️

B2B customer experience is reaching an inflection point as buyers' expectations rise, service channels multiply, and AI reshapes how teams operate. Yet many organizations are still relying on outdated systems, siloed data, and reactive support models. To stay competitive, B2B teams must modernize their CX strategy, unify customer context, and prepare for a faster, more intelligent era of customer engagement...Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Consumer prices posted their biggest decline in more than six years during June as a sharp swoon in energy prices provided at least temporary relief from this year’s inflation surge, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

The consumer price index, a broad measure of the cost of goods and services across the U.S. economy, was lower than expected across the board. The CPI fell a seasonally adjusted 0.4% for the month, bringing the annual inflation rate down to 3.5%.

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💻 Why LinkedIn Engagement Is Becoming One Of The Most Valuable Sales Signals

Sales Homie — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, July 10th, 2026

Back after a two-week summer break! Hope you had a great 4th of July holiday with you and yours. 🇺🇸 The summer weather is heating up🔥; is the same thing happening with your pipeline(s)?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out growing your business:

1) B2B Prospecting Has Changed. Most Sales Teams Have Not Caught Up. 🐢

The average B2B sales cycle now involves between 6 and 10 stakeholders, according to Gartner’s 2025 buying behavior research. Yet most sales teams are still running prospecting workflows built for a world where a single decision-maker said yes and the deal closed. The gap between how buying actually happens and how outreach is structured explains a significant portion of pipeline underperformance in 2026…Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Nothing in life can be perfect all the time, right? And certainly, in sales, perfection can be the hardest characteristic to achieve!

But here’s the secret…

You don’t have to be perfect. You have to be the best at keeping a relationship moving forward, and that can be inherently clunky. Sometimes, clunky is what’s most comfortable, because real life always seems to get in the way of our personal or professional agendas.

A prospect cancels on you last minute… no sweat! You’ve now gained the opportunity to rebook with that prospect knowing they’ll be ‘that much more’ open to what works for you, since they were the one who had to cancel the last scheduled engagement.

Perfection isn’t hitting a sales goal, and it’s not having every last strategy ready and deployed. Perfection is keeping the prospect progressing through your sales process, whether it be for 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We help $5M-$50M companies build predictable revenue growth.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas:

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Stop Running Batting Practice In Sales: AI Role-Play Is The New Pitching Machine ⚾️

For decades, hitters trained with live batting practice. Then pitching machines brought consistency and repetition. Today, elite teams are adopting AI-driven systems like the Trajekt Arc, technology that replicates the exact delivery, spin, and decision-making context of real pitchers. Now ask yourself, which era does your sales training belong to…Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Low-turnover sales teams are 2.4x more likely to run on 1-2 systems; high-turnover sales teams are 3x more likely to have 5+ tools.” (Hubspot)

ROI in sales can be tricky. If your organization lacks retention and development tactics, be aware that pairing development with newer sales reps often requires investing in additional tools and systems to support onboarding, learning, and coaching.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

🌵 Advisors In The Field:

Christian Delzer - Sales Homie

Christian helps founder-led and growth-stage companies build scalable, predictable revenue systems.

He partners with organizations to align messaging, strengthen outbound sales, and implement repeatable sales processes that drive long-term growth.

With experience across enterprise technology, SaaS, operations, and professional services, Christian combines strategic insight with hands-on execution to turn sales into a disciplined, high-performing function.

Contact Christian:
christian@salessquad.biz
(612) 695-2487

3) Why LinkedIn Engagement Is Becoming One Of The Most Valuable Sales Signals 💻

For years, B2B sales teams operated on a simple premise: find the right job title, obtain contact information, and begin outreach. The approach worked when inboxes were less crowded, and buyers had fewer channels competing for their attention. The challenge today is no longer identifying prospects, but identifying them at the right time...Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

On a year-over-year basis, the labor force is down by just over 1 million, while the employed have also fallen by 1.06 million, and the ranks of the unemployed have risen by 40,000. The employment-to-population ratio slipped to 59% in June, the lowest since October 2021. All that has happened while the unemployment rate has risen by just one-tenth of a percentage point to 4.2%.

“What really affects me is not so much the unemployment rate,” said Dan North, senior economist for North America at Allianz. “What’s an important development is the participation rate, and this is a big leg down in one month, and over the past year it’s a pretty big leg down. I think this is a more important number.”

If you found this content relevant and helpful, please hit the subscribe button below to receive The Sales Report. You can also follow Sales Homie on LinkedIn and Twitter for more conversation and discovery!

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📚 In Sales, Discipline Is The Shortcut You’re Searching For

Sales Homie — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, June 19th, 2026

Congrats! You made it to Friday! TGIF! With the markets and federal agencies closed today, how are you using the time to either relax, reflect, or reset?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) Sales Tech or Sales Training - Where Should You Invest First? 🏋🏼‍♂️

From CRMs to AI SDRs, the promise of sales technology is real. According to a 2024 study by Salesforce and Slack, 43% of small businesses reported exploring new technologies to improve productivity and efficiency. That instinct isn’t wrong. But for most entrepreneurs, the sequence is…Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Why do you need sales stages and a sales process?

