BLOG
SALES PERFORMANCE AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT INSIGHTS FROM AMY FRANKO
Guest Article: The Hidden Cost of “Wait and See” Decisions
How can today’s leaders think and act differently to avoid the curse of “wait and see?” ****** As former board chair of Girl Scouts of Ohio’s Heartland, I helped lead a critical decision during the uncertainty of COVID: whether to continue moving forward with a $16 million capital campaign for our STEM leadership center — or pause and “wait and see.” (Spoiler alert: We did not wait and see. You can peek below to see how our vision became reality.) That experience reinforced an important leadership lesson: indecision often carries greater long-term costs than thoughtful action. In my latest article for Smart Business, I explore the hidden cost of “wait and see” decisions and how leaders can create momentum through clarity, ownership and decisiveness. Read the full article. What happens when “wait and see” becomes your leadership strategy? What leaders often don’t realize is that delaying a decision can...
Stale Playbooks Aren’t Driving Growth in Professional Services Firms
How Chief Growth Officers Can Think Differently and Win More Opportunities. The sales playbook is as old as time. On paper, playbooks make sense: they help to define ideal clients, guide conversations, and create a more consistent approach to winning complex work. Why Don’t Professional Services Playbooks Help Firms Win Complex Opportunities? But most playbooks don’t get firms to their ideal growth outcomes. Why? 1) They’re a static PDF. 2) Because they’re static, they are quickly dated and difficult to maintain. 3) They aren’t quickly adapted to current issues a client or prospect may be facing. 4) They fail because they never change the behaviors required to best position the firm to win the complex opportunity. Execution is the one word that sums this up. For Chief Growth Officers and firm leaders, there’s a shift that’s needed, from a playbook to a system that shapes the behavior required to win...
Client Experience Quietly Makes or Breaks Growth for Professional Services Firms
I have a keynote speech this summer and I’m providing copies of The Modern Seller for the event. Because it’s a few months out, I ordered the books for shipment to me. Then I’ll ship them to the hotel. This is what arrived at my door: Over a dozen separate packages for a single order of 125 books. What if I allowed that shipment to go directly to its destination? While nothing was technically wrong and everything arrived, optics and ease matter. It doesn’t matter about the logo on the outside of the box. That experience would’ve tarnished my brand with the client and the experience they have with me. The lesson here is that client experience isn’t just the work (in my case the content of my books or the keynote). It’s how the work arrives and how the client feels about the work being done that matters equally. This is where it’s easy to go wrong in professional services. You’ve never heard a firm say, “we...
Find Your Underestimated Growth Advantage
What Growth Strategies and Business Development Skills Do Professional Services Firms Need in 2026? Remember 2020? COVID sent everyone home and firms weren’t struggling to land clients. In fact, the opposite was true: client work was plentiful. Business development in professional services firms was paused and along with that was a pause on building the required business development skills across firms. In the past two years, that pendulum swung back. The Chief Growth Officers Amy Franko works with are refocused on organic growth, along with the added layer of inorganic growth through mergers and acquisitions and private equity investment. With that comes the realization that there are bottlenecks in creating growth, along with a significant lag in the strategies and skills required to achieve goals for organic growth. If you’re a Chief Growth Officer, Partner, or firm leader, how do you determine what...
The Modern Seller named among Top 40 Sales Books for 2026
Amy Franko's book The Modern Seller has been included in Olesia Krilyshyn 🇺🇦’s Top 40 Sales Books for 2026. Sales keeps evolving, so it’s rewarding to know the concepts continue to resonate. We appreciate everyone who’s read The Modern Seller and shared it with their friends and colleagues! Here is Olesia's list, and you can view her full post on LinkedIn: 📖 PROSPECTING & OUTREACH 1️⃣ Fanatical Prospecting - Jeb Blount 2️⃣ High-Profit Prospecting - Mark Hunter 3️⃣ COMBO Prospecting - Tony J. Hughes 4️⃣ Pick Up the Damn Phone! - Joanne Black 5️⃣ Always Be Qualifying - Darius Lahoutifard 🎯 SALES PROCESS & METHODOLOGY 6️⃣ The Work Before the Work - Paul M. Caffrey 7️⃣ Addicted to the Process - Scott Leese 8️⃣ Whale Hunting - Tom Searcy 9️⃣ Figure Sales Secrets - Marcus Chan 🔟 The Sales Skills Book - Gerald Zankl 💡 BUYER PSYCHOLOGY & RELATIONSHIPS 1️⃣1️⃣ Heart and Sell - Alessandro Sharif Al-Shafi...
