Sales orgs rarely lie. They stop asking questions right where the answers get uncomfortable. The deal looks real, the forecast looks reasonable, and the miss shows up a quarter later.
I spent 20+ years selling enterprise solutions, building sales analytics, and coaching sellers. Now I come in as an independent voice, find where the digging stopped, and tell you what's real.
| Account | Stage | Amount | Close | Red pencil |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regional health system | Commit | $420,000 | Sep 30 | Champion says "we know how to get this bought." Nobody has met the CFO. |
| Logistics platform | Best case | $185,000 | Oct 15 | Single-threaded. Last three updates came forwarded, secondhand. |
| Mid-market insurer | Pipeline | $96,000 | Nov 2 | Rep is in month two of a four-month ramp he was told would take one. |
Who handed you this, and did you check it?
Every forecast is a story someone told someone else. Most of the time nobody is lying. The information arrives secondhand, polished on its way up, and the person who notices the gap learns to keep quiet. I ask the question the room has agreed not to ask.
Each one looks like something else. A marketing problem, an HR problem, a bad quarter. Usually it's a sales problem nobody has named yet.
"Our messaging is dialed in and the team knows the product."
What marketing says, what sales sells, and the problem the customer is trying to solve never meet. Sellers can't position a whole solution, so they pitch features.
Field note coming →"New reps ramp in 90 days. The plan is achievable."
Targets and ramp times were set by the cap table, not by how long a deal takes to enter the funnel and move through a real buying cycle.
Field note coming →"The champion says they know how to get it bought."
That's where the digging stops. The SVP, the CFO, and the CIO each have their own buying motion and their own incentives. The deal needed to go five wide and three deep. It went one.
Field note coming →"Everyone is aligned and the team is bought in."
People operating under threat stop telling the truth. They report what leadership needs to hear, because being honest hasn't gotten them heard or supported.
Field note coming →"It's a personnel issue. HR is handling it."
Influence networks and incentives pull against what leadership is asking for. The split looks like culture. Usually it's a competence gap in sales, and it breeds the surprises that get leaders fired.
Field note coming →I'm independent. I have no stake in internal politics and no ego in the outcome. I go in, talk to the people doing the work, and come back with what's real.
How the audit worksI learned what denial looks like the hard way, in my own life first, and then across two decades in enterprise sales. The talk gives sales leaders a way to see it in their own organizations, with stories, a framework, and some laughs.
Talk and feesA private place for sellers to put down what they're carrying: a 3-minute check-in any day, a weekly Room with other sellers, and veterans in your corner. $25 a month, your own card. Your company never sees your name.
See Off the RecordA three-week, flat-fee engagement for the CFO or operating partner who wants an independent read on the sales org. I keep it to sales and finance, because that's what I know best.
Includes the assessment, up to 20 interviews, the executive report and the readout. Travel outside Austin billed at cost.
Up to 25 people, from the CEO to your newest seller, answer 25 statements across the five places. Ten minutes each, confidential.
Four quarters of forecasts against actuals, the open pipeline, ramp assumptions and attainment. Every finding gets checked against a number.
Up to 20 one-on-one conversations, sellers without their manager in the room. This is where people say what they won't say in a forecast call.
Where denial lives first, what it cost last year, every participant's results, a 90-day plan with owners, and the people most likely to move with coaching. Delivered in a 90-minute readout.
Most people who struggle in a sales org feel undertrained and under pressure at the same time. The vocational and the personal travel together, so the coaching covers both: talk tracks and deal strategy, and what it takes to keep moving.
Month to month, or as a 90-day engagement.
Most sales disasters aren't caused by lies. They're caused by true stories told so well that nobody checks them. Drawing on 20+ years in enterprise sales and a personal story of learning to see what everyone else agreed not to, I walk sales leaders through the five places denial hides and the questions that bring it into the open.
Audiences leave with a question they can use Monday morning: who handed me this, and did I check it?
Longtime MC and emcee for company events. Clips available on request.
Check a datePerformance lift in the middle 70% of sellers in enterprise pilots, using a performance-segmentation approach I co-developed. Most orgs coach the top and manage out the bottom. The money is in the middle.
For most of my life I was the person at the table who noticed the thing everyone had agreed not to say. It got me in trouble before it got me paid. I learned what denial looks like in my own life long before I learned to find it in a pipeline.
Professionally, I've spent 20+ years in enterprise sales and sales analytics. I helped build data models behind the Livestrong wristband launch, worked with one of the largest sales-interaction datasets in the industry, co-developed a method for lifting the middle of a sales team, and moved a John Deere distributor's retail sales team into an outbound motion. During COVID I put together a $15 million PPE order for a hospital network in a matter of weeks.
I don't like to win or lose alone. I bring the right people together and tell the truth, with the bark on it when it needs it.
A family, a method, and fifty years of not looking. A memoir about how a family that never lied still never told the truth, and what it took to start asking.
A 30-minute call, no charge. If an audit or a talk makes sense, I'll say so. If it doesn't, I'll say that too.
Email · hollisron@gmail.com