If you were into cars, I might ask, “Why do you need first, second, or third gear,” when you simply want to cruise on the highway?

The only way you can reach cruising speed is by using gears or steps that increase your speed. As in a sales process, the only way to get to the close is through a step-by-step process.

Most industries aren’t set up for one-call-close situations. Yes, there are EVs now that don’t necessarily have gears, but fundamentally, the concept is similar.

If you don’t operate with a sales process, or at minimum, sales stages, how are you measuring next steps, or even forecasted and potential revenues?

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) The Hidden Sales Metric Driving Customer Growth 🌱

Sales executives love measurable activity because activity is controllable. Even if closed-won revenue is the only thing that matters, it’s easiest to reach for the levers that are easiest to pull: calls, emails, sequences, voicemails… yet many of the tactics and metrics that have been a focus of B2B sales teams for the last decade-plus are becoming increasingly disconnected from actual customer growth… Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“About 65% of outside account executives hit their quotas, roughly 10 percentage points higher than inside counterparts.” (Hubspot)

If you’re in sales management, what are some of the strategies that you implement to get your team to 80%+ or more of goal attainment? Further, if you have an impact on the budget process, are you writing budgets to perform at 100% of quota attainment when it’s mostly an objective that isn’t achieved by the sales team(s)?

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

Sales Homie will be launching our podcast series, “Sell Like A Homie,” in June! We’ll be digging into all things sales with different guests, bits, facts, and strategy sharing.

You can follow Sales Homie on YouTube to not miss an episode, or simply keep subscribing to The Sales Report to find clips and links to recent episodes.

3) In Sales, Discipline Is The Shortcut You’re Searching For 📚

Everybody wants the shortcut. The growth hack, the overnight success story, the AI strategy that promises instant efficiency gains while completely overlooking the compliance, regulatory, and contractual landmines sitting underneath the operation. They’re waiting for a magic sales strategy, or one podcast episode that transforms a struggling company into a market leader by Tuesday morning... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

The Federal Reserve and Chairman Kevin Warsh on Wednesday followed the script on interest rates closely, voting to keep the benchmark level steady, but dropped several surprises that kept markets guessing about where things are heading. Markets didn’t like it, with major averages swooning after the meeting and during Warsh's news conference.

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🧰 Your Growth Strategy Has A Blind Spot. Here’s How To Fix It.

Sales Homie — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, June 12th, 2026

Here we are, back to Friday! We’re only 3 weeks away from the 4th of July. 🧨 What does that mean? Summer vacations 🏖️ and decision-makers out of the office. How are you strategizing to maximize your prospecting engagements?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) What Is Lead Nurturing? 6 Strategies To Close Hesitant Prospects In 2026 📝

New leads may never result in a sale. As a salesperson, you can't afford to give up on a prospect simply because they are unwilling or unready to buy at the current moment. Instead, savvy sellers use tactics to cultivate these relationships and provide hesitant leads with the support they need to successfully move forward in the buying process…Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Have you ever heard of “Little C’s and Big C’s” in sales?

There’s a theory, and also practical evidence, that if you focus on ‘closing’ your prospect on variable and frequent engagements, you’ll lead them (and drastically increase your closing percentages) to water = aka the sale, or Big C!

What’s a little c, or a small close?

You invite a prospect to visit your office, and they accept. They said “yes.” Or, you invite them to an association event that you’re already planning on attending, and you ask if they’d like to attend with you. They said “yes.”

Get the idea?

Each “small close” is a buying signal towards the ultimate prize.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) How AI Is Reshaping B2B Sales And Why Humans Still Close The Deal 🤖

B2B sales have always been about insight, timing, and credibility. What AI has changed is not the essence of selling, but the speed and precision with which strong teams can execute. And at this point, it’s not a “nice to have.” If your revenue engine isn’t already using AI to prioritize accounts, sharpen messaging and accelerate deal execution, you’re leaving pipeline quality and win rate on the table… Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Just one in three field sales managers reports that more than 70% of their team is consistently hitting quota. Only 9% report 90%+ attainment.” (Hubspot)

33% of sales teams are attaining 70% of their quotas? That’s not very good, is it? So where’s the opportunity if you’re managing a team? 1) Focus on 1-on-1 coaching and counseling on strategy. 2) Find ways to engage your team in peer groups or associations designed to train and/or coach. 3) Break down goals into small, achievable weekly KPIs that will help them lead to monthly and quarterly sales results.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) Your Growth Strategy Has A Blind Spot. Here’s How To Fix It. 🧰

Here is a question most product manufacturers never ask: of every dollar your existing customers could spend with you, how much are you actually capturing? Not your revenue. Not your growth rate. The share of available spend — from accounts you already own — that you are leaving on the table. For most manufacturers, the honest answer is: we don’t know. And that gap is often the highest-return growth opportunity in the business... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Inflation accelerated in May as rising energy costs weighed on consumers, though underlying pressures were less intense.

The consumer price index, a broad gauge of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 4.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Both numbers were in line with the Dow Jones consensus, though the monthly number was 0.1 percentage point below the April reading.

