Good morning!
Welcome to the three-part series: "Improving Your Revenue Through Art, Music and Design". This week will touch on art. Next week will touch on music, and then three weeks from now, design.
Art is about conviction. Artists do not wait to feel ready. They do the work, and the belief shows up inside it.
Music is about practice. The best performers rehearse the hard passage a hundred times before anyone pays to hear it once.
Design is about structure. A designer treats friction as a defect and removes it one piece at a time.
We are starting with art, because conviction comes first. What does a buyer hear in your first ninety seconds that has nothing to do with your presentation?
86% of buyers say seller expertise is the top driver of trust, yet only 45% describe the sellers they meet as trustworthy. Source: LinkedIn and Ipsos B2B Buyer Research, 2025
That is not a likability problem. It is a preparation problem.
FOR SELLERS You walk into calls with product knowledge and no point of view about the buyer's business, so you sound like every other rep on their calendar. That gap is why your proposals get compared on price instead of remembered on merit. |
FOR MANAGERS The energy in your pipeline meeting is set by you in the first two minutes, whether you plan it or not. A room that opens flat produces forecasts that are hedged, vague, and late. |
FOR OWNERS Your company's belief in its own product travels through every seller on the first call, and buyers hear it when it is missing. When conviction is absent at the top, your team discounts to close and your margin pays for it. |
Conviction is a revenue input, not a personality trait. Buyers decide whether you understand their business in the first few minutes, and that decision sets the price of everything that follows. Sellers who arrive with a real point of view get access to the people who decide. Sellers who arrive with a product tour get handed to procurement.
KEY TERMS
Conviction | Belief the buyer can hear. Built from what you know about their business, not from how much you like your product. |
Studio Time | The prepared hours before the call. No buyer sees them, and every buyer feels the result. |
The Tell | What a buyer reads in your first ninety seconds. Preparation reads as certainty. Improvisation reads as risk. |
DO'S AND DON'TS
DO | DON'T |
Build a point of view on the buyer's business before you build the deck. | Wait to feel confident before you make the call. |
Name one thing you would change about their revenue if it were yours. | Open with your company history and your product line. |
THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE
Pick the account you know least about, give it forty minutes of real research, and open your next call with one sentence about their business instead of yours.
THE WORKSHOP
MODULE 01 · FOR SELLERS
Build the Belief Before the Call
Turn preparation into a point of view the buyer can hear.
Step 1. Pick one account on your calendar this week and give forty minutes to their business, not your product.
Step 2. Write one sentence naming what you would fix about their revenue if it were yours.
Step 3. Open the call with that sentence, then stop talking.
Q. What if the point of view is wrong?
A. Then the buyer corrects you, and you learn more in ten seconds than a discovery script gets in ten minutes. Being wrong out loud beats being vague on purpose.
EXAMPLE. A digital ad seller at a regional publisher had a renewal meeting with a hospital system that had cut spend twice in a year. Instead of rebuilding the same package, she spent an afternoon in their service line data and their competitor's local campaigns, then opened the meeting by saying their orthopedics line was invisible in the market while the competitor owned it. The marketing director spent the next thirty minutes explaining the internal fight over that exact budget, and the renewal came back larger with a new line item attached.
Do This Today. Pick the account you know least about and give it forty minutes before you give it a call. Share It. Buyers do not buy your enthusiasm. They buy evidence that you did the work. |
MODULE 02 · FOR MANAGERS
Set the Room on Purpose
Treat the energy of your meetings as something you build, not something you hope for.
Step 1. Decide before the meeting how the room should feel when it ends.
Step 2. Open with one specific win and the name of the person who earned it.
Step 3. Close by naming the single move the team owns this week.
Q. Is this not just cheerleading?
A. No. Cheerleading is generic praise with no evidence behind it. Naming a specific move by a specific person tells the room what good looks like and makes it repeatable.
EXAMPLE. A sales manager at a broadcast group opened every Monday pipeline meeting with the gap to budget, and forecasts kept arriving padded and late. He changed the first two minutes to one named win with the detail of how it was earned, then moved to the numbers. Within a quarter his reps were volunteering the deals they were unsure about, because the meeting had stopped being the place where you get caught.
Do This Today. Write the first two minutes of your next pipeline meeting before you walk in. Share It. The energy in your meeting is not the weather. It is a decision you make. |
MODULE 03 · FOR OWNERS
Say What You Actually Believe
Give your team language about the product they can repeat without flinching.
Step 1. Write one page on what your product does better than the alternatives, and where it does not.
Step 2. Name the buyer you are wrong for, in writing.
Step 3. Hand both pages to every seller and let them use the second one out loud.
Q. Does admitting a weakness cost deals?
A. It costs the wrong deals. Naming where you do not fit is the fastest credibility you can buy, and it stops your team from selling into accounts that churn in eight months.
EXAMPLE. The owner of a B2B publishing company watched his sellers hedge every time a prospect asked about audience size, because the honest number was smaller than the competition's. He wrote a single page stating that the audience was smaller and more senior, and named the advertiser profile they were wrong for. Sellers stopped apologizing for the number and started leading with it, and average deal size rose because they were finally in front of buyers who wanted that audience.
Do This Today. Write the one page naming who you are wrong for and hand it to your team. Share It. Conviction is not claiming you are best. It is knowing exactly what you are for. |
RECOMMENDED READING
BOOK 01 The War of Art Steven Pressfield Why the work produces the belief, and not the other way around. Written for artists, read by operators. |
BOOK 02 Art & Fear David Bayles and Ted Orland What actually stops people from making the thing, and how the ones who finish handle it. |
BOOK 03 Revenue vs. Sales Mort Greenberg The operating difference between chasing sales and building revenue, from twenty-five years inside the work. |
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Have a good week ahead,
Mort