PREFACE

Gavin isn’t me.
Gavin is the best of every great sales manager I’ve had the privilege to work alongside — the instincts, the scars, and the stubborn optimism stitched together into one imperfect, battle-tested leader.

If you’ve ever been handed a quota that made your stomach drop…
If you’ve ever tried to rally a team after yet another leadership change…
If you’ve ever needed to turn things around…
You’ll find something familiar in these pages.

This book was built in moments like those. Not in theory, but in the trenches — where coaching conversations happen in the margins between pipeline reviews and customer calls. Where strategy has to fit on a whiteboard. Where people are tired, but still want to win.

The frameworks in this book became my playbook. But they weren’t inherited from a methodology vendor or dropped in from corporate. They were built deal by deal, manager by manager — refined through trial, grounded in context, and designed to flex.
They’re built to support whatever system you already run — Challenger, MEDDICC, or your own — not compete with it.

Over time, I adapted what I’d learned. I made mistakes. I simplified what worked. You will too. That’s the job.

What’s in front of you isn’t a perfect system. It’s a practical one — built under real pressure, for real teams, trying to win real business.

I built it to serve my teams.
I hope it serves yours.

— Brad