Inflation climbed above 4% for the first time in three years, though the increase met expectations amid concerns over how much the surge in energy prices would impact the economy. The level was the highest since April 2023 and above the 3.8% reading from April.

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🪜 7 Steps To Advance Any Deal Forward

Sales Homie — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, June 5th, 2026

Welcome to June! Come on in, the water is nice. 🏝️ What was good enough for May isn’t good enough in June. Progression is the name of the game in sales. How are you progressing your prospects and pipeline opportunities as you enter month 6 of 2026?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) That Bad Sales Hire Probably Costs You More Than You Think 💸

The national average cost of a bad sales hire across all industries is $177,171. The average annual B2B sales turnover rate is 35%, meaning a team of 10 salespeople can expect to replace more than 3 members per year… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Here’s what a “tech stack” looked like for someone in sales in 2004:

ACT Database (for contacts)
MapQuest (to print off driving directions to your meeting)
Excel (to submit expenses)

Here’s what a “tech stack” looks like for someone in sales in 2026:

CRM (for contacts)
Smartphone (for everything)
AI (for everything else)

- - -

Nothing is truer than change as time evolves any profession or industry, but the sales fundamentals- communication, building trust, following up with your prospects, providing value above your competitors- it’s all still the same and all still important.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Are You A Bottleneck In Your Own Company? 🍼

Most founders don’t fail because they can’t execute. They struggle because they refuse to stop executing. As your company grows, so does complexity. What worked for five people doesn’t work for fifty, and what worked for fifty breaks at one hundred. At that point, your job has to evolve from operator to... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Sales professionals spend about 21% of their day writing emails.” (Hubspot)

Here’s another secret sauce lesson in differentiation: If your competitors are communicating via email 21% of their time, how do you think the trust-building process can speed up (for you) if you’re able to speak to your prospects on the phone, meet with them in person, or engage with them outside of email? Therein lies the challenge, and the reward.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) 7 Steps To Advance Any Deal Forward 🪜

When you have a plan for every conversation, you build momentum. You transform form a vendor pitching a product into a strategic partner guiding a solution. This approach not only shortens sales cycles but also builds the kind of trust that turns skeptical stakeholders into your biggest advocates. It’s how you create predictable revenue, not just a pipeline of maybes... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Private hiring expanded at a brisk pace in May, providing further indication of a stable labor market, ADP reported Wednesday.

The payrolls processing firm said companies added 122,000 workers for the month, up from 105,000 in April and better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 110,000. May marked the strongest month since January 2025. April’s total was revised down by 4,000.

Unlike prior months, when job growth was concentrated in healthcare and a few other sectors, gains were broader-based. Eight of the 10 sectors ADP tracks saw gains, and hiring was evenly distributed across company size and geography.

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🙋🏼‍♂️ Survey: 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights

Sales Homie — Fri, 29 May 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, May 29th, 2026

We’re almost through Q2 of 2026! How is that possible?! 🤪 Are you on track to hit your Q2 targets? 🎯 If not, what are you going to shift as you enter June? Welcome back to the Sales Report; TGIF!

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) An Effective Enterprise B2B Sales Cycle In The Age of AI 🚴🏼

Most sales leaders are obsessed with the wrong question. They tend to ask: "How do we close faster?" But the more nuanced question, the one that separates the top 20% of enterprise revenue teams, is: "How do we qualify better, earn trust deeper, and advance deliberately…" Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

If you were given a “pop quiz” like the ones you got on Fridays in High School, but this quiz asked you to spell out the sales process for your business, would you ace it?

If not, it’s not the type of information that you want to shoot for a “C” grade on. Worse, a “D” for even an “F!”

If you don’t have a sales process, how do you effectively engage with prospects? Since effective selling involves executing the current engagement and then setting up the next one (thinking 2-3 steps ahead of your prospect) and understanding which stage of the purchasing process your prospect is at, how do you know when to push, let up, or close?

And as the Tweet from above states, your answer on the quiz should not be “it depends.”

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) What Is Lead Nurturing? 6 Strategies To Close Hesitant Prospects 🚦

Lead nurturing involves engaging potential buyers with value-based content and personalized outreach across every stage of the sales funnel. It is the process of investing in leads that are not yet ready to buy and helping them get to a place where they feel confident and ready to purchase your product... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.” (Hubspot)

Speed doesn’t always win, but in service or product sales, the vendor rep that responds first back to the prospect has a higher conversion chance simply because they tend to be the most influential vendor in terms of explaining the process, talking about challenges, educating the prospects, and/or even positioning for the reason why the prospect is purchasing in the first place. Vendors that respond late are usually too busy, juggling too many other initiatives, and often don’t slow down through the discovery process. It all impacts the conversion.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) Survey: 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights 🙋🏼‍♂️

Sixty-nine percent of B2B buyers prefer to validate AI-generated insights with sales reps, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company. A survey conducted from August through September 2025 found that B2B buyers are increasingly using... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said Thursday that bringing down inflation in the U.S. remains his top priority, warning that consumer prices are still “much too high.”

Kashkari said that the U.S. central bank would continue taking a “balanced approach” to its dual mandate of price stability and full employment. Still, he noted that inflation has remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target for more than five years, while the labor market is in “decent shape” right now.

