16 | Acquisition International, October 2026 Sales Transformation Consultancy of the Year 2026 – UK Countless SMEs have real value to offer but can struggle to communicate it well enough to win the business they deserve. They lose out, and so do the customers who would have benefited. Built on decades of direct sales experience, Spear Sales has earned a strong reputation for helping businesses across the UK compete, reach their targets faster and grow. Recently named the UK’s Sales Transformation Consultancy of the Year 2026, its founder Alex Henneberg told us more. Contact: Alex Henneberg Company: Spear Sales Consulting Web Address: www.spear-sales.com “I so often hear the same frustrations from SME sellers and business founders. They know their product inside out and can see exactly how it helps their customers, but they find it hard to turn that knowledge into a sale, because nobody ever taught them how. So leads are difficult to find, deals drag on, contract values get squeezed and win rates drop. The worst part is the hit to their confidence; they start to doubt the product, when the real problem is how it’s being sold.” So says Alex Henneberg, founder of Spear Sales. He is clear that anyone with the right attitude and work ethic can sell, provided they are given the right training and coaching. Across a 30-year career leading complex B2B sales for Microsoft, BT, CenturyLink and Siemens, Alex has helped win over £1 billion of business. He has distilled that experience into the S.P.E.A.R. Sales Operating System, which combines proven sales methodologies with his own tools and frameworks, applied selectively according to the type of organisation, the nature of the sale and where the customer is in their buying journey. What sets the approach apart is the 1:1 coaching built on that foundation: SME sellers and founders learn the methods, hear real-life examples of them in action, then apply them in their own live deals. Alex’s methods have helped organisations double their average sales values and achieve win rates of over 60%. “My clients include SME sellers pursuing £100k+ opportunities and founders chasing smaller deals who do most of the selling themselves,” Alex told us. “And it’s the sales skills gap that costs them deals they should be winning, and costs their customers the benefits they’d have gained.” To close that gap, the system is built around five pillars, each with its own sub-framework to make it practical, measurable and repeatable. The first, Strategy, sets direction and defines how a business wins, using the G.R.I.P. Model to clarify who it targets, what it offers and how it competes. The second, Plan, is supported by the S.P.R.I.N.G. Management sub-system. It creates the sales structure, processes, recruitment plans and management rhythm needed for consistent, scalable performance, aligned to how customers buy. Third is Engage, which sits at the heart of the system and is supported by the other four pillars. Its P.L.A.N.N.E.D. Pursuit Playbook gives sellers a repeatable method for progressing B2B deals from first contact to delivery through seven stages: Prepare, Lead Generation, Assess, Nurture, Negotiate, Execute and Develop. It turns the idea that “every deal is different” into a disciplined, winning sales motion. Qualification alone can transform results: a recent report found well-qualified deals won 6.3 times more often than poorly qualified ones (a 50% win rate against 8%) and closed 21.6% faster. The fourth pillar, Assist, equips sellers through the T.A.C.T. Toolkit: Technology, such as CRM, AI and automation; Assets, including playbooks, battlecards and templates; Coaching in skills, performance and mindset; and proven sales Techniques. Coaching makes a measurable difference: sellers coached regularly hit quota over 70% of the time, against less than 50% for those coached irregularly or not at all. Finally, Refine is driven by the Feedback L.O.O.P. Orchestrator: Learn, Orchestrate, Optimise and Progress. Teams learn from wins and losses, align sales and delivery, optimise processes and tools, and track the KPIs that show progress, so the sales function gets stronger with every deal. Over the past year, Alex has turned what was once his personal sales playbook into a structured, repeatable system for any business. The focus now is growth: making it accessible to even more SME sellers and founders, with tools and frameworks they can keep using long after the coaching ends. With Spear Sales named the UK’s Sales Transformation Consultancy of the Year 2026, Alex is clear about what comes next: “Longer term, I want Spear Sales to be the default answer for SME sales leaders, entrepreneurs and founders who believe passionately in the value their business provides, but feel they are underperforming on sales and don’t know how to identify or address the root cause.” Where do your own sales strengths and gaps lie? You can find out by taking Spear Sales’ free Sales Persona assessment, which identifies your selling style and the next steps to raise your win rate, by scanning the QR code below.
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