Sales was the symptom

Is your sales problem starting with sales? What a stuck sales number can tell you about the people at the top

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A $10M consumer goods manufacturer was getting ready to make a growth investment. The obvious next step was more sales capacity: more reach, more reps, a bigger number.

But the owners were pulling in different directions, and more money behind sales would have made that louder. So that’s where the work started.

Eight months later, sales were up 71%.

Why it shows up in sales first

Every decision at the top eventually lands in front of a customer. Pricing, which customers to chase, what to say yes to, how hard to push. When the owners haven’t settled those questions together, sales is where the gaps show.

It rarely looks like conflict. Most owner groups are polite about it. It looks like this:

• Reps get different answers on pricing or discounts depending on who they ask.
• The ideal customer changes depending on which owner is in the room.
• Big deals stall on a sign-off nobody clearly owns.
• New initiatives launch with energy and fade within weeks.
• Managers know which owner to take which request to.
• Leadership meetings end with follow-ups instead of decisions.

From the outside, that reads as a sales problem: soft pipeline, an inconsistent team, a forecast that keeps moving. So the fix gets aimed at sales. New hires, new training, a new comp plan, a new CRM.

Those can help. But if the people at the top are sending different signals, the sales team is left carrying a disagreement it has no authority to settle.

What the owners worked on

The work started with the owners and the leadership team, before anyone touched the sales team.

How each person works.

Working Genius for each owner and for the team showed where each person gets energy from the work and where it drains them. Owners who have worked together for years still tend to assume the other person approaches decisions the way they do. Seeing it side by side makes the friction easier to talk about, and easier to stop taking personally.

Clear lanes.

Which decisions sit with one owner, which need both, and which belong with the team. Written down, so a manager doesn’t have to guess.

Accountability that matches the lanes.

If one person owns it, one person reports on it. If it’s shared, the team knows how the call gets made and by when.

None of that work was aimed at sales. But once the sales team got one direction to sell in, sales moved.

A conversation for your next leadership meeting

You can find out whether this is happening in your company in about an hour.

Ask each owner or leadership team member to answer these on their own, in writing, before anyone discusses them:

1. Which two or three customers or segments do we most want more of next year?
2. What would we turn down, even if it paid?
3. Which decisions do I think are mine alone?
4. Which decisions do I think we make together?
5. When we disagree on a call, how does it actually get settled today?

Then put the answers side by side. Where they match, you have something sales can act on. Where they don’t, you’ve found the questions your sales team has been answering on its own.

A few things that help:

• Write before you talk. Once discussion starts, answers drift toward whoever speaks first or loudest.
• Look hardest at questions 3 and 4. Two people who both think a decision is theirs is the most common source of mixed signals.
• Settle one thing before you leave. Pick the biggest gap and decide who owns it. The rest can follow over the next few weeks.
• Tell the team what changed. A decision sales never hears about doesn’t help them sell.

Signs it’s working

The questions coming up from sales get shorter. Reps stop asking two people for the same answer. Deals that waited on a sign-off start moving, because the owner of that call is clear. Leadership meetings spend less time reopening last month’s decisions.

Every week the top stays unsettled, the sales team pays for it twice: in the deals that stall, and in the workarounds they build to get anything done. The sooner the owners agree, the sooner sales stops guessing.

If your leadership team answered question 3 separately tomorrow, how close would the answers be?

If your sales number has been stuck and the fixes so far haven’t moved it, it’s worth asking whether the problem starts with sales at all.