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🎓 Stop Selling Features: How B2B Brands Win By Teaching

Sales Homie — Fri, 15 May 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, May 15st, 2026

TGIF! Time for the Sales Report! Are you hitting ⚾️ your goals this month, or have they slipped through the cracks? 🪵 The good news!? You’ve got half the month to make the correction.

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) If Trust Is The Currency Of B2B, Marketers Need To Start Brokering It 💵

Buying decisions are stalling. Not because products are weaker or value propositions unclear, but because buying groups cannot agree. The B2B Institute found the 40% of deals fail to progress due to a lack of consensus. Economic pressure, geopolitical tension, and rapid technological change are making stakeholders more cautious and more divided. Businesses can generate demand, but converting it is becoming… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Everyone has been the new rep on the team before, right?

It’s those first-day-of-freshman-year-of-high-school vibes, where you don’t find yourself equal to those around you.

Well, guess what? You’re in sales. And the only thing that really matters in sales?

High activity.

It causes the sales slumps to disappear. It makes your closing percentage rise. It forces less overthinking on prospect engagement, and helps you get back to doing the fundamental parts of the job… which always leads to new opportunities.

Sure, respect those tenured reps around you. But don’t think you can’t join in their successes simply because you’re new.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

Coaching and Training programming includes membership in one of our Sales Squads, a sales peer group ecosystem, individual Sales and Business Owner Coaching, plus our quarterly sales education series, the Revenue Hangout.

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Founders Under $5M Build With Conversations, Not Emails 🧱

Conversational outreach that works is specific, timely, and actually useful to the person receiving it. More messages (or emails) won’t help if they feel generic — and the more naturally it can happen in real life, the better... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Outside reps now spend almost half their time selling remotely, a massive shift from a decade ago, to meet demands for flexibility.” (Hubspot)

Do you see the opportunity here? Prospects want to meet in person less and less. When (not if) you can find ways to engage with your prospects in person, how much do you want to bet that your sales increase?!

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

Sales Homie will be launching our podcast series, “Sell Like A Homie,” in May! We’ll be digging into all things sales with different guests, bits, facts, and strategy sharing.

You can follow Sales Homie on YouTube to not miss an episode, or simply keep subscribing to The Sales Report to find clips and links to recent episodes.

3) Stop Selling Features: How B2B Brands Win By Teaching 🎓

Buyer behavior has changed fundamentally. 71% of decision-makers say thought leadership is more effective than traditional marketing or sales materials in persuading them. Yet most B2B marketing teams still default to more features, more demos, and more product-led content—approaches that often miss how decisions are actually made. More than 40% of B2B deals stall due to... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Prices that consumers pay for a wide range of goods and services increased at a faster-than-expected pace in April, as another burst in energy prices raised further concerns about inflation’s impact on the U.S. economy.

The consumer price index rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.6% for the month, putting the one-year pace at 3.8%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The monthly rate was as forecast, but the annual rate was 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus.

Excluding food and energy, the core CPI increased 0.4% and 2.8%, respectively, keeping inflation well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal as the monthly rate was the highest since January 2025. Fed officials consider core a better indicator of longer-term inflation trends.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

📉 The Sales Mistake Most Founders Don’t Realize They’re Making

Sales Homie — Fri, 01 May 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, May 1st, 2026

Springtime! ☀️ And Friday! Welcome to May. We’ve reached the month of the year when most start to experience summertime weather. With the temperatures rising, is your pipeline rich and balanced to sustain the heat?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) How To Survive In Business When Sales Drop And Costs Rise ☔️

Small business owners are navigating one of the most challenging economic environments in recent years. Confidence remains below historical averages, inflation continues to pressure margins, and many businesses are struggling to maintain consistent revenue. Knowing how to survive in business is of utmost importance… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Have you ever tried to adjust your quota or fiscal calendar to your advantage?

For those in long sales-cycle environments, there’s a strategy and tactic where rep teams adjust their own prospecting calendars to more effectively (and consistently) produce new revenues.

Just because your company operates on a January - December fiscal, doesn’t mean you need to sell off of it.

Working to get prospects engaged in Q3 and Q4 to set up a strong Q1 (and ultimately Q2), the following fiscal year allows for high revenues at the beginning of important budget zones for the company. For the rep, this puts you in a place to achieve 60-70% of your annual goal before July. Most businesses rely on new revenue, and when it doesn’t hit in Q1 and Q2, achieving goals in Q3 and Q4 becomes much harder.

So, this practice can be a win-win.

The rep approaches Q3 and Q4 as time to build for the next fiscal, while selling non-pressured opportunities throughout the balance of the year to meet an annual goal as they ramp up to heavy output in the new year.

