This weekend, most of us lost an hour of sleep. The clocks jumped forward on March 8th, and for a few days, the rhythm feels slightly off—like the system didn’t get the memo. Revenue leadership transitions work exactly the same way. A sudden shift exposes whether your go-to-market engine runs on mechanics or on …
Revenue Architecture: Building Systems That Survive Leadership Transitions Read More »
Spring is arriving. Growth plans that looked sharp in January are being pressure-tested against real-world results. Budgets are being quietly reshuffled. And in boardrooms and strategy offsites from coast to coast, someone invariably raises a hand and asks: “Should we be doing more events?” Trade shows. Executive dinners. User summits. Webinars. Roundtables. Hosted workshops. …
It is late February 2026. You made it through the January board meeting. The deck looked great, the pipeline chart pointed up and to the right, and someone—probably more than one someone—said some version of: “We just need to hit Q1. We can reinvest in the long game later.” Later almost never comes. I …
Why Boards Choose Short-Term Revenue Over LTV—and What CEOs Can Do About It Read More »
Your customer satisfaction scores look solid. Your Net Promoter Score is respectable. Yet your referral engine sputters along at half the rate you need. Sound familiar? Here’s what most leadership teams miss: customers don’t remember experiences the way accountants measure them—by averaging everything. They remember like humans, which means your carefully tracked “average experience” …
The Peak-End Rule in Customer Experience: Designing Moments That Drive Referrals Read More »
As we kick off 2026, CEOs, Marketing and Sales leaders across B2B companies of all sizes are finalizing growth plans, setting aggressive pipeline targets, and aligning their go-to-market strategies. Yet one of the most consequential drivers of profitable scale rarely makes it into board presentations: how marketing and sales stages are actually defined—and when …
The Hidden Tax of Broken Stages: How Vague Pipeline Definitions Quietly Kill B2B Growth Read More »
If you’ve read my earlier post on The Half-Life of Cross-Sell, you know the uncomfortable truth: your window to sell more to an existing customer decays rapidly—often in days, not weeks. But here’s what I didn’t fully explore: the psychology behind why that window closes so fast, and more importantly, how both B2B and …
Do You Want Fries With That? Revisiting the Half-Life of Cross-Sell Read More »
As we kick off 2026, I’ve been thinking about an uncomfortable truth: the biggest limitation on most teams isn’t talent, resources, or market conditions—it’s the invisible beliefs team members hold about their own potential. After spending three decades building and leading teams across multiple industries, I’ve watched countless smart leaders inadvertently create cultures where …
From Fixed to Flourishing: How Leaders Build Teams That Embrace Growth Read More »
As we settle into 2026, I’ve been thinking about an unlikely source of marketing wisdom: the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Recent neuroscience research reveals that this simple game, which we’ve all played as children and adults, is actually a microcosm of human decision-making under competition—and the insights have direct implications for how we …
What Rock, Paper, Scissors Can Teach Us About Marketing Read More »
You’ve invested eighteen months and $2 million into a product that was supposed to revolutionize your category. Customer pilots came back lukewarm. Your team keeps finding reasons why next quarter will be different. But pulling the plug means admitting those 18 months were wasted—and nobody wants to be the executive who burned through capital …
The Sunk Cost Trap: When Loyalty to a Bad Bet Drains Your Future Growth Read More »
January’s here, which makes this the perfect time to address one of the most expensive biases in business. The fresh start effect—a behavioral science principle showing that temporal landmarks like New Year’s Day boost our motivation to change—gives us that extra push to tackle hard truths (Dai et al., 2014). Here’s one worth facing: …
The Halo Effect: Why Your Best Hire Might Be Your Worst Decision Read More »
Award winning Chief Marketing Officer, Founder, and Investor with a history of building profitable companies and top-tier brands for the financial services, fintech, data, martech, health care, insurance, and consumer financial products industries.
Copyrights 2026 Rich Smith’s All Rights Reserved
