Don't Blame Your Sales Team. Fix Your Sales Process.

The numbers for the quarter are in, and they’re not good. You look at your CRM, you look at your team, and the easy, tempting conclusion starts to form in your mind: they’re just not closing hard enough.

Before you go down that road, I want you to stop and ask a different question: Have we given them a process that actually allows them to win?

Don't Blame Your Sales Team. Fix Your Sales Process.

More often than not, the answer is no. Here’s a truth every seasoned leader knows: a great salesperson with a terrible process will lose to an average salesperson with a great one, every single time. If your team is consistently underperforming, the problem probably isn’t your people. It’s the playbook you’ve given them.

The Telltale Signs of a Broken System

How can you tell if your process is the real villain? Look for these signs. It’s a process problem if:

• Nearly everyone is struggling. If one rep is missing their target, it might be a coaching issue. If 80% of the team is off-pace, it's a systemic failure.

  
  

• Your reps are professional administrators. Studies have shown salespeople can spend over half their time on non-selling tasks—updating the CRM, searching for content, chasing internal approvals. That’s not a lack of effort; it’s a process that forces them to be administrators instead of sellers.

  
  

• The leads are a lottery. Your team is frustrated because they spend their days chasing prospects who will never, ever buy. This is a classic symptom of a broken connection between marketing and sales.

  
  

• Your best people are leaving. Top performers have a low tolerance for inefficiency. If you have high staff turnover, it might be because they’re tired of fighting a system that works against them.

  
  

A War Story: The Myth of the 'Lazy' Sales Team

I was brought in to consult for a fast-growing tech firm here in Singapore whose revenue had stalled. The CEO was convinced he needed to ‘clean house’ in the sales department.

But I spent a day just watching them work. They were drowning. They spent hours sifting through a flood of completely unqualified leads from marketing—students doing research, competitors, and people who’d downloaded a white paper with no intention of ever buying. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack made of other, smaller needles.

We didn't fire anyone. Instead, we got the heads of sales and marketing in a room and didn't let them leave until they had a single, written-down definition of what a "good lead" actually was. We implemented a simple lead scoring system to automate the filtering. Two months later, with the exact same team, the sales-qualified lead conversion rate was up by nearly 40%. The problem was never the people; it was the plumbing.

Your 5-Step Plan to Fix the Engine

If these problems sound familiar, the responsibility to fix them lies with leadership. Here are five practical steps you can take right now.

1. Uncover the Real Friction by Watching Them Work

Don't just ask for reports. Actually sit with your reps. Watch them use the CRM. Listen in on their calls. Ask them one simple question: "What is the single dumbest, most frustrating part of your day?" Their answer is your starting point.

2. End the Lead Wars with a Single Definition of 'Good'

Get your commercial leaders together and force them to agree on a single, clear definition of a "sales-ready" lead. Then, create a simple Service-Level Agreement (SLA) that defines how quickly sales must follow up. This one meeting can eliminate countless hours of wasted effort.

3. Declare War on Admin

Aggressively hunt down and eliminate manual, repetitive tasks. Can you create automated proposal templates? Can you use a simple scheduling tool? Is your CRM a helpful guide or a data-entry burden? If it's a burden, simplify what you require from your reps. Their job is to sell, not to type.

4. Give Them Tools, Not Just Training

Sales enablement isn't just about another training day. It's about removing roadblocks. Give your team genuinely useful tools like competitor comparison cards for quick reference, an easy-to-use ROI calculator, or pre-approved contract templates that cut down legal delays.

5. Change Your Scoreboard

Stop obsessing only over lagging indicators like 'revenue closed'. Start tracking the leading indicators that tell you if your process is healthy. Look at your lead-to-opportunity conversion rate, your average sales cycle time, and your customer acquisition cost. These numbers reveal the health of your engine.

Leadership Owns the Process

It’s tempting to blame the players when the team is losing. It’s also a sign of weak leadership.

Your team’s performance is a direct reflection of the system you’ve built for them. Great leaders don't just demand better results; they architect an environment where better results are the natural outcome. Before you have another tough conversation with a struggling salesperson, have a tough look at your process.

Fix the engine, and you’ll be amazed at how much faster your team can go.