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12touches.com — Archive · Vol 342 Issue 1

6 articles that week

12touches.com, Friday, September 4th, 2026

Consistency Is a Sales Skill - and Your Newsletter Proves It

Vol 342 · Issue 1 · 2026-09-04

When an enterprise IT buyer chooses a vendor, they're not just buying a product. They're betting on a relationship that will play out over years - implementations, support, renewals, escalations, roadmaps. And the single trait they most want to see in the rep and the company behind that bet is one that's surprisingly hard to fake: reliability. Will you follow through? Will you still be there, engaged and dependable, long after the ink dries?

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12touches.com, Friday, September 4th, 2026

Own Your Pipeline: Personal Marketing for IT Sales

Vol 342 · Issue 1 · 2026-09-04

Most enterprise IT sales professionals are, whether they admit it or not, dependent on marketing for the top of their funnel. The leads that arrive, the campaigns that warm the market, the content that gives them something to send - all of it flows from a team the rep doesn't control, working to priorities the rep didn't set. When marketing's engine is humming and pointed at your accounts, life is good. When it isn't - when the leads dry up, the campaigns target the wrong segment, or the content doesn't fit your deals - you're stuck. And you have no lever to pull.

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12touches.com, Friday, September 4th, 2026

Build a Personal Brand That Follows You Anywhere

Vol 342 · Issue 1 · 2026-09-04

Sales careers are mobile. The average enterprise IT rep will change companies several times over a career - chasing a better product, a bigger territory, a stronger comp plan, or simply a fresh start after a reorg. And every time a rep makes that move, they typically leave something valuable behind: the relationships, the visibility, and the market presence they spent years building, all of it tied to an employer that keeps it when they walk out the door.

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12touches.com, Friday, September 4th, 2026

Educated Buyers Close Faster

Vol 342 · Issue 1 · 2026-09-04

Every sales professional wants a shorter sales cycle. Faster cycles mean more deals per quarter, quicker commissions, less pipeline slippage, and less of the exhausting effort that goes into dragging a hesitant buyer across the line. We tend to chase that speed inside the deal — sharper demos, tighter proposals, better objection handling. But the biggest lever on cycle length often sits before the deal even starts, in how well-educated the buyer is when they first engage.

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12touches.com, Friday, September 4th, 2026

Build Your Own Audience While You Still Have a Job

Vol 342 · Issue 1 · 2026-09-04

Let's start with the part nobody enjoys saying out loud: the last several years of enterprise technology have been full of layoffs that had nothing to do with performance. Whole sales teams cut because a segment got deprioritized. Territories dissolved in a reorg. Solid reps let go sixty days after a president's club trip, because a board wanted a different number on a slide.

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12touches.com, Friday, September 4th, 2026

Curate the Industry Without Promoting Your Competition

Vol 342 · Issue 1 · 2026-09-04

There's a reason a lot of enterprise IT reps think about starting an industry newsletter and then quietly drop the idea. It isn't the writing. It isn't even the time, though that's the one they'll say out loud. It's a specific, uncomfortable scenario that occurs to them about ten minutes in: What happens the week my biggest competitor announces something great?

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