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Insights

The research, translated into things you can say on Monday.

One substantial piece a week on the science of how people decide, the moments where deals actually die, and what corporate training in India gets wrong. Sources cited, always.

The science of buying

Why buyers decide about you in 100 milliseconds — and what to do in the other 59 minutes

Princeton research shows trust judgements form in a tenth of a second and barely move afterwards. Here is what that means for how you open a sales call.

2026-08-127 min read
Sales leadership in India

Why 97% of Indian companies can't tell you whether their sales training worked

India's largest study of enterprise sales found that only 3.3% of companies track training against revenue per salesperson. The problem is not the workshop. It is the silence afterwards.

2026-08-058 min read
Speaking & pitching

How to open a keynote in the first 30 seconds (and the three openings that kill one)

The opening of a talk is the only part the audience is guaranteed to be paying attention to. Here is how to build one, and the three habits that waste it.

2026-07-296 min read
The hard moments

The five objections that kill Indian B2B deals — and what to say instead

Roughly a quarter of B2B deals in India die at closing and another tenth at objection handling. Here are the five that do the most damage, and the language that works better.

2026-07-159 min read
The science of buying

Why a discount changes what your buyer experiences — not just what they pay

Identical painkillers produced measurably different relief when the stated price changed. The implication for how you discount is uncomfortable and worth sitting with.

2026-06-246 min read
The hard moments

What to say when they say “send me a proposal”

The most dangerous sentence in Indian enterprise sales, because it feels like progress. Here is how to tell a real request from a polite exit.

2026-06-036 min read
Speaking & pitching

Your pitch deck's story is backwards

Most decks open with who you are and end with what the customer gets. Reverse it, and the same slides start working.

2026-05-137 min read
Speaking & pitching

Executive presence is four signals, not a personality

“Be more strategic” is the least useful feedback in corporate life. Here is what people are actually responding to when they say someone has presence.

2026-04-227 min read
Sales leadership in India

What should you pay a sales trainer in India?

Almost nobody in this market publishes prices. Here are the real ranges, what drives them, and how to tell whether a quote is reasonable.

2026-04-018 min read

Coming up

Four clusters we are working through

The science of buying

  • What Damasio's patients teach you about closing
  • The endowment effect and why pilots convert
  • Loss aversion, used honestly
  • Why the buying committee decides differently than any of its members would

The hard moments

  • Handling procurement without losing margin
  • The discovery questions that make buyers convince themselves
  • What to do when the champion leaves
  • Reviving a deal that went silent

Speaking & pitching

  • Reading a teleprompter without sounding like it
  • The 10-slide deck that actually closes
  • How to handle a hostile question
  • Opening a sales kickoff so the room stays with you

Sales leadership in India

  • Building a reinforcement system your managers will actually run
  • Ramping an SDR in 90 days
  • How to measure training against pipeline, not feedback forms
  • Should you hire a sales trainer or build enablement in-house?
Want one of these sooner, or have a question you would like answered properly? Tell us — reader questions jump the queue.