Productivity Centre

I had a conversation last month in Amsterdam with a sales director who'd been in the industry for 20 years.

"Frank," he said, looking genuinely bewildered, "I used to know exactly how to close a deal. Now I don't even know when the bloody deal starts."

I laughed. Then I realised he wasn't joking.

Welcome to the new world of sales, where everything you learned in 2015 is about as useful as a Rolodex. (Yes, I'm old enough to remember those.)

Look, the fundamentals haven't changed—people still buy from people they trust, relationships still matter, value still wins. I've been training sales teams across 70+ countries for a quarter-century, and those truths are eternal.

But how those fundamentals play out? That's shifting faster than a politician's promises.

The sales professionals absolutely crushing it right now aren't the ones with the slickest pitch decks or the biggest LinkedIn networks. They're the ones who've adapted to how buyers actually behave in 2026—not how sellers wish t...