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Blockbuster was the place to be on Friday night in the ‘90s.

The anticipation would grow on those Fridays. What movie would we pick? Add popcorn to go? Maybe get two movies? It was a full experience. The days!

And then Netflix came along and disrupted the whole industry.

Blockbuster didn’t die because they were bad at renting movies. They died because Netflix saw what was coming and moved first.

Sales is the same game. The script that landed you a deal last quarter gets ignored today. Your “sure-thing” playbook gets disrupted overnight. Meanwhile, your biggest competitor is running micro-tests, deploying AI, and reaching your buyers before you even know there’s a deal on the table.

Two years ago, I watched a top-performing sales rep, someone who'd crushed quota for their company for five straight years, lose three major deals in a row.

Same pitch. Same process. Same confidence.

The buyers had changed, the market was moving underneath him, and the company. What they were looking for and how they interacted pivoted. They craved authentic conversation, not polished presentations. They expected personalization at scale, not mass-market messaging.

While he kept perfecting yesterday's playbook and what he had in front of him, his prospects had already moved to tomorrow's game.

This is the Innovator's Dilemma in sales: the very strategies that made you successful can become the reason you fail. Because in a world where buyers evolve faster than quarterly reviews, standing still is moving backward.

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Here’s the cold truth: you don’t lose deals because you stopped being good. You lose because you banked on what already worked, while your customers and competition leveled up faster than your playbook did.

The Innovator’s Dilemma isn’t just for tech companies or CEOs. It’s happening right now, on your sales floor.

Are you adapting, or are you perfecting a process everyone’s already moved past? We are going to dive into it this week.

Let’s dance.

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Clayton Christensen's research showed that 95% of innovations fail, not because they're bad products, but because companies keep optimizing what used to work instead of adapting to what works now.

In business development, it's the same trap. Your best script, your top lead source, your proven closing technique, they all have expiration dates. The problem isn't that they stop working overnight. It's that they stop working better than what's replacing them.

Sometimes, your team is stuck in its ways. They like to sell the way they like to sell.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

They hit their number, they were paid out their bonus, and they know they can hit their number again next year. They aren’t going to change a thing, no matter what you tell them.

Translation:

I worked with a sales manager who sold into the VA and hospitals, and had been doing it for 20 years. Never took any advice, but also crushed his numbers each year. Never paid attention in any sales training or learned new products or services. Just absolutely set in his ways.

He thought he was good to go, just keep riding the wave.

Until there was a change that was out of his control.

We had a CEO change, and new senior leadership came in. Our quotas went up (surprise, surprise). It was a change that was out of our control.

He couldn’t sell any more offerings into these existing accounts, and you could tell the frustration set in. His normal process for winning business wasn’t working anymore. He couldn’t introduce new or more advanced solutions, and over the years, never adapted.

He took retirement instead of pivoting.

There were lessons along the way, both for the sales manager, the leadership, and the company.

The pace of change has accelerated.

While you optimize yesterday's tactics:

Competitors capture tomorrow's buyers. They're building relationships on platforms you're ignoring, using tools you haven't adopted, speaking languages you haven't learned.

You might have learned them, but what about…your CEO, your subject matter experts, your account managers?

Customer trust erodes. When your outreach feels templated and your insights feel generic, buyers notice. 53% of bad experiences result in customers cutting their spend, and moving from a mediocre to good experience increases the likelihood to buy again by 68%.

Opportunities disappear. 85% of customer interactions are expected to be managed by AI by 2025. If you're not integrating these capabilities, you're becoming irrelevant.

Revenue stagnates. Companies leveraging AI personalization achieve 20% sales increases, while teams using modern multi-channel approaches report 2× higher customer engagement rates

Here are a few tips to really hit it out of the park when reaching out

Dedicate 10% of your selling time to testing new approaches. Try AI-powered research tools. Test video prospecting. Experiment with LinkedIn messaging. Run micro-tests with different value propositions.

Rule: For every old tactic you perfect, try one new approach.

Your prospects are telling you what they want—if you're paying attention. Notice shifting objections. Track response rates. Ask buyers what influenced their decision. When someone says "this feels outdated," that's not criticism—it's intelligence.

90% of knowledge workers say automation improved their jobs, and automation saves 5 hours per week on average. Stop doing manually what machines can do better. Use AI for research, automation for follow-ups, and data for insights.

Build towards it, don’t jump the gun.

Don't wait for perfect. Ship, test, refine. If a new approach shows promise after 50 attempts, scale it. If it doesn't work after 100, move on. Speed of learning beats perfection of execution.

FYI…you’re not going to be perfect off the get-go. You’re gonna fail, things aren’t going to go smoothly. Fail, pivot, fix, adapt, try again, fail, try again, improve, do it again. And again. You’ll see improvements as you keep at it.

If you only try it once or two…well, that’s not going to get you anywhere…Stay at it!

Keep doing what works while investing in what's next. Maintain your proven revenue streams while building tomorrow's capabilities. Think 70% execution, 30% innovation.

Pick one part of your sales process that feels stale. Your prospecting approach. Your discovery questions. Your closing technique. Your follow-up sequence.

This week, test a fresh approach:

I can keep going, but these are easy (and most are all FREE) tactics that you can do. That just takes…effort.

Track the results. Share what you learn. Build on what works.

From new tools, recent trends, and market updates, here is what has been on my mind.

The real danger isn't failing with something new, it's succeeding too long with something old.

Every market shift creates winners and losers. The winners are the ones who see change coming and adapt first. The losers are the ones who perfect yesterday's playbook while tomorrow's game begins.

Your clients are already evolving. Your competitors are catching up. The more proactive you are, the better positioned you will be.

Don’t get caught with your pants down.

See you next week.