But strategically, you’re focused on selling June - July.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) The Amazon Effect: How B2C Expectations Are Rewiring B2B Sales 🚛

Recently, the concept of the “Amazon effect” emerged, referring to how Amazon’s business model, supply chain, and shipping capabilities have revolutionized retail shopping in both online and offline stores. This effect is not just how consumers buy. According to the latest McKinsey research, 75% of B2B buyers prefer digital services and remote human engagement over a face-to-face buying experience... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Only 30% of companies have a sales referral program in place.” (Hubspot)

The number one rule in new revenue: Current customer wallet share growth and expansion is easier (and less expensive) than acquiring new logos. Yet, 70% of companies are ignoring opportunities to engage that same customer base to “close” a new prospect via referral.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) The Sales Mistake Most Founders Don’t Realize They’re Making 📉

Most founders think about sales in terms of downstream tactics. How do we handle objections? In what ways can we create urgency? How do we get them to say yes? By the time you’re handling objections, something upstream has already failed. The prospect is unclear, uncertain, or unconvinced. Now the burden shifts to your salesperson to “close the gap” with some combination of persuasion, pressure, and hope... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Consumers faced escalating prices in March as the Iran war sent oil soaring and created new challenges for the Federal Reserve, according to a batch of reports released Thursday that showed slower-than-expected economic growth and a generational low in layoffs.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which excludes food and energy, accelerated a seasonally adjusted 0.3% for the month, pushing the 12-month inflation rate to 3.2%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The readings matched the Dow Jones consensus estimates. Core inflation hit its highest level since November 2023.

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⛔️ Your Growth Strategy Isn’t Broken - It’s Avoiding Decisions

Sales Homie — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, April 24, 2026

TGIF; Welcome back to Friday! Did you know that 30% of 2026 has officially passed? 📆 Or the better question: Has your organization achieved at least 30% of its revenue goals for the year? 📈

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) B2B Marketers Are Drowning In Data But Starving For Insight 🤿

Measuring B2B campaigns is hard. Sales cycles are long, buying committees are large, and it can be challenging to work out the likely value of the project that will result from a download of a data sheet, or even if it’s just a competitor keeping tabs on you… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Another day, another dollar?

Not so fast.

Gigantic topline revenue doesn’t always equal success. And endless numbers of customers are not the secret to business growth.

As your business grows and scales, there are pivot-point opportunities to leverage how your culture has evolved, how you support (and partner) with customers, and almost as importantly, how your customers partner back with you, their vendor.

Not all revenue is good revenue, especially when the customer who generates it abuses your resources, lacks professionalism, neglects communication, or spreads false narratives.

When you’re looking to move beyond growth ceiling challenges that don’t involve topline or margin-based revenue, look at the partnership with your customers as an easy answer.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Maximizing Revenue Potential Through Smarter Lead Evaluation Strategies 🤓

Scalable growth depends on treating marketing as a measurable system. That system includes matching leads with strong sales talent, eliminating arbitrary budgets, and investing more in high-performing channels. This shift moves companies from reactive spending to structured, compounding growth... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first, emphasizing the critical role of speed in the sales process.” (Hubspot)

If you were watching the NFL Draft last night, football teams and organizations value speed in most positions on the field. No different than in business! Coaching your reps and development professionals - or - implementing an AI-based solution to correspond with new inbound leads as quickly as possible, is paramount to capturing revenue over your competitors simply because your organization and teams value effective and efficient follow-up.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) Your Growth Strategy Isn’t Broken - It’s Avoiding Decisions ⛔️

Growth strategies don’t usually fail because they’re wrong. They fail because leaders never make or finish the decisions that strategy demands. Instead of choosing how the company wants to grow (anchored in explicit customer and segment choices), where to place real bets, and what to stop doing, teams default to alignment theater. Everyone agrees. Nothing changes. Execution quietly absorbs the cost... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Outgoing Dow CEO Jim Fitterling said clearing the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could take far longer than investors expect.

“Some scenario planning that we did said that even if the straits were to reopen today, just to clear the logistics logjam… is going to take 275 days, maybe more now,” he told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” on Thursday.

The Strait of Hormuz effectively shut down in early March at the onset of the Iran war, triggering a major bottleneck in global energy and petrochemical flows. Fitterling said the path back to normal will be slow and operationally complex.

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🍯 Why Most B2B Salespeople Are Sitting on a Goldmine and Don’t Even Know It

Sales Homie — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, April 17, 2026

Another Friday (yay), and another Sales Report (double-yay)! How did your sales week materialize? One of our Service-based customers was verbally awarded a $290k contract… 💪🏼 after a meeting in which they presented on a $500k contract; Taking swings! ⚾️ And 17 days into Q2, a Manufacturing-based customer has already generated a ton of new revenue. $6.2M on a goal of $8.8M for the Quarter! 💥 It’s been a really solid first few weeks of April.

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) “Buyability” Isn’t Really New, But it is Really Important 🤑

A survey of 750 B2B buyers conducted by the initiative’s researchers identified five main factors that business buyers need to feel confident about. When the researchers analyzed the survey results, they found that the most important factor buyers identified is to feel confident they can defend their decision if the purchase goes wrong. This was slightly more important to buyers than feeling confident the product or service they recommended could do the job… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Any sales rep can ‘tell you’ about their product or services, but the best ones? They find ways to show a prospect how their product or service truly impacts them, makes a difference, solves a problem, and the like.

Said another way, how you engage with a prospect can be seen as a “show me” demonstration: providing stories of success with other customers or providing validated industry guidance or assistance.

