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Sales is Not Working – Don’t Guess – Know Why!

Updated: Apr 29, 2021




It has almost become cliché, “The world has changed…” Yes, we all know that, but for the revenue generating part of your business this is even more acute.


If sales effectiveness measures the output per salesperson, ask 100 people why sales is ineffective and you get 100 different answers, even within one’s own organisation. If one was to search Google, the responses are as wide as they are varied:

  • Ineffective content marketing

  • Failure in incorporating sufficient social media marketing (or social media ads) into your sales strategy

  • Lack of sales activity

  • Not knowing target audience well enough

  • Wrong people

  • You didn’t catch their attention

  • Insufficient interest in your offer

  • Inadequate sales process

We asked our customers and some of their responses were:

  • Our sales reps are not meeting - let alone exceeding - their Revenue Targets.

  • We've invested a truckload in a CRM system, but no-one is using it.

  • Our strategy is to grow the business, but our product strategy and innovation is around driving legacy products and services.

  • 20% YOY growth is our strategy but our sales structures and incentives drive customer retention.

  • Salespeople spend more than 75% of their time in internal departments chasing issues or information.

  • Customers are already 57% through their Buying Journey before they contact us.

  • Our key relationship within our customers is with one person, often not even a leader.

  • Our sales reps are not demonstrating the right and desired behaviours.

  • Our sales reps are selling on "Price" only, not on "Value".

  • Forecasting through CRM has no relationship to the actual monthly forecast call.

Each and every one of the above points is valid, so more importantly, the questions we should be asking ourselves are:

  • What are the root causes impeding our sales effectiveness? and

  • What are the priorities I should consider in remediating those impediments?


A simple, globally tested Sales Effectiveness Baseline would quickly provide the strategic kick-off point for initiating change and development programs within your organisation to stabilise and accelerate sales effectiveness.


Against Fresh Perspective Sales’ peak performance pillars, small prioritised packaged initiatives could include (but are not necessarily limited to):


Strategy and Adoption

  • Strategy alignment

  • Business roles, responsibility and accountability alignment

Customer Connections

  • Customer planning

  • Insight Messaging

People Potential

  • Competency based development and training with both classroom and digital training and embedding coaching

  • Sales leader coaching and mentoring

Sales Enablement

  • Rewards architecture and incentive planning

  • CRM usage and adoption

  • Sales effectiveness dashboards, reporting and metrics.

With global economic trends showing recessionary times ahead why wouldn’t organisations invest in increasing sales effectiveness to not only to retain hard fought customers but also stimulate growth?


Contact us if you want to find out how we can help you address the challenges you have with your sales.


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