PROBOS Perspective:What's Really Getting in the Way of Your Number?

I've spent a large part of my career in and around sales, selling, leading sales teams, coaching sales people, working with sales leaders and building commercial capability. One thing I've learnt is that when the number isn't where we want it to be, we have a tendency to look for the answer:

• We need more pipeline.

• We need more activity.

• We need better conversion.

• We need sales training.

• We need a new methodology.

• We need better account plans.

• We need people to prospect more.

• We need to improve negotiation.

Maybe.

Before we decide what needs fixing, perhaps we need to ask a better question:

What's really getting in the way of the number? ........because revenue is an outcome and behind that outcome sit hundreds of human behaviours, decisions and conversations

The Number Is Telling You Something

Imagine conversion has dropped. It's tempting to conclude that your salespeople need help closing but what if closing isn't the problem ?........

• What if discovery six weeks earlier wasn't good enough?

• What if the seller never really understood the customer's commercial problem?

• What if they started presenting solutions too early?

• What if they built a fantastic relationship with someone who couldn't actually make the decision?

• What if the customer liked the solution but couldn't build an internal business case?

• What if nobody created enough reason to change?

• What if your salesperson knew all of this but didn't feel confident enough to challenge the customer?

Suddenly... “We need to improve conversion” isn't one problem, it's potentially six and another sales course may not fix any of them.

Sometimes It's a Skills Problem.....Sometimes It Isn't.

This is something I believe commercial leaders need to become much more curious about. If people aren't doing something, we often assume they don't know how, so we train them, but what if they already know ?

• A salesperson may know how to ask great discovery questions but still rush towards the solution because they're under pressure to generate demos.

• A sales manager may know how to coach but spend every one to one inspecting pipeline because that's what leadership asks them about.

• A seller may understand negotiation but discount early because they're uncomfortable sitting with tension.

• A technical expert may know the product brilliantly but dominate the demo because nobody has helped them understand their role in the customer's buying journey.

• A senior account manager may understand strategic selling but avoid challenging a longstanding customer because they don't want to damage the relationship.

  
  

These aren't necessarily knowledge problems. They're human behaviour problems.

And that's where commercial performance gets interesting.

Best Practice Matters but Behaviour Determines Whether It Happens.

There is a huge amount we know about good selling:

• Great discovery matters.

• Understanding the customer's world matters.

• Creating value matters.

• Reaching the right stakeholders matters.

• Qualification matters.

• Commercial curiosity matters.

• Negotiation matters.

• Coaching matters.

• Accountability matters.

None of that is particularly controversial. The interesting question is: If we know these things matter, why don't they happen consistently? That's the territory I want to explore in this new series, not simply: What should salespeople do? .......but What gets in the way of them doing it ? because knowing best practice and consistently demonstrating it are two very different things.

Revenue Follows Behaviour

A CRM gives us data. Pipeline gives us visibility. Forecasting gives us a view of what might happen but underneath every number is behaviour:

• Someone asked a brilliant question, or didn't.

• Someone challenged an assumption, or stayed quiet.

• Someone reached another stakeholder, or relied on their existing contact.

• Someone properly qualified an opportunity, or kept it in the pipeline because they hoped it might happen.

• Someone had the courage to discuss money, or avoided it until the end.

• Someone walked away from an opportunity that wasn't real, or spent another three months chasing it.

Revenue follows behaviour.

Which means if we want to change the number, we need to understand the behaviours creating it.

And Sometimes the Problem Isn't Sales

This is another area I want to explore. Revenue doesn't belong solely to the sales team.

• Marketing influences it.

• Leadership influences it.

• Customer success influences it.

• Technical teams influence it.

• Operations influence it.

• Culture influences it.

• Reward and recognition influence it.

• The quality of sales management influences it enormously.

You can train a salesperson brilliantly and then send them back into an environment that rewards entirely different behaviour and guess which one usually wins? The environment.

That's why sustainable commercial performance can't always be solved in a training room.

• Sometimes we need training.

• Sometimes coaching.

• Sometimes sales leadership development.

• Sometimes executive coaching.

• Sometimes better cross functional working.

• Sometimes behavioural change.

• Sometimes clearer process.

• Sometimes different conversations.

• Sometimes we need to challenge what the organisation itself is doing and often it's a combination.

Diagnose Before You Prescribe

This is something we believe strongly at PROBOS.

Your commercial challenge should determine the intervention, not the other way around.

Start with the outcome -What are we trying to achieve? Then look underneath it.

• What's happening now?

• What's working?

• What isn't?

• What are the best performers doing differently?

• Where are opportunities getting stuck?

• What behaviours are helping?

• What behaviours are getting in the way?

• What are managers coaching?

• What does the organisation reward?

• What do customers experience?

And importantly: Why are people behaving the way they are?

Only then should we decide what needs to change because the answer might be a workshop, but it might be coaching or leadership intervention or a change programme. Deal coaching may be required , negotiation capability enhanced or Manager development optimised. Cross functional alignment may ned to be reviewed or something completely different or a blend of some or many of these. Not training for training's sake.

What Drives Revenue?

That's what this new series is going to explore.

• The people.

• The psychology.

• The conversations.

• The leadership.

• The habits.

• The processes.

• The customer.

• The uncomfortable bits and the behaviours behind commercial performance.

We'll look at:

• Discovery

• Value.

• Pipeline.

• Coaching.

• Negotiation.

• Influence.

• Strategic accounts.

• Customer decision making.

• Change.

• AI.

• Technical selling.

• Commercial culture.

......and probably a few sales practices we've accepted for years that deserve to be challenged, because I don't believe there's one magic methodology that suddenly transforms revenue, but I do believe there are clues everywhere if we're prepared to look beneath the number.

So perhaps the next time someone says: “We need more sales.” Don't immediately ask: “What training do we need?”. Ask......

“What's really getting in the way of our number?”

That's where the interesting conversation starts.

PROBOS Revenue Sprint

Find what's getting in the way of your number. Then fix the right things.

Best practice tells us what great looks like; understanding human behaviour helps us make it happen.