If you’re a lazy sales professional, you email a cut sheet and hope your prospect asks questions.

If you’re a motivated sales professional, you become a storyteller that plays chess with your prospects, always thinking 2-3 moves ahead on how you can further engage, who else you can introduce into the conversation, and how you can potentially solve challenges and problems.

Show me, don’t tell me.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Chief Sales Homie

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Flat Revenue is Trying to Tell You Something - Are You Listening? 🙉

Two years of flat revenue doesn't happen to you. It happens because of something. That's a hard sentence to sit with, especially when you've been working just as hard as you always have, showing up every day, pushing every lever you know how to push. But effort isn't the issue. The issue is what's underneath the numbers. Flat revenue is data. Most founders treat it like the weather... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“80% of sales require 5+ follow-ups, but 92% of reps quit after just 4 attempts.” (Hubspot)

Sure, there are industries where a one-call close can be more common, but for the majority of B2B service and product offerings, it takes multiple engagements and follow-ups to ultimately win new business.

The secret sauce? Although it might take 5+ actual follow-ups with a prospect, how many in-person engagements does it take to build trust with a prospect? The answer is almost always more than 5. And rock-solid trust can reduce the number of follow-ups needed to close a sale.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

Sales Homie will be launching our podcast series, “Sell Like A Homie,” in April! We’ll be digging into all things sales with different guests, bits, facts, and strategy sharing.

You can follow Sales Homie on YouTube to not miss an episode, or simply keep subscribing to The Sales Report to find clips and links to recent episodes.

3) Why Most B2B Salespeople Are Sitting on a Goldmine and Don’t Even Know It 🍯

There is a peculiar irony at the heart of modern B2B sales. Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on CRM platforms, email automation tools, and paid advertising - and yet one of the most powerful prospecting resources in existence often sits underused, misunderstood, or completely ignored... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

The Iran war is starting to show up in the U.S. economy in ways both obvious and less so, with soaring energy costs leading the impact and potential hits on broader growth simmering beneath the surface.

Though recession fears have grown since the fighting began more than six weeks ago, most economists think the war will have only modest effects on gross domestic product — maybe shaving off a few tenths of a percentage point overall.

But there’s an important caveat, mainly around duration: Should the current ceasefire hold, inflationary impacts will wear off. If fighting resumes, however, the future becomes much murkier, threatening the fragile growth the economy has seen over the past two quarters.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🤖 How AI is Transforming B2B Sales Without Replacing Human Sellers

Sales Homie — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, April 10, 2026

Welcome back to Friday! Sales Homie closed out Q1 of 2026 with solid results from all of our clients. 💪🏼 Manufacturing (X3), Services (X2), and a few other smaller firms all met or exceeded their quarterly goals. How did your team(s) do? What was your biggest challenge in not meeting the goal? What was the biggest reason why you met your goal(s)? 🤔

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) 7 B2B Acceleration Strategies for Commerce Teams 🏎️

In B2B sales, closing deals quickly is increasingly essential, as businesses navigate uncertain markets and changing buyer preferences.

Dan Saavedra, founder of MergeYourData, analyzed deal cycles among clients with average deals ranging from $10,000 to $40,000. His findings show that deals closed in less than a week won 29% of the time, while those that took more than 60 days closed at just 4%. The best success comes from deals closed in eight to 14 days, which achieve a 61% win rate… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

This is both a life lesson and a Sales lesson. You need to make mistakes to grow as a person and as a professional.

The best place to find yourself in an early career role is either with a manager or an organization that VALUES learning. With learning comes failure and retrials. The beautiful thing about working in sales is that most days are different and offer a fresh start from the day before. What you did yesterday (and maybe didn’t work) can be tweaked and shifted the next day for a potentially better outcome.

The higher up an organization you go, the shorter the leash is for making mistakes, which makes it critical to flex the learning muscle in the early years of your career.

Ever wonder why some people frown upon switching industries or employment focuses later in life?

You guessed it. Not as much room (in terms of time) to make mistakes … and learn. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but the odds are literally stacked against you.

And when you find yourself in a leadership role or in a position of influence over others, make sure you promote failure. You’ll never win every deal. And when you lose 60-70% of the time, you have ample time for learning and evaluation.

But only if you, as the boss, support it.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Chief Sales Homie

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) 6 Winning Cold Call Scripts That Actually Book Meetings 🥇

Every B2B sales rep knows the pressure - you've got a quota to hit, a pipeline to build, and prospects who'd rather ghost you than give you 30 seconds. While your competitors fumble through generic scripts that get shut down faster than a pop-up ad, you need an approach that actually works. The difference between top performers and everyone else? They've mastered the art of the cold call with scripts that spark curiosity, handle objections like a pro, and turn skeptical strangers into booked meetings... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“42% of salespeople rank prospecting as the hardest part of their job, ahead of closing (36%) and qualifying leads (22%).” (Hubspot)

This isn’t surprising, but if you’re a sales professional in a competitive industry, know that your dinner is won by outprospecting your competition. Not closing more deals or working opportunities through your sales process more quickly. It’s literally about having plenty of at-bats, enough opportunities to take a swing at… or better known as, prospecting.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) How AI is Transforming B2B Sales Without Replacing Human Sellers 🤖

Society is currently experiencing a paradox in B2B sales. Everywhere you look — LinkedIn feeds, webinars, and industry panels — AI is touted as a tool that could replace entire teams. Yet sales leaders are still facing burnout, confusion, and minimal measurable impact from these new technologies.

