The Cost of Tolerating “Pretty Good”
Let’s pretend that you just invested $500,000 in the latest technology to “tighten up” the reporting on your company’s payables, receivables, compensation reports, taxes, and forecasting. The company you bought the service from told you that it would take about 90 days to work any bugs out, but certainly, by year-end, your expectations would be met.
Around the 90-day mark, you meet with your CFO and ask, “How’s it going?” She responds, “Pretty good!” You then inquire, “Pretty good means?” She replies:
- Our payable reports are about 66% correct, but trending in the right direction.
- Our overdue receivables still average 45 days, but we’re making progress.
- Our compensation expenses are off by about 5% and we’re not sure why, but we’re working on it.
- Taxes? Well, my best guess is that we are going to owe between 10% and 20% more than last year.
- As far as forecasting revenue, our pipeline shows $5,000,000 to be closed in the next 6 months, but we’re not yet confident that the number is accurate.
How do you feel about your investment? What is your reaction to a lack of success at meeting expectations? How long would you tolerate the continuance of this failure? I’m not sure you’d fire your CFO, CTO, HR, or consultant, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t say, “Okay, let’s give it another 60 days.”
What Nobody Talks About in Building a Successful Sales Environment
This is a bit of a stretch scenario, but the point I want to make is that you probably get a report like this about your sales team; you just don’t know it. What isn’t revealed in a sales meeting or in your monthly meeting with your sales manager is the detail behind the big numbers you talk about.
You talk about YOY results, sales YTD against plan, and maybe even how you’re doing against other sales divisions or peers in your industry. What you don’t see or hear about is this:
- Over 90% of your results are probably coming from 36% of your sales team.
- The bottom 36% of your sales team is likely responsible for less than 4% of your total sales.
- Of the last 4 hires, only 1 of them is doing better than the people they replaced.
- The cost of putting the other 3 in the market for 12 months and then replacing them is a two-comma problem over 5 years.
- If you really wanted to drive profit, you could probably eliminate the bottom 36% and increase profitability significantly.
- Some of your more senior people are not performing nearly as well as some of your new people.
The challenge to organizations (and what matters most) is the answer to the question: Are we hitting our numbers? If that answer is yes, you’re okay. BUT if you are unwilling to accept 90% correct in your tax estimate or compensation projections, why are you settling for anything less than 100% execution from your entire sales team?
3 Steps to Building a Successful Sales Environment
These three tools will help your organization build a successful sales environment and correct what’s broken.
1. Speed to Failure
With your new hires, do your best to find out quickly if both of you made the right decision. Make sure that, as you are making the offer, you let them know everything they are going to have to go through, how they will be managed, and all that is expected of them in the first 90 days and the following 6 months.
2. Conversation is King
Despite all the technology that is available to help your salespeople create opportunities, nothing yet has replaced the value of quality conversations and coaching. This means you need to have a very high standard for training, practice, and preparation before you put people out into the market. These consistent conversations are the foundation of building a successful sales environment.
3. Use Sales Technology That Supports Selling
The technology that you buy to support sales must support sales first, then finance. Your sales technology should make it easy for salespeople to communicate with suspects, prospects, and clients. It should be easy to use and provide extremely useful information for both the sales manager and salespeople. It should make it simple for your team to consistently follow your sales process and help you predict, with a high level of validity, what is actually going to get sold over any given time frame.
Implementing these three steps will go a long way toward building a successful sales environment and improving the productivity of your entire team.
FAQ: Building a Successful Sales Environment
Q: What is a “sales environment”?
A: A sales environment refers to the systems, culture, and tools that influence how your sales team performs. A strong environment promotes accountability, communication, and clear expectations.
Q: How long does it take to build a successful sales environment?
A: While quick wins can happen within 90 days, building a truly successful sales environment requires consistent coaching, clear metrics, and leadership commitment over time.
Q: What’s the biggest mistake leaders make when trying to improve sales performance?
A: Many leaders rely too heavily on technology or metrics without focusing on conversation quality and accountability. The best results come from combining strong systems with daily coaching and real dialogue.
Q: Can smaller teams benefit from this approach?
A: Absolutely. Whether you have 5 salespeople or 50, these same steps—speed to failure, consistent conversations, and the right technology—can transform your results.
