“The Sailboat” - Simple Systems for Resilient Revenue Growth

This simple and effective framework helps you mobilize your entire company to make buying easier and customer outcomes more likely and frequent. We use a sailboat as a metaphor for a sales opportunity. Our goal is to create the conditions for the fastest and least risky journey to the “harbor,” where this sales opportunity transforms into a successful customer with measurable outcomes.

I first developed this framework at Workday and then refined it at Pivotal Software and VMware and now use it in my advisory practice at Sales Leader U. It’s effective because it’s simple and visual. Product teams, sales teams, marketing teams, and customer success teams immediately understand it. Our goal is to create a shared understanding across your entire company of the experiences and outcomes that your customers value most. This sailboat exercise is a powerful tool for making that happen.

The 6-minute video below will introduce you to the key concepts.

Intro to Sailboat Framework