Investor and entrepreneur Matt Haycox has unveiled his latest addition to the No Bollocks Business HQ, this time turning his trademark bluntness toward one of the biggest weaknesses in small businesses: sales. His new ‘No Bollocks’ approach to client acquisition is designed to help founders stop improvising, stop winging every sales call and start building a pipeline that doesn’t rely on luck or charisma.
Haycox says he built the resource after seeing the same issue crop up repeatedly across the hundreds of businesses he has funded and advised. Brilliant service. Decent product. Plenty of ambition. And then a sales process held together with duct tape.
‘Nobody thinks they’re bad at sales,’ he says. ‘But most founders are. They waffle. They talk too much. They panic-price. They follow up badly. And most importantly, they don’t know how to take someone from interested to committed. That’s why I had to create this. People need a clean, simple way to sell without feeling like they’re begging.’
Cutting Through the Misconceptions
Haycox argues that entrepreneurs have been fed a warped idea of what selling actually is. Too many think it’s about persuasion, personality or high-pressure tactics. According to him, those outdated approaches are not only ineffective but actively damaging.
‘Selling isn’t about being slick,’ he says. ‘It’s about understanding what the person needs, whether you’re actually the right fit and guiding them to a decision. Founders overcomplicate it because they’re nervous. Clients can feel that a mile away.’
Inside Matt Haycox’s No Bollocks HQ, the Sales and Client Acquisition guidance takes aim at the myths first. Haycox calls out the ‘bro-marketing’ mentality that encourages founders to chase strangers, spam cold DMs or rely on robotic pitch scripts.
‘No serious operator behaves like that,’ he says. ‘Real sales is controlled, respectful and structured. Nobody buys from the founder who sounds desperate.’
Why Sales Fails Before It Begins
The HQ’s approach starts by identifying the real reason many founders struggle: their offer and positioning are unclear. Haycox says most sales calls fall apart not because the founder can’t close, but because prospects don’t fully understand what they’re buying.
‘Sales becomes stressful when you’re selling fog,’ he says. ‘If your positioning is messy, if your pricing is confusing, if you can’t explain your value quickly, the call becomes a therapy session instead of a sales conversation.’
It’s a problem especially visible in fast-growing entrepreneurial hubs. The UAE, which topped the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2024 to 2025 report for the fourth year in a row, has seen tens of thousands of new founders enter the market. The Dubai International Chamber recorded a 138% year-on-year surge in company registrations in the first half of 2025, while the Dubai Chamber of Commerce added more than 35,000 new companies over the same period.
Haycox says this surge has increased both competition and confusion.
‘In markets like Dubai, people move fast. They want answers. If you can’t articulate your value in under 90 seconds, someone else will. The No Bollocks approach fixes that first.’
The Simplicity That Most Businesses Miss
The HQ’s sales guidance centres on a simple idea: create a predictable process and stick to it. No theatrics. No ten-step persuasion frameworks. No pressure-cooker tactics. Just clarity, confidence and control.
Instead of drowning founders in scripts, Haycox focuses on the few behaviours that make the biggest difference:
- Asking real questions
- Listening instead of pitching
- Identifying the problem before suggesting the solution
- Controlling the pace of the conversation
- Holding the boundary on price
- Following up like a professional, not a chaser
‘There’s nothing complicated about it,’ he says. ‘The problem is that founders try to sell without preparing. They run calls like they’re improvising a play. Sales isn’t improv. It’s a process.’
A System Built From Hundreds of Deals
Haycox has run thousands of sales calls in his career, both as a founder selling his own products and as an investor evaluating whether a business has what it takes to grow. He says the most important lesson he’s learned is that confidence doesn’t come from hype. It comes from structure.
‘If you know the steps, you stop panicking. If you know the questions to ask, you stop talking over people. If you know your price and why it matters, you stop giving discounts out of fear. Confidence is built, not wished for.’
The HQ’s approach reflects this. The training includes call frameworks, qualification checkpoints, objection-handling guidance, pricing anchors, proposal structures and follow-up systems, all shaped by real-world outcomes, not academic models.
Sales for People Who Don’t See Themselves as ‘Salespeople’
One of the most striking aspects of Haycox’s approach is that it’s designed for founders who don’t consider themselves natural sellers. Designers, consultants, agency owners, service providers, operators. The people who want more clients but hate the idea of ‘selling’.
‘They think selling means being pushy or fake,’ he says. ‘It’s the opposite. Good sales is calm. It’s honest. It’s respectful. It’s about helping someone make a decision they’re already considering. Once founders understand that, everything changes.’
A McKinsey study found that buying decisions in SME markets are now driven more by trust and clarity than by persuasion, something Haycox says he sees every day.
‘People buy from founders who make things easy, not founders who talk the most.’
Where the No Bollocks Sales System Goes Next
The HQ will soon expand into sector-specific sales resources, including B2B service playbooks, high-ticket consulting toolkits and UAE-focused guidance for founders navigating regional buying behaviour.
But Haycox says the mission won’t deviate.
‘The goal isn’t to turn founders into slick salespeople,’ he says. ‘The goal is to help them get clients without selling their soul or slashing their prices. When you understand what you’re doing, sales stops being something you fear and becomes something you can rely on.’
The No Bollocks Sales & Client Acquisition System is now available inside the No Bollocks Business HQ on Haycox’s official website, giving founders a cleaner, calmer and far more effective way to win the clients they actually want.