Amy Franko Launches New Newsletter: BOLD Growth
Many of you, nearly 2,000 here, have been part of this community for several years. We appreciate the trust and the time you’ve invested in both Amy Franko and your own growth. Amy recently took a few weeks to step back and refresh both her focus and the content she brings to you twice a month. We excited to introduce the next evolution: Amy Franko's BOLD Growth newsletter. This newsletter focuses on growth inside professional services firms and expertise-driven organizations, including accounting and advisory, consulting, engineering, technology services, and non-profit organizations. Amy Franko will be designing original content on: • Growth strategy and market focus • Business development leadership • Forces shaping professional services and how leaders respond • Modern selling for expertise and complex solutions • How marketing, technology, and AI are reshaping growth • Professional...
Video: Making the Most of Tradeshows & Events
Trade shows and events are among the biggest investments in any sales organization’s budget — and often among the hardest to measure in terms of ROI. From planning and execution to post-event follow-up, getting these right can mean the difference between wasted spend and high-value relationships. In this video, Amy Franko breaks down how to get more out of both curated events and large-scale trade shows as part of a sales strategy, along with a simple three-phase approach to maximize results. And for professional services firms, these strategies can turn events into credibility, relationships, and future engagements—not just booth traffic. Key Takeaways Blend both event types: Curated events build depth; large trade shows build reach. Think in phases: Pre-plan with a clear business case, execute with purpose, and follow up with precision. Track everything: Data drives better decisions for future...
Guest Article: Account-Based Selling
Many leadership teams begin the year with a familiar refrain: “We’re focused on growth.” The challenge isn’t understanding why growth matters—it’s deciding how to pursue it. One of the most overlooked and underutilized sources of growth is already in place: your existing clients. In the February issue of Smart Business Magazine, I explore why account-based selling should be a top priority for organizations looking to drive sustainable, predictable growth in 2026—especially professional services firms and complex sales organizations. You can read the full article here. Why Existing Accounts Hold More Growth Than You Think Many companies unintentionally leave revenue on the table because they focus on maintaining anchor accounts rather than expanding them. Without an intentional expansion strategy: Client relationships stagnate Assumptions replace real discovery conversations Competitors step in to solve...
Video: Help Your Decision Makers Actually Make Decisions in Complex Sales
In complex sales, indecision—not competition—kills deals. Learn how sales leaders can facilitate better executive decision-making and move opportunities forward with confidence. ******* My friends at Membrain.com shared two eye-opening statistics with me. Here’s the first one: 61% of sales losses are due to non-decision and not competitive loss. This means that your current pipeline may contain only 39% of opportunities that are truly decision ready. How do we improve this? It involves a key mindset shift you must make about your role in the client’s decision process, and then a fresh approach to your sales conversations. In this week’s video I share more on this, so you can make the most of the time you’ve earned with executives and decision makers. (And I also share the second statistic you’ll want to know!) Key Takeaways Why 61% of sales losses happen due to...
Guest Article: Consultative Sales Playbooks
Amy Franko's Training Industry article, “Consultative Sales Playbooks: The Ultimate Training Tool for Navigating Complex Deals,” won a 2025 Top Sales Award. It breaks down how consultative sales playbooks can actually get used—becoming a living, flexible framework that helps sellers navigate complex deals with confidence. ******* Sales Training professionals: Do you ever feel like you're handing off great content, only to see it collect dust? I wrote a piece for Training Industry, Inc. on how consultative sales playbooks can become a living, breathing part of your sales training strategy. It’s all about creating structure and flexibility for complex deals. Find the full article here: Consultative Sales Playbooks: The Ultimate Training Tool for Navigating Complex Deals. Who is the article for? The Consultative Sales Playbooks article by Amy Franko in Training Industry is written for sales training...
Our Strategic Selling signature sales training program is now available online. This online sales learning program is ideal for professional services and B2B sales. Get started with 2 free lessons.
