About SellSip, and how we check what we publish

What we believe

Every leader is a salesperson. A founder pitching a bank, a CEO writing to a board, a new rep on a Tuesday cold call: same craft, different stage. So we learn from people who actually sold, and we write for every seller, everywhere. No region, industry or seniority gets a lesser seat at the table.

We aim to be warm, fun and rigorous, in that order of appearance and the reverse order of importance.

Our editorial rules

1. Original words only. We read widely and link to every source, but we write in our own words. Quotes are short and rare.
2. No invented numbers. Every statistic on SellSip comes from a named source we have opened and checked. If we cannot trace a number to its origin, we do not use it, or we rate it low and say why.
3. People are named positively, and only with proof. We feature people when a third party backs their record: a ranking body, an award, a regulator, national press, or the record of a company they built. We describe what they did well.
4. Every piece ends with something to do. Each playbook ends with a script or drill you can use this week.
5. Corrections are welcome. If you spot an error, tell us and we will fix it and note the change.

The Brew Strength scale

When we check a claim ("reviews raise sales 270%") or a strategy ("reply to leads within an hour"), we give it a Brew Strength rating: our estimate of how reliably it holds when a typical seller acts on it.

• Strong Brew80%+
  Solid, replicated evidence.
• Good Blend60 to 80%
  Real, with caveats.
• Needs Stirring40 to 60%
  Right direction, shaky numbers.
• Weak Brew20 to 40%
  Thin or untraceable support.
• Decafunder 20%
  No real evidence behind it.

To rate a claim, we find the original study or dataset, then note three things: the sample (how many people or firms, and where), the year, and who ran or paid for it. Strong, recent, independent and replicated evidence brews strong. A number with no traceable source is Decaf, however often it is repeated. The rating is an editorial judgement, explained in one line beside each claim, not a statistical model.

For strategies, our Strategy Vault scores each one out of 100: 40% strength of evidence, 25% replicability, 15% ease of doing it, and 20% fit across B2B, B2C and small businesses. The score maps onto the same scale, so 80 or more is a Strong Brew. Read the top three in Three Strong Brew strategies and five rated stats in Brew Strength Check #1.

How the Legends Index is scored

The Legends Index asks one question: who do independent publishers keep naming as great salespeople, and can we verify that they really sold?

1. One vote per publisher. Each publisher domain counts once per person, however many pages it writes about them. Mirrors and reposts count zero.
2. Weight by publisher type. Research, academic and major press: 3. Established sales publishers and reference works: 2. Listicles, forums, speaker agencies and paid releases: 1. A person's own site, company or book page: 0.
3. Recency. A mention from the last 24 months is multiplied by 1.25.
4. Breadth. +0.5 for each extra role someone is named in (for example seller and author), capped at 1.5.
5. Proof of doing. People with a verified record of selling or building a business are weighted up.
6. Scale to 100, then tier: Hall of Fame 65+, Legend 45 to 64.9, Rising 25 to 44.9, Watchlist under 25.

The first edition read 27 public lists from 25 independent publishers and logged 322 mentions of 215 people.

Known biases we are fixing. Most English-language lists are US-centred, so we actively added lists from the UK, India, Brazil, Spanish-speaking Latin America, Nigeria, Australia and Japan. The Middle East and North Africa are still under-represented: the one Dubai list we found named training firms rather than people. We are looking for more sources from every region, and you can suggest one.

How our tools work

Our free tools run entirely in your browser. There is no sign-up, and nothing you type is sent to us.

• Discount Damage Calculator: standard gross-profit arithmetic. Extra volume needed = discount ÷ (margin − discount).
• Deal Odds Checker: a transparent, weighted checklist drawn from MEDDPICC, Gap Selling, SPICED, JOLT and multi-threading. The weights are SellSip's editorial judgement and are shown next to every box. It is a readiness estimate on the Brew Strength scale, not a calibrated forecast. Compare it with your own win rates.
• Cold Email Grader: simple text checks for length, reading level, you/I balance, one clear ask, the subject line, spam words and personalisation. The thresholds are SellSip house rules, informed by Jill Konrath's SNAP advice to keep emails short and focused on one ask.

Who we are

SellSip is an independent publication at sellsip.com. We are not paid to feature any person, method or product. If that ever changes for a piece, the piece will say so at the top.