“The forecast is fiction.”
Commit slips every month and nobody can say exactly why. We start by opening the deals together: inspection and forecast discipline: so the number you report is the number you get.
Deal coaching & reviewsSales performance consulting · Fort Lauderdale
I carried a number for 35 years.
Now I build the teams that carry yours.
Decades Sales Partners is a hands-on sales performance practice for B2B and B2C technology companies: playbooks, compensation, territories, hiring and live deal coaching. You work with me. Not an associate, and not a framework deck.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida: on-site with your team or remote, anywhere. Every enquiry gets a personal reply within one business day.
- Over-quota
- 35+ years as seller and leader
- Been through
- 4 IPOs · 2 unicorns · 3 exits
- Method
- MEDDPICC, fitted to your motion
- Network
- Founding Member, Chief
Start here
Which of these is true this quarter?
Almost every team that calls me is living one of these six. Pick the closest one: that is usually where we start, and the rest tends to follow from it.
“Two reps carry the whole team.”
Your best seller’s judgement lives in their head and nowhere else. We codify what they actually do into a playbook the rest of the team can run.
Playbook creation“Comp is paying for the wrong things.”
Plans drift. Reps optimise for the plan you wrote, not the business you have now. We rebuild the mix, accelerators and quota alignment around the behaviour you need.
Compensation design“The number feels impossible.”
Territories are lopsided and quotas were set top-down with no capacity model underneath. We make the target reachable for reps and defensible to the board.
Territory & quota“Every hire is a coin flip.”
Without a scorecard you are hiring on charisma. We define who actually wins in your market, then build the interview process that finds them.
Recruiting & hiring“Nobody is bought in.”
People sell better when they feel genuinely invested in. QBRs and team events that land are a performance strategy, not a perk at the end of the quarter.
QBRs & eventsTrack record
Where I carried the number.
Thirty-five years on the front line of enterprise software: client-server, to cloud, to AI. I have sold and led through hyper-growth and through downturns, which is mostly how you learn what actually transfers between the two.
These are roles I held: former employers, not clients of this practice.
| Company | Role | Era |
|---|---|---|
| UiPath | Regional VP: Global Key Account Program | Automation & AI |
| Dataiku | Sales leadership: Everyday AI & data science | AI & data |
| Splunk | Director: Southeast Strategic Account Segment | Data & observability |
| Salesforce | Global Account Executive | Cloud & SaaS |
| SAP | Global Strategic Accounts: Office of the CFO | Enterprise |
| Documentum / EMC | Director: Enterprise Account Teams | Content & ECM |
| Interwoven | North American Director: Enterprise Sales | Web & content |
| Computer Associates | Enterprise software sales | Client-server |
Selected roles across a 35+ year career that also includes Informix, SmartForce and Adobe.
The method
Rigor you can inspect. Not slideware.
Most consultants hand you a framework and leave. I install the operating discipline, then stay in the room while your managers learn to run it without me.
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MEDDPICC, fitted to your motion
Qualification your reps actually use: in the CRM, on the call: rather than an acronym on a slide. I am fluent in every modern methodology and match it to how you sell.
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Opportunity and deal inspection
We open the deals together, in the room. Risk surfaces early: while there is still time to do something about it.
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Forecast discipline
Commit means commit. A weekly cadence, clear stage exit criteria, and a number you can put in front of your board without flinching.
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Coaching the coaches
Your front-line managers have to carry this after I am gone, so enabling them is part of every engagement rather than an add-on at the end.
Engagement models
01
Project
A defined deliverable: a playbook, a comp plan, a territory model: scoped, built with your team, and handed off.
02
Fractional
Ongoing sales-leadership horsepower: a coaching cadence, forecast calls and pipeline reviews on a recurring basis.
03
Advisory
A trusted thought partner to the founder or CRO for the decisions that are too consequential to make alone.
Beyond the playbook
Rigor is half of it.
The other half is people wanting to show up. I have spent a career learning that teams do not perform because of a process alone: they perform when they feel genuinely invested in. So the events I build are part of the operating plan, not a reward at the end of the quarter.
“After one QBR, someone on the team pulled me aside to tell me it was the first time they had been able to dance since losing their baby.”Beth Benkowski
Moments like that are the heartbeat behind everything I build. It is why my favourite line is one often attributed to Dr. Seuss, though the attribution is disputed:
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
How are you different from a sales trainer or a fractional VP?
A trainer delivers an event and leaves. A fractional VP fills a seat. I install the operating discipline: qualification, inspection, forecast rigor: and then coach your managers until they can run it themselves. And you work with me directly, not with a junior associate carrying my slides.
How quickly will we see an impact?
Forecast accuracy and deal qualification usually tighten inside the first quarter, because inspection starts in the first few weeks. Structural work: compensation, territories, quotas: lands over a quarter or two, since it has to be rolled out and adopted rather than just written.
Who do you work with?
B2B and B2C technology sales organisations: from early-stage companies looking for their first repeatable motion, through scale-ups, to large public companies. If you have no sales team yet, that is a fine place to start too.
What does it cost?
Engagements are priced individually against scope, because a single comp plan and an end-to-end build are very different pieces of work. We will talk about scope on the first call and you will get a written proposal: there is no charge for that conversation.
Let's look at your number.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell me what the team is missing and I'll tell you straight whether I'm the right person for it: and what I'd do first.
Or email Beth directly at bethbenkowski@gmail.com. Replies come from Beth, within one business day.