RevHeat

RevHeat is passionate about your business growth and The Sales Alpha Roadmap™ is our secret weapon. A process that allows you to know exactly how much more effective your company could be in dollars, what it will take to accomplish it and how long it will take.

We know you've spent money with "sales experts" in the past.  Sometimes it helped other times it did not.  That makes it really difficult to gauge the effectiveness of any dollar spent.  We will help you define the real ROI, the effort it will take and the plan of attack that will work before any lengthy commitment.

Chief Scaling Officer

Ken Lundin & Associates

The world of Sales Training and Consulting is broken. Typical one or two-day classes to train the individuals on the sales team or a sales strategy session alone fail to produce the results you pay for more often than not.

Unlike the typical “drinking from a firehose” two-day sales training event or sales consulting project.  We offer a recurrent model, which takes a holistic look at how your company can achieve predictable, sustainable sales growth. This approach assures greater adoption, retention, and use of the new skills through reinforcement of a smaller set of more important skills.

With the only full-service growth consultancy on the market, we have the resources to focus where you need the attention and multiply the impact a fully aligned marketing and sales effectiveness plan can provide your company.

President

Okinus, Inc.

Senior Vice President Of Sales

Optymyze

Vice President of Sales

Insperity

Senior Consultant

Your Sales Team Isn’t Broken. Your System Is.

If you're a founder, CEO, or sales leader still stuck in the weeds, chasing deals, or cleaning up after underperformers—it's not a "sales talent" issue.

You don’t have a repeatable sales system.

Here’s what I see every day:
❌ Sales is reliant on a few “closers” instead of a scalable team
❌ Training is disconnected from daily execution
❌ Forecasts feel like fiction—and reps aren’t held accountable
❌ Founders still carry the pipeline because the team can’t

That’s why I built the SmartScale 90 System™️ (S90™️)—a sales infrastructure built for scale.

We don’t "train" salespeople.
We install the system that makes sales consistent, coachable, and scalable.

🚀 What We Deliver

✅ 300% increase in win rates
✅ 20–30% higher rep productivity
✅ Strategic hiring and onboarding that sticks
✅ CEO out of sales—team into action

I’ve helped companies from early-stage to $1B+ build sales organizations that drive growth without guesswork.

👊 Ready to build a sales team that performs with or without you?

🔗 Book a strategy session: https://calendly.com/ken-lundin/linkedin-intro

#RevHeat #SalesOperatingSystem #FounderLedSales #SalesLeadership #ScaleSales #SalesTrainingThatWorks #B2BSales

Let me tell you something most founders don’t admit out loud…

You’re not “busy.”
You’re over-committed with zero boundaries - and it’s killing your clarity.

Several years ago I was working with a company
where the CEO was grinding 70-hour weeks, stressed out,
always “catching up tomorrow.”

Revenue wasn’t the problem.

His calendar was.

So here’s the deal:

If your mind is running at 110% every day, your team feels it.

Your decisions get worse.
Your patience gets thinner.
Your creativity flat-out disappears.
And you can’t scale a business on fumes.

So this weekend, try this one thing:
Give yourself 24 hours where your laptop stays CLOSED.

No Slack.
No email.
No “quick follow-ups.”

Just space.

Because the truth is this:

Your business doesn’t need a burned-out operator.

It needs a leader who can actually think.

Take the break.

You’ll make more money Monday.

Ken Lundin

Founder @ RevHeat• $1B+ Closed | $4B+ in Client Exits • Scaled Clients From $3 to $18M in 18 Months, & $10 to $60M, $98 to 420M • 4 Unicorns • Bootstrapped to $78 Million • Sales Systems That End Founder Burnout

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Business owners don’t want to hear this, but it’s the truth:

Your company mirrors your habits.

When you’re tired, stressed, distracted, eating like trash, and sleeping like you’re in college again…
your decisions get slower,
your patience gets shorter,
and suddenly every problem feels 2x bigger.

You’re not “losing momentum.”
You’re under-fueled.

Healthy business?
Start with a healthy operator.

And no - you don’t need a Navy SEAL morning routine.

You need the basics:
👉🏼 Sleep that isn’t optional
👉🏼 20 minutes of movement
👉🏼 Food that doesn’t sabotage you
👉🏼 Boundaries you actually honor
👉🏼 Time to think instead of react

Because here’s the pattern I see every single week:

🔥 Leader gets healthier → business gets stronger.
🔥 Leader gets clearer → team gets calmer.
🔥 Leader gets consistent → revenue steadies.

You don’t fix a foggy business with more hustle.

