The number goes
back to zero.
You can close the biggest deal of your career and on the first of the month it is gone. Almost no other job works that way, and it is the reason a sales floor is really a resilience problem wearing a revenue costume. Methodology is taught constantly. What happens to a rep in the third bad week is taught almost never.
These formats are free, they run inside a sales calendar, and nobody needs to have read the book first, including whoever is running it.
Where this comes from. Chris Sund is a keynote speaker and the bestselling author of You Are Capable of More. He has spent fifteen years running sales organizations, taking one company from a startup to one of the largest in its industry with revenue growing 10x in two years, which means he has sat through the good quarters and the bad ones from the other side of the board.
What this is
not.
This is not a methodology. Nothing here touches discovery, qualification, forecasting, or negotiation, and your team probably already has a framework they were trained on and half use.
The problem with kickoff energy is not that it is fake, it is that it has no mechanism attached. These formats exist so the room leaves with something to do rather than something to feel.
If the territory is wrong, the split is wrong, or the product does not compete, your reps know it and a development session will be heard as a dodge. Fix what you can first.
An hour before the phones get busy, a slot inside a kickoff agenda, a cohort across ten weeks. Nobody has to lose selling days.
No budget line, no vendor agreement, no license. Print it and run it. The material is free and stays free.
The concepts that land
hardest on a sales floor.
There are ten in the book. These four are the ones that get a sales team quiet.
Own It. Every Day.
Sales gives you the richest supply of true explanations in any profession. The territory, the pricing, the lead quality, the product roadmap, the competitor who undercut you, the buyer who went quiet.
Every one of those can be accurate and none of them move. This session separates the explanation that is true from the one that is useful, without asking anybody to pretend the constraints are imaginary.
Read the concept →Seek Truth. Not Praise.
Sales culture runs on recognition, which works right up until it becomes the only thing anybody hears. A rep who has been told they are great for six quarters and is quietly slipping does not get the conversation until the number forces it.
Run this before a call review cycle. It changes what people ask for from their manager, which is a more durable fix than changing what managers are told to give.
Read the concept →Unlock Your Hidden Gear
Every board has reps working well below what they are capable of, and it is almost never effort. It is somebody who decided a while ago that they are a mid-market person, or not a hunter, or not built for enterprise, and has been living inside that sentence ever since.
Run this when you look at your board and can name three people who should be higher on it than they are.
Read the concept →Relentless Improvement
Most reps get meaningfully better for about eighteen months and then stop, because the job becomes repeatable and repeatable feels like competence. Five years in, a lot of people are running the same call they were running in year two.
This is the session for a tenured team that is hitting number and has not changed anything about how they sell since the last reorg.
Read the concept →Five formats,
five calendars.
Same material, different levels of commitment. Start with whatever your team will realistically show up for.
The Lunch and Learn
All ten concepts at about five minutes each, with a full run of show and the exact question to ask for every one. Nothing to prepare beyond printing a page, and nobody needs to have read the book.
Works for: a Monday sales meeting, a slot inside a kickoff agenda, a QBR morning, or a regional get-together.
Open the Guide →The Book Club Guide
One session per concept, written so any manager or rep can run it rather than requiring a facilitator. Honest questions, one that asks more of the room, and a challenge to carry into the week.
Works for: a pod meeting weekly, an SDR team, a manager cohort across regions, or a President’s Club group. Everyone needs a copy of the book.
Download the Guide →The Workshop
One concept worked properly instead of ten skimmed. A question on the board, silent reflection, tables of four, and the group deciding together what it will change. Sixty, seventy five or ninety minutes.
Works for: a breakout at the kickoff, a pod or region meeting, a ramp class, or a quarterly reset when the number is not where it should be.
Open the Guide →The Boot Camp
All ten condensed into a day. Each concept runs the same loop: short teach, silent reflection, table discussion, decision. The group leaves with a written plan instead of notes.
Works for: the day before or after a kickoff, a leadership offsite, a President’s Club trip, or the front end of a new hire class.
Open the Guide →The 10-Week Program
The deep version, and the answer to kickoff energy that evaporates. One concept a week with a real quarter happening in between, so people try something and report back.
Works for: the ten weeks following a kickoff, a new hire ramp class, or a first-time manager cohort.
Open the Guide →Running it
around a kickoff.
Things Worth Knowing Before You Start
Kickoff energy has a three week half life. This is the most predictable thing in sales and almost nobody plans around it. If a keynote is the whole intervention, February looks exactly like last February. Put something on the calendar for week three before anybody leaves the room, even if it is only the first book club session.
Do not give it the graveyard slot. The last hour of day two, after the comp plan reveal and before the dinner, is where good content goes to die. Morning of day one or first thing day two.
Managers participate, they do not present. Every guide is written so the person running it answers the questions too. A director who says out loud which of these they are bad at changes what the floor is willing to admit, and sales is not short of people performing certainty.
Never run it the last week of a quarter. Obvious, still happens, and it teaches your team that development is what the company does when revenue does not matter.
If You Are Building a Reading List Instead
There is a separate page of books for sales reps, with honest write-ups of seven titles that have research or a real operating record behind them. Most of them are not mine, and it says which ones to skip.
The highest level of success is helping others become more.
Or bring Chris
to the room.
Sales kickoffs, national meetings, President’s Club, and leadership offsites. Bulk copies can be paired with a keynote so the team leaves with the material rather than the memory of a good hour.
Bring Chris In
The keynote, a facilitated day, or bulk copies for a kickoff or a club trip.
Start a Conversation →The Comfort Ceiling Assessment
Twenty five questions across five areas. Runs on a phone in ten minutes and gives a room something concrete to talk about.
Take It →The Promise
One thing you have been putting off, with a date on it. A strong closing exercise for a kickoff day, and it takes four minutes.
Make One →The Printables
Worksheets for all ten concepts, ready to print for every seat in the room.
Print Them →Seen On
Chris has taken this material onto morning television across the country, and writes for Forbes and Inc.
When I’ve got something worth sending.
Just a story or an idea I picked up that I think will help you.
Sometimes that’s twice in a month. Sometimes it’s not for a while.