Ben Reed's Weekly B2B Growth Insights & Highlights | 16th May, 2026

Hey everyone,

This week’s recap saves you time: I’ve distilled the top B2B sales, marketing, and growth insights from my podcast + LinkedIn - so you can scale smarter without the noise.

💭 My Take of the Week

With the hype around AI, the never-ending cycle of new tools and applications coming to market, and all the gurus telling you the next tactic or trick that will fundamentally change the way you go to market and make money, I think it’s incredibly important that we become more perceptive, more aware, and more discerning about who is legitimate and who is simply misleading us or operating from superficial knowledge.

This reminds me of an experience I had at a personal development retreat about a year ago. It taught me something deeply important about deception, influence, and human psychology that I think is worth sharing because the lesson applies directly to business, sales, marketing, and life in general.

We were deep in the woods with a group of about 50 men when we were told we were going to play a game. The larger group was split into teams of roughly five people each. Every team was given a large log with handles on it, and the rule was that at least two people from the team had to be touching the log at all times. We also weren’t allowed to speak to one another. We could use hand signals and facial expressions, but no actual talking.

The objective was simple. We were told there would be five checkpoints throughout the woods, almost like a scavenger hunt. At each checkpoint, we had to retrieve a gold coin. Once we collected all five coins, we had to carry the log to the finish line. The first team there won. Those were the rules. That was the entire ruleset.

The game started, and naturally, everyone sprinted toward the first checkpoint. When we arrived, all the teams lined up in an orderly fashion. The fastest runners ended up at the front of the line, and the slower people ended up at the back. My team happened to include an older gentleman who couldn’t run very quickly, so we ended up near the back.

But I remember noticing something almost immediately.

Nobody ever said we had to stand in line.

Nobody said we had to wait our turn.

Nobody said we had to be polite.

That entire structure had been unconsciously created by the group itself. It wasn’t part of the rules. It was just social conditioning.

Because I tend to be fairly contrarian and skeptical by nature, I started questioning the situation. I motioned to my team nonverbally and signaled for us to move to the front. So we did. We essentially cut the line. Nobody stopped us. Nobody said we broke a rule.

But then I noticed something else.

The people running the checkpoint were making teams do random things before giving them the coin. Push-ups. Jumping jacks. Weird exercises. Arbitrary tasks. And again, I remember thinking: none of this was part of the rules either. We were supposed to walk up, retrieve the coin, and continue. Yet everyone was complying without questioning it.

At that point I started asking myself a deeper question:

“What game are we actually playing right now?”

Because the behavior I was observing had drifted far away from the original rules.

As the game continued, it became even stranger. Along the course, various people would interrupt us and tell us we were going the wrong direction. Some claimed we had to turn around. Others said we needed to complete additional tasks before moving forward. Some acted like authority figures. Some seemed genuinely helpful.

And despite the fact that I clearly remembered the original rules, I still found myself doubting.

Maybe they know something I don’t.

Maybe I misunderstood.

Maybe this is actually part of the game.

That’s the scary part about deception. Even when you are relatively self-aware, grounded, and skeptical, repeated social pressure and confident assertions can still pull you off course.

Later, after the exercise ended, we found out the truth.

All of those people throughout the woods were intentionally planted there by the retreat coaches. Their purpose was to distract us, deceive us, manipulate us, and test whether we would abandon first principles under pressure.

And what struck me most was this:

Many times during the game, people told us we couldn’t do something, had to do something, or needed to go backward in order to move forward. None of it was true. None of it was part of the original ruleset. Yet almost everyone complied anyway.

Even the people who considered themselves highly independent thinkers got manipulated to some degree.

Including me.

The coaches later referred to these planted people as “thieves.”

And honestly, I think that concept exists everywhere in life.

There are people around us, sometimes even well-meaning people, who project their own fears, insecurities, incentives, biases, and worldviews onto us. They tell us what we should do, what we shouldn’t do, who we should be, what success looks like, what risks are acceptable, what’s realistic, and what’s impossible.

The problem is that much of that advice is not actually aligned with our highest good, our goals, or the outcomes we truly want for ourselves.

And because humans are social creatures, we naturally want to trust people. We want to be accepted by the group. We want harmony. We want validation. We want to believe that authority figures are competent and that confident people know what they’re talking about.

But especially in the modern era, and especially in sales and marketing, you have to realize something:

Most people do not fundamentally know what’s best for you.

And many people present themselves as highly knowledgeable, sophisticated, and credible when they are not.

This brings me back to GTM.

I genuinely believe the GTM industry is filled with thieves. Maybe not malicious thieves in every case, but people who are absolutely capable of pulling you away from truth, first principles, and effective execution.

I say this because I’ve been deeply involved in the industry for years. I’ve seen the inner workings. I’ve watched how opinions are formed. I’ve seen the politics, the incentives, the ego, the tribalism, and the psychographics of many agency owners and consultants firsthand.

Most people (the “experts”) don’t actually know what they’re doing at more than a superficial level.

Many have extremely strong opinions despite having a shallow understanding.

A large percentage come from sales backgrounds where confidence and persuasion are rewarded more than truth or rigor. They are often highly capable of convincing other people of something that may not actually be good for them.

On top of that, many GTM agencies and consultancies are financially incentivized to do as little work as possible while maximizing retainers and extracting cash from clients in exchange for relatively low-value output.

So my point is this:

Be careful who you listen to.

Be careful whose incentives you trust.

Use first principles thinking.

Test everything.

Stay discerning.

And make sure you follow people who are grounded in reality rather than trends, status games, or surface-level sophistication.

Because in B2B sales and marketing, mistakes compound slowly and painfully. A bad strategic decision is rarely a one-week problem. Most mistakes become three to six-month problems that can cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars before you fully realize what went wrong.

🎧 Podcast Episode of the Week

Guest Name: Barry Flanagan

Highlights:

• How Barry helped scale a startup from $2M to $50M ARR

• The biggest hiring mistakes founders make in sales

• Differences between product-led, sales-led, and marketing-led growth

• How SDRs, AEs, and Sales Engineers work together

• Why deep ICP and persona research improves sales performance

• How AI can help with messaging, content, and buyer research

• Why trust-building is critical in enterprise sales

• The psychology behind objection handling and buyer decisions

💡 LinkedIn Highlights

📣 What do you think?

👉 Hit reply and let me know what resonated most this week, or tell me what you’re struggling with in B2B sales right now. I read every response

👉 Want to go deeper? Head to the NextGen Sales Systems Group and Share!

👀 Stay tuned 🎙️ More podcast conversations are on the way.

🚀 Let’s connect

• Connect with Me On LinkedIn:

  https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-aaron-reed/

• Send Me An Email: [email protected]

• Work With Me: https://www.nextgensalessystems.com/

  • B2B revenue scaling strategy & coaching

  • B2B Lead Generation

  • B2B revenue operations

• Become a Beta Tester of the #1 B2B Data Management Platform: https://www.revyops.com/ 

• Listen to the NextGen Sales Leaders Podcast: Click here

  • For up-to-date B2B insights with top B2B sales, marketing pros, and B2B Founders