You fix it by fixing the person steering the ship.

If your health is slipping, don’t kid yourself - your leadership is slipping too.

I’ve seen this play out with founders, CROs, and sales leaders.

Body’s exhausted.
Brain’s foggy.
Stress is sky-high.
And then they wonder why their team is inconsistent.

I worked with a CEO last year who hadn’t taken a real break in 18 months.
He thought the business needed him “on” 24/7.

But the truth?

His exhaustion was the biggest bottleneck in the company.

When he fixed his sleep, started walking daily, and actually took care of himself…

Decision-making improved.
Conflict went down.
Sales went up.

Wild concept, right?

Healthy humans lead better.

So here’s your Sunday challenge:
Do one thing today that makes tomorrow’s version of you sharper

A workout.
A long walk.
A real breakfast.
An hour with no phone.

Leadership isn’t just strategy and KPIs.

It’s the state you show up in.

Protect the asset - you.

There’s a hidden tax in entrepreneurship nobody talks about:

Every hour you “save” by skipping sleep, movement, or downtime
gets billed back to you with interest.

I’ve worked with enough CEOs to see the same pattern:

Year 1–3:
“I’ll grind now and rest later.”

Year 4–7:
“Why am I tired all the time?
Why is my creativity dropping?
Why do small problems feel like big ones?”

Year 8+:
“My business didn’t burn me out. My habits did.”

You want the simplest performance framework on the planet?

Here it is:

Sleep = decision quality
Movement = energy
Downtime = perspective

Take any of these away and your execution falls apart in slow motion.

If you can’t remember your last real day off,
or you wear “I’m so busy” like a badge of honor...
that’s the health tax collecting.

This week, try something radical:
Build your calendar around the things that keep you healthy - then plug in the work.

Every founder I’ve coached who did this made more money, not less.

Your body is not a liability.
It’s the only competitive advantage that can’t be copied.

Protect it.

Business owners: If your family only sees the tired version of you, this post is for you.

I was talking to a client this week who said,
“Ken, I’ll make time for myself once things calm down.”

And I laughed (kindly) because if you run a business,
you know that “once things calm down” is the biggest lie we tell ourselves.

Here’s the truth:

Your business will take every ounce of time you give it.
It will eat your evenings.
It will eat your Saturdays.
And if you’re not careful… it’ll eat the people you actually care about the most.

So here’s my Sunday message to you:
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲.

Because the irony?
Every entrepreneur I’ve ever coached performs better when they stop trying to sprint seven days a week.

Your team shows up better.
Your decisions get sharper.
Your stress drops.
Your creativity comes back online.

And your family, the people who are in the stands cheering for you even when you’re losing, they get the version of you they actually deserve.

So before you open that laptop today… pause.

Take your partner out for lunch.
Play with your kids.
Call your parents.
Sit in silence for 20 minutes.
Do something that reminds you you’re a human first, a business owner second.

Because your business needs a healthy you a lot more than it needs one more “quick task.”

Have a great Sunday!

Everyone thinks the top reps are the most “coachable.”

Nope.

We tested this across 12,744 assessments.

Difference in coachability between the top 10% and bottom 10%?
Zero.
Read that again. ZERO.

The top 1% win because they’re:
740% better at closing
476% higher in real commitment
468% more comfortable discussing money
380% better at qualifying

And shockingly?
More skilled at CRM + tech execution

Here’s the founder takeaway:
Stop hiring “athletes with potential”
because you think they’re coachable.

Start hiring for the actual competencies that produce revenue.

Coachability doesn’t close deals. Capability does.

I always get asked:

“Ken, what actually happens when you run this process inside a real company?”

Alright — here’s one.

We walked into a company that was drowning.

Three-year sales slide.
Largest account gone.
Missed payroll.
Tension everywhere.

Here’s what happened after we ran Audit → Accelerate → Advance:

$4M closed in 6 months

40% YoY growth

$12.2M over the next 18 months

And one rep went from a performance-improvement plan…
…to $21.7M sold and #1 in the company

They went from $10M → $60M in 5 years with a six-person sales team.

Big turnaround doesn’t come from “more hustle.”

It comes from 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿.

Founders:
If you fix the system, the numbers follow.
Every time.

Your sales process isn’t your problem.
Your repeatability is.

One of the biggest myths I see inside organizations is:

“We just need a better sales process.”

No.
You need a repeatable system the team actually follows.

When teams are inconsistent, leaders obsess over tactics:
New scripts.
New CRM workflows.
New “closing tricks.”

But here’s what really scales revenue:

A repeatable, scalable framework.

