Articles

Practical guides for modern revenue teams

Honest writing on lead scoring, pipeline hygiene, sales automation, customer retention, outreach, and the messy realities of building a relationship-first sales motion that actually works.

27 articles
Pipeline10 min read

Sales Pipeline vs Sales Funnel: What They Are and Why the Difference Matters

Teams throw "pipeline" and "funnel" around as if they mean the same thing, then wonder why their forecast and their marketing report never agree. They are two different views of the same revenue — one is the buyer's journey, the other is your selling process — and confusing them quietly corrupts how you measure both. Here is the clean distinction, where the two connect, and how to run each without letting one contaminate the other.

Paul HittJul 12, 2026
Pipeline9 min read

Getting Registered to Win Federal Work: SAM.gov, UEI, NAICS, and Set-Aside Eligibility

Before capture, before a single proposal, the federal market has a gate you have to walk through: an active SAM.gov registration, a UEI, the right NAICS codes, and — if you qualify — a set-aside status that can hand you contracts your bigger competitors legally cannot touch. A plain-English guide to getting registered right and tracking it in your CRM.

Paul HittJul 9, 2026
Pipeline8 min read

Selling Into the Federal Fiscal Year-End: Managing Your Pipeline Around September 30

Every year the federal government spends a staggering share of its discretionary budget in the final weeks before September 30 — "use it or lose it" is real, and it turns Q4 into the most concentrated buying window in the market. How to position your pipeline, your forecast, and your follow-up to catch the year-end surge instead of watching it pass.

Paul HittJul 9, 2026
Pipeline8 min read

Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and Deals: The CRM Data Model, Explained

Most CRM confusion comes from not knowing what a lead, a contact, an account, and a deal actually are — and how they relate. A plain-English guide to the four core objects, why the distinctions matter, and how to avoid the mess of duplicates and orphaned records.

Paul HittJul 8, 2026
Pipeline8 min read

The SDR-to-AE Handoff That Doesn’t Drop the Lead

When an SDR books a meeting and passes it to an account executive, a hard-won opportunity changes hands — and context leaks at the seam. What the AE needs to inherit, how to make the pass clean, and how to keep the two roles from quietly working against each other.

Paul HittJul 7, 2026
Pipeline8 min read

Writing a Capability Statement That Opens Doors

A capability statement is a small shop’s business card in the federal market — a one-page proof that you exist, you’re qualified, and you’re worth a five-minute conversation. What actually belongs on it, the mistakes that get it deleted, and how to keep it current from the same CRM that tracks the relationships it opens.

Paul HittJul 1, 2026