The reality? AI will transform sales, but not by eliminating human salespeople. Instead, it’s elevating the profession but only for leaders and teams willing to fundamentally rethink what “selling” means... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

The U.S. labor market bounced back in March, with job creation much stronger than expected, though the broader picture of a slow-growth labor market held intact.

Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 178,000 during the month, a reversal from the 133,000 decline in February and better than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 59,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. February’s number was revised down by 41,000, while January was revised up by 34,000 to 160,000, putting the three-month average around 68,000.

The unemployment rate edged lower to 4.3%, though that was largely from a sharp reduction in the labor force.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🔌 Sluggish Q1? Here Are 3 Ways To Supercharge Sales

Sales Homie — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, April 3, 2026

First Friday of Q2; has your owner, boss, or manager already asked you about your pipeline for the next month or quarter? 😤 The sales engine never stops, so make sure you’re doing what you can to forecast and produce consistent outputs. 💥

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) The Secrets to Handling Rapid Revenue Growth 🤫

Organizations with exploding revenue growth have what many might see as a “champagne problem,” as Holly Grey, CFO of penetration testing company Horizon3.ai, described it. Anyone popping a bottle of bubbly—which is under tremendous pressure, mind you—is aware of what can happen if they botch it. CFOs whose companies are experiencing hyper growth must balance that growth with the appropriate organizational support… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Being in sales and having discipline don’t always mix.

The most successful teams and organizations find ways to make any processes, actions, or tasks (aka metrics) repeatable. What you end up doing is finding ways to build healthy habits for your team members, who ultimately create discipline in their outputs.

But the largest competitors for any rep, in any industry, at any stage of their selling careers are always … themselves.

Are you “feeling it” today, or not? Want to make a run to the store while you’re out in the field at 3 p.m. instead of doing a couple of more calls? Will you get the proposal completed now instead of doing it tomorrow?

There’s room for flexibility in any sales role; that’s what’s great about the profession. But keeping the discipline to take action on the tasks that will ultimately bring you sales success?

That’s your biggest competitor.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) Your Sales Hire Didn’t Fail - Your System Did 🎓

Most founders blame the rep when a sales hire doesn't work out. The real problem is almost always what they were hired for. Here's what to fix before you hire again... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Referred customers generate 16% more in profits compared to non-referred ones.” (Hubspot)

Warm introductions, referrals, and introductions to trusted “advisors” all add up to greater profits. You typically aren’t competing for business when you generate business from a referral. It’s not given to you, but as the old saying goes, it’s “tee’d up” for a higher-percentage chance at a close. The referred company sees you as the solution, rather than starting a vendor evaluation and grouping everyone together, not knowing the differentiators.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) Sluggish Q1? Here Are 3 Ways To Supercharge Sales 🔌

When markets are uncertain and growth is under pressure, executives often push the sales organization to do more, believing that if sales activity metrics rise, results will follow. In the current environment, that pressure is greater. Growth is harder to generate, costs remain elevated, and performance expectations remain demanding. Yet leaders are still being asked to deliver strong results without much help from the market... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Gasoline prices over $4 a gallon, part of an ongoing supply shock in the energy markets, might seem like a cue for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to head off inflation. At least for now, that looks like a bad bet.

Investors instead expect the central bank to hold benchmark rates steady, or even pivot back toward cuts later in the year as policymakers weigh the risk that higher energy prices will slow growth more than they fuel lasting inflation.

In market-moving remarks Monday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled that raising rates now could be the wrong medicine for an economy already facing a softening labor backdrop and elevated recession concerns on Wall Street.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🕵🏼‍♀️ B2B Companies Adopt Multiple AI Sales Agents

Sales Homie — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, March 27, 2026

You’ve made it to the end of Q1, and it’s Friday! Raise your hand if you hit your Q1 goal 🙋🏼‍♂️ or are on pace to meet your annual goals after the first three months! 💥

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) Are LinkedIn Ads Worth It for B2B Manufacturers? 🗞️

LinkedIn advertising enables manufacturers to target decision-makers based on job title, industry, company size, and seniority. This level of precision allows manufacturers to reach operations managers, procurement leaders, and engineers directly. This is significant as these audiences are often difficult to access through other channels… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

Sales is not about positioning a product or service. From the beginning, it’s about creating trust in the window of relationship that you’re given.

What does that mean?

If you’re selling in an industry that ‘allows’ multiple cold calls, engagements, or meetings with prospects, you’re automatically gifted the opportunity to build trust (which brings you closer to selling your actual product/service). The reps that can balance relationship building are the ones that ultimately close at 30% or higher.

If you’re selling in an industry where prospects expect to see you once or twice, you’ve got it much harder! You have to be able to find relatability that much quicker, at the same time, finding ways to sell solutions (not features).