Frameworks for discovery.
Frameworks for qualification.
Frameworks for advancing deals.
Frameworks that make every rep (veteran or rookie) look like they’ve been doing this for years.

This is the final step in our turnaround method: Advance.
Not “more activity.”
Not “more pressure.”
Not “more tools.”

Just consistent execution.

The companies that grow from $10M to $60M
don’t win because they hustle harder.

They win because they remove the guesswork.

Make success predictable - and your revenue becomes predictable.

Most leadership problems aren’t leadership problems.
They’re avoidance problems.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most founders don’t want to hear:

If your team is confused, slow, or inconsistent…
It’s usually because you’re being unclear on purpose.

Not because you don’t know what to do.
But because clarity creates friction.

Clarity means:

- Saying no to people you like
- Calling out behavior you’ve been tolerating
- Making decisions that disappoint someone

Great leaders don’t avoid discomfort.
They trade short-term discomfort for long-term trust.

If you want a high-performing team, ask yourself this today:
👉 What conversation am I delaying that everyone already feels?

Let me give you something most sales leaders don’t want to admit:

Your team isn’t struggling because of the economy,
the market, or “slow months.”

They’re struggling because you’re trying
to fix symptoms instead of the source.

Here’s what I mean.

Every week I talk to CEOs and VPs of Sales who say the same thing:

“We’ve done the training.
We’ve run the workshops.
We’ve bought the tech.
Why aren’t we seeing results?”

And the answer is always the same:

You can’t accelerate what you haven’t audited.

If you don’t know your team’s actual skills,
mindset gaps, and selling behaviors…

you’re throwing darts blindfolded and praying you hit the board.

This is why the companies we work with see results FAST:

👉🏼 We baseline first.
👉🏼 We skill-up second.
👉🏼 We scale third.

Audit → Accelerate → Advance.

Three steps. Every time.

And when you follow it?

That’s when you see the $4M jumps in six months…

the pit-plan reps who turn into top closers…

the teams that go from “barely hanging on” to doubling revenue.

So here’s my Thursday challenge to you:

❌ Stop guessing.
✅ Start measuring.
👉🏼 Then build the plan based on reality - not optimism.

If you want the blueprint we use to take reps from inconsistent to elite,
drop me a message. I’ll send it your way.

Happy Thursday - let’s go build some closers.

Founder @ RevHeat • $1B+ Closed | $4B+ in Client Exits • Scaled Clients From $3 to $18M in 18 Months, & $10 to $60M, $98 to 420M • 4 Unicorns • Bootstrapped to $78 Million • Sales Systems That End Founder Burnout

Most people spend the day after Thanksgiving in a food coma.

Founders?

We spend it thinking about next quarter…
and whether our team is actually ready for it.

Here’s what I can tell you after working with more than a thousand salespeople and 150+ CEOs:

The problem in most companies isn’t effort. It’s clarity.

You’ve got sellers working hard on the wrong things, in the wrong order, with zero objective insight into where the real bottleneck is.

You wouldn’t take a road trip without knowing where you're starting from…
But most founders try to scale revenue without ever establishing a baseline.

So here’s a simple Friday reminder as you stare down the last month of the year:

If you want 2026 to look radically different,
you need to do three things before January hits:

1️⃣ Audit your team - not vibes, not guesses,
not “I think Sarah needs prospecting help.”
Objective data on skills, mindset, and the hidden stuff that sabotages deals.

2️⃣ Accelerate the short-term wins - because nothing builds buy-in like early results.

3️⃣ Advance the systems - so the wins repeat without you hovering over every deal.

Companies that do this don’t grow by 5–10%.
They grow by 40%+ in six months and unlock reps who go from PIP to President’s Club.

So while everyone else is refreshing leftovers…
You can be refreshing your entire revenue plan.

Happy Friday and let’s finish the year with intent.

One small skill upgrade turned into $4M in 6 months. Here’s how.

Quick story:

A company came to us in free fall.
Missing quota. Pipeline a mess. No consistency.
Classic “we hired good people, why isn’t revenue going up?” scenario.

We didn’t change the market.
We didn’t change the product.
We didn’t even add headcount.

We changed the system.

We audited.
We upskilled.
We coached in active deals - not theory.
Then we installed repeatable frameworks.

Result?

$4M in 6 months.
$12.2M in 18 months.

Then $10M → $60M in five years…
…with only six reps.

Scaling isn’t magic.

It’s math.
Systems.
Clarity.
And the right reps doing the right things.

Founders, before you hire, optimize what you already have.

The upside is bigger than you think.

Let me be blunt for a second.

