Ben Reed's Weekly B2B Growth Insights & Highlights | 9th May, 2026

Benjamin Reed's weekly B2B sales, marketing, & revenue insights...in one simple email.

Author

Benjamin Aaron Reed
May 12, 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

I often find myself, in both business and life, deeply reflecting on my own emotional state. It might surprise you to learn that I have deep anxiety around public speaking, yet to do personal branding, I often appear on live webinars, live-hosted meetings, masterminds, and record a lot of talking head videos. It's just part of the job.

Yet it raises the question: “Why do I do it if it causes me this pain?”

The way that I look at it is that it is an opportunity to:

  1. Explore myself more deeply to understand the root cause of the anxiety

  2. Go through a personal experience of letting go of my attachments to “looking good,” “being liked,” and “not being rejected.” (more on this below).

There are several books that I highly recommend on the subject that have been instrumental for me in the last year:

  1. "Letting Go"

  2. "The Surrender Experiment" by Michael Singer

  3. “The Untethered Soul"

  4. "Untethered Wisdom”

I recommend all of those. The basis of each book is pretty simple. It is that throughout our lives, especially for people who are entrepreneurs, type-A, high-strung, and high-performing, they tend to want to control, optimize, measure, and analyze.

And in the process of doing so, there is hope that, through one's effort, they will see improvement through iteration… hopefully, fast.

The thing is, in my personal experience, my progress as an entrepreneur has been far slower than I had anticipated, given the sheer amount of effort and work I have put in. I am not talking about trying for days, weeks, or months. I’ve been at this game for more than 18 years.

Which raises the question: who is in control? Do we actually impact our outcomes? Do we actually have the ability to rise above and pull ourselves up by the bootstraps?

Now, I believe we do have a degree of control. I am certainly continuing to pursue my own excellence and to become better every single day through sheer force of will.

But I have found in the pursuit of this excellence, my anxiety across the years and my stress levels across the years have continued to rise. Part of that is because, despite my efforts, I have not gotten what I want. I have not been able to control the outcome the way I wanted to. My results have not materialized despite my blood, sweat, tears, and the sheer volume of work I have put in.

Consequently, a core emotional development I have had to go through is acknowledging what I cannot control and literally letting go of the emotion tied to that attachment to control, whether it's fear, anger, shame, or whatever it might be. In each of the books above, the author explores in depth the mechanisms and processes of “letting go.”

The takeaway here is that I believe it is critical to explore oneself, including a deep exploration of one's emotions and character. I think it is a fundamental requirement if you're going to succeed in business (at least if you're extremely high-strung, high-performing, analytical, and you want to compete as I do). Perhaps you are one of the exceptions, but I have not yet met a person who has succeeded in business who has not deeply suffered over many years. It’s part of the job.

“Letting go” starts with becoming aware of ourselves and our emotions, both of which are key aspects of this game (of business and life).

And, it all delves deeply into the depths of emotional intelligence, which requires looking at my emotions and then asking myself, "What emotions are becoming troublesome? What emotions are getting my way? What belief systems are leading to those emotions that cause the performance issues I'm having?"

Then, the next step is not to control, stop, prevent, or even lessen my emotions. Instead, the practice is to witness them, and they dissolve on their own. I know… weird.

And, the crazy thing is that, ever so slowly, it works.

It's not to say that I have overcome all of my problems and that I've relinquished any anxiety through this exploration. It is an ongoing, I assume, lifelong process.

In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm about to present to 500 people at a SmartLead webinar tomorrow. I have experienced deep anxiety thinking about this event over the entire weekend, and even as I write this, I have my adrenaline pumping… I can feel my heart rate going.

So I don't know if I will ever fully overcome some of my fears, but I know that it's a process, it's something that I'm working through, and I think it's okay to feel those emotions - it's completely natural, especially if you're doing hard things.

My ultimate message is this: Know that you don't have to be fully in control; sometimes you can just acknowledge your limits (or the limits of the world and reality) and let go of the emotions that surround them.

Ultimately, regardless of your emotions, success requires grit and courage. Courage is doing things that scare you, even when you feel the fear deeply. As we level up, the fear will continue to rise as the stakes get bigger. But, I see this is the cost of growth, which I am readily willing to pay. I hope that, through small and big efforts to let go of the emotions and false beliefs holding me back, the ride to the top can be as enjoyable and peaceful as possible.

🎧 Podcast Episode of the Week

Guest Name: Geraldina Scarascia Olson

Highlights:

  • How founders become the bottleneck in scaling

  • Why structured KPIs improve marketing execution

  • The biggest AI and automation mistakes companies make

  • Why product and marketing must work together

  • Why great marketing can’t fix a weak product

💡 LinkedIn Highlights

The New Rules of B2B Sales

Smart companies are now splitting their accounts into buckets: the absolute best prospects get VIP, super-personalized treatment.

503 Versions Later, It Imploded

I've personally put in over 5,000 versions of AI prompting on my own AI projects in almost every AI tool worth testing.

157 Deals From Cold Email

$737,900 in revenue (157 won deals) came from 72 cold email campaigns. Here's how I know.

Most AI Agents See Partial Truths
Unified identity graphs are the key to future AI agents in GTM. What is an "Identity graph?"
Employee-First Cultures Scale Better

I sat down with Wesley Hoang, founder of Cymate, a top-tier outbound lead generation agency, and this turned into one of the most honest, systems-driven conversations we've had on the podcast.

RevyOps Solves The System State Problem

Many teams are already using it to build custom GTM workflows. But there’s a fundamental architectural problem with using AI agents for revenue infrastructure.

Build A Monopoly, Not A Hustle
Agencies that codify their process onboard faster, delegate easier, and actually have a weekend. Want the same? I have a question for you...

3 Steps to Consistent B2B Growth

I've been a VP of Sales. I've also been the one signing the agency contracts. So I've seen Month 3 from both sides of the table. And...most agency owners think churn is a performance problem. It's usually not.

Cold Outreach Changed In 2026
These frameworks work because they replace the single biggest mistake in cold outbound - leading with what you need instead of what you've already built for the prospect.

3 Steps to Consistent B2B Growth

My last failed business partnership cost me $600,000. My business partner stole everything. Here's the story:

 🎥 NextGen Weekly Call Replay

Every Thursday, the meets to break down the latest tactics shaping outbound, GTM systems, agency growth, and modern B2B sales. Missed it live? Watch the latest recording here.

📣 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

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

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