Focusing on the relationship… even if you’re an inside Account Manager, will ultimately bring you closer to closing at a higher percentage, and ultimately winning more than you lose.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Chief Sales Homie

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) You’re the Reason Your Business Won’t Grow Past This Point 👀

If you’re still the primary salesperson in your own company, your business has a ceiling - and it’s you. Here’s what it takes for founders to finally get out of the sales seat.... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Emails with personalized subject lines are 50% more likely to be opened.” (Hubspot)

Not breaking news, but don’t be spammy with your email subject lines. Make sure they are targeted and unique to your recipient.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) B2B Companies Adopt Multiple AI Sales Agents 🕵🏼‍♀️

If you’re building in B2B, build for a world where companies run multiple agents simultaneously, where the headcount budget is your TAM, and where being the best at one specific thing matters more than being the platform for everything... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

The U.S. budget deficit surpassed $1 trillion for the fiscal year through February but was sharply lower than the same period a year earlier, Treasury Department data showed Wednesday.

Outlays exceeded receipts by $308 billion in February, roughly in line with the deficit recorded in the same month a year ago. For the fiscal year to date, the deficit totaled $1.004 trillion, about 12% lower than the comparable period in 2025, as government revenues rose faster than spending.

✅Subscribe here, homie.

🥶 How To Turn Cold Emails into Sales in 2026

Sales Homie — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 05:00:00 +0000

📬 Friday, March 20, 2026

March Madness has arrived! 🏀 And it’s Friday! Double-whammy enjoyment for some. 😎 Do you have your prospecting and closing plan in place to maximize the last full week of Q1 ahead?

Here’s what you missed this week while you were out selling and growing your business:

1) 10 Best AI Tools for B2B Sales Prospecting in 2026 🛠️

B2B sales prospecting has undergone a structural shift. Static lead lists, generic cold emails, and volume-based outreach no longer produce predictable results. Buying committees are larger, buyers self-educate long before engaging sales, and technical stakeholders increasingly influence purchase decisions. At the same time, sales teams are overwhelmed with operational work, leaving less time for meaningful conversations… Read more here. 👈🏼

📎 Sales Tip(s) of The Week:

What a time to be alive!

How many Gen X or Millennials remember the painful task in our early career years of having someone volunteer to take notes for various meetings?

“Maybe if I look busy and don’t look at my boss, he won’t ask me to take notes…”

No longer!

- - -

I was speaking with a group this week about important AI tools to use in sales, to ensure they’re taking advantage of a new skill set (utilizing AI) to benefit their daily job of prospecting and generating new revenue. The first on the list? An AI notetaker.

When it’s so critically important to build quick relationships with buyers in a world that is ever-busy and noisy, the last thing anyone should be doing is NOT using an AI notetaker. Focus on listening and being present, with eye contact, rather than jotting down the perfect note summary from your meeting.

And if you choose the right notetaker, the summary (of your meeting notes) can be spelled out utilizing different lenses, such as framed as sales follow-ups, making your ‘next steps’ thoughts a whole lot easier.

🦉 Who Is Sales Homie?

We scale your sales strategies to increase your business's revenue and profits, starting at $595/month.

Nate Zoellner, Founder & CEO

To do this, we focus on three areas :

For more information, please visit our website.

CRM SUPPORTER

Get a 30-day free trial from The Sales Report!

The CRM to get your sales organized. Pipedrive users close an average of 28% more deals after their first year. Learn more here. 👈🏼

2) 3 Questions Leaders Can Ask to Identify Solutions for Growth Problems 👨🏻‍🏫

Growth is a tricky thing. You hear it discussed ad nauseam in corporate boardrooms, sales meetings, and marketing team huddles. While growth goals are constantly on your staff's minds, that doesn’t mean everyone knows how to turn concepts into favorable outcomes.... Read more here. 👈🏼

🔑 Sales Stat of The Week:

“Nurtured leads move through the sales cycle 25% faster than non-nurtured leads.” (Hubspot)

It’s amazing how quickly business can seemingly close simply because you’ve taken time to educate, consult, develop, expose, and map out engagement types with prospects! If you don’t have a marketing engine behind you (or your business), nurturing can still happen as effectively, individually, by you acting as a sales consultant.

🎙️ Sell Like A Homie - Podcast

3) How To Turn Cold Emails into Sales in 2026 🥶

Cold emails are easier to send than ever, but many teams still struggle to turn them into real B2B sales conversations. Even with better data, automation tools, and AI-powered personalization, I still hear the same question: Why does our cold outreach generate activity but not a pipeline? In my experience, the issue is not volume, timing, or tooling. It is intent. Most cold emails are written to sell... Read more here. 👈🏼

📊 Weekly Financial Forecast:

Prices consumers pay for a broad range of goods and services rose in line with expectations for February, offering a final look at inflation pressures before an oil shock tied to the Iran war rattled the outlook.

The consumer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 0.3% for the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.4%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday. Both numbers matched the Dow Jones consensus forecast.

Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the core CPI posted a 0.2% monthly reading and a 2.5% annual rate, in line with forecasts of 0.2% and 2.5%, respectively.

✅Subscribe here, homie.