Every time I walk into a company where the sales team is missing quota,
the story is always the same:

They’re training the wrong skills…
for the wrong people…
at the wrong time.

And then everyone’s shocked when revenue flatlines.

Here’s the reality business owners don’t hear enough:

You can’t fix what you refuse to measure.

When we turned around that sales team that went from $10M → $60M,
it didn’t start with “more activity,” “better leads,” or “fancier scripts.”

It started with one thing:
𝗔 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁.

Not “Hey team, what do you think you need?”
Not “Let’s buy whatever training is trending on LinkedIn this month.”

I’m talking about an objective measurement of:
Their will to sell
Their sales DNA
Their mindset
Their actual tactical competencies

(And yes, half of most sales teams don’t even have the basics. Our research proves it.)

Once we knew exactly where they stood, everything changed:

✅ We customized training based on gaps, not guesses
✅ We coached to real deal pressure, not theory
✅ We created early wins that rebuilt confidence
✅ And then we scaled the system

Results?
🚀 $4M in 6 months.
🚀 $12.2M in 18 months.
🚀 And eventually, one rep went from a PIP to $21.7M and became #1 in the entire company.

All because we stopped guessing.

If you want 2026 to be different, do this one thing:
Audit before you train.

Stop throwing “motivation” at what is really a skill, mindset, or process problem.

Your sales team doesn’t need more hype.
They need clarity.
And clarity starts with data.

The College Football Playoff didn’t just screw up.   It told the truth about how things really work.

And it hit me harder than I expected.

- Notre Dame gets left out.
- Alabama gets a pass.
- Criteria shift.
- Explanations evaporate.

Everyone’s pretending the system makes sense… while knowing damn well it doesn’t.

Here’s the part that stuck with me:

Isn’t this exactly what it feels like to work inside a company trying to scale?

You think you understand the goals—
 until suddenly you don’t.

You think you know the rules—
 until someone changes them in the boardroom.

You think you’re winning—
until the “committee” moves the goalposts and calls it strategy.

It’s the same emotional whiplash players, coaches, and fans felt watching the CFP unfold.

- Confusion.
- Frustration.

That low-grade resentment that comes from being judged by criteria nobody will actually say out loud.

And here's the real why this hit home:

- People don’t burn out because work is hard.
- They burn out because the game feels rigged.

The ongoing implications—CFP or GTM—are identical:

- You stop trusting the people running the show.
- You start guessing instead of executing.
- You put in effort… but you stop putting in belief.
- You wonder if excellence even matters, or if narrative matters more.

We don’t talk about this enough.

Not in college football.
Not in business.
Not in scaling teams.
Not in the messy middle between “we’re growing” and “we actually know what the hell we’re doing.”

So here’s my question to you:

Have you ever felt like you were doing everything right…
 and still got left out of the playoff?

Because THAT is the conversation founders, sales leaders, and operators need to have.

Not more frameworks.
Not more dashboards.
Not more slogans about alignment.

Just the raw, human truth about what happens when direction is unclear, rules shift, and the people doing the work feel invisible.

If this hit you the way it hit me, I’d love to hear:
 
Where have you seen the “CFP effect” inside a business? Or hell—inside your own career?

Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Most sales teams aren’t failing. They’re flying blind.

Let me kick off your week with something every CEO and sales leader needs to hear:

You don’t have a sales problem.
You have a visibility problem.

When we walk into a company that’s missing quota, the first thing I ask is:

“Show me the baseline.”

Nine times out of ten… there isn’t one.
No objective measurement.
No clarity on skills.
No real understanding of what’s actually holding the team back.

It’s like saying, “Let’s get to New York City!”
without knowing what city you're starting from.

When we finally run an objective audit, the truth hits hard:
People are in the wrong roles.
Reps don’t have the skills leadership thinks they have.
Mindsets are quietly sabotaging deals.
And the team is working 10x harder than they need to.

Once you SEE the truth, you can finally fix it.

Today’s reminder:
If you want your team to win, stop guessing.
Get the baseline.
Everything gets easier from there.

If your team keeps missing quota,
here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud…

Let me tell you something I’ve learned
after turning around more sales teams than I can count:

Most leaders skip the ONE thing that actually changes performance - a real audit.

Not a “how do you think you’re doing?” conversation.
Not a gut-check.
Not another round of “we just need more pipeline.”

I’m talking about an objective baseline that tells you:

👉🏼 Who has the grit
👉🏼 Who has the mindset
👉🏼 Who can actually sell
👉🏼 And who’s been faking it behind a big pipeline number

Every time a company tells me they’ve “tried everything,”
9 out of 10 times they’ve never done this step.

When you finally see the truth?

✅ Hiring gets easier.
✅ Coaching gets easier.
✅ Revenue stabilizes.
✅ And the team stops guessing.

Founders: fix the audit, and the rest of the turnaround gets 10X easier.

Here’s how our clients grew while everyone else complained about the economy…

Every time the economy shakes, two types of companies emerge:

1. The ones who freeze.
2. The ones who get sharper.

When interest rates jump and budgets tighten, founders ask,
“𝘒𝘦𝘯… 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘣𝘶𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥?”

Easy:
You stop selling products and start selling outcomes.

Companies that win in downturns do three things:

👉🏼 They tighten their value story
👉🏼 They sell direct ROI, not “features”
👉🏼 They build a Client-First discovery process that actually uncovers real business pain

When the market gets tougher, the lazy sellers get exposed.

The disciplined ones explode.

If you're a founder, this is the best possible moment
to build a team that can sell on value -
because almost none of your competitors can.

Here’s something I was reminded of this morning.

Every sales leader wants better results,
but almost none of them actually want to look at the truth behind
why the team is struggling.

They jump straight into:
- new scripts
- new tech
- new “motivation”
- new comp plan tweaks

…all while ignoring the one thing that tells you exactly where the real problem is.

👉🏼 The baseline.
👉🏼 The audit.
👉🏼 The starting point.

You can’t fix what you refuse to measure.

If I tell you, “Let’s meet in New York,”
but you don’t tell me what city you’re coming from…
there’s no route to give you.

Sales teams are the same.

Here’s the crazy part:
When we run assessments across thousands of reps,
50% don’t even have the basic skills required for B2B sales.

Not advanced skills. BASIC ones.

But companies keep throwing training, incentives, and “rah-rah” speeches at problems that are 100% diagnostic.

So here’s my Wednesday reminder:
✅ Audit first.
✅ Accelerate second.
✅ Advance third.

Follow that order and you get repeatable wins.

Skip it and you get frustration, turnover, and the roller coaster pipeline everyone hates.

Your team isn’t broken.
Your process is blind.

Happy Wednesday - go get the truth before you try to get the win.

Most business owners won’t admit this… but weekends tell the truth.

Because when the office is quiet and the emails slow down,
the stuff you’ve been ignoring all week gets loud:

• The sales team that’s “busy” but not closing
• The pipeline that somehow keeps refilling with maybes
• The top performer doing the work of three people
• The quota that feels more like a coin flip than a plan

Here’s the deal - none of that is a “salesperson problem.”
It’s a system problem.

And systems don’t fix themselves just because you grind harder.

Every turnaround I’ve ever led - from the companies on the edge of missing payroll to the teams that 5x’d revenue starts the exact same way:

Audit → Accelerate → Advance.

1️⃣ Audit:
- Stop guessing. Get objective about what your team can actually do.
- Most leaders skip this step and then wonder why training doesn’t stick.

2️⃣ Accelerate:
- Find quick wins. Apply the right skills to real deals already in the pipeline.
- Momentum buys belief, and you need both.

3️⃣ Advance:
- Build the repeatable, scalable systems that turn average reps into closers and closers into top 1% producers.

Simple.
Not easy.
But transformational when you run it in order.

So if you’re a business owner sipping coffee this Saturday and thinking:

“Why am I still carrying the revenue weight myself?”
or
“Why does my team take so long to level up?”

Just know this - 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝘅𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲.

You just need a real baseline and a real plan.

Most sales problems don’t start with closing.
They start with guessing.

Every week I talk to founders who are convinced the issue is:
-  “we need better scripts,”  or
- “my reps just need motivation,” or
- “we need more leads.”

Then we actually dig in…

and none of those are the real problem.

Here’s what usually is:
- Reps qualifying with their gut, not a framework
- Deals dying because nobody’s talking to a real decision maker
- Follow-up happening in four different places
- Managers coaching based on opinions instead of data
- A pipeline that looks full on paper but has zero forward motion

And 99% of that could’ve been spotted months earlier if someone had paused long enough to run an audit.

The funny part?
Teams don’t resist change.

They resist changing in the dark.

But when you put hard data on the table -
skills, mindset, selling behaviors, pipeline health,
the conversations get clearer, calmer, and a whole lot more productive.

You stop arguing about symptoms.
You start fixing causes.

If you lead a sales org, here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Your team doesn’t need more hustle.
They need a baseline.

Audit before you optimize.

Otherwise you’re building speed on top of confusion.

And confusion is the most expensive problem in sales.

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