The Assumptions Running Your Sales Team
You're in an executive team meeting, and the sales team is on the docket.
It’s taking way too long for reps to ramp. The last two hires didn't even last long enough to get there. Revenue is concentrated in a few veterans’ territories, and everyone knows that's a risk. Something needs to change.
So you make some decisions.
"Let's invest in training."
"Let's hire someone with more experience."
"Let's build out a playbook."
All reasonable. All based on... what, exactly?
A hunch. A pattern you think you see. Something that worked at another company ten years ago.
Fast forward six months, and the training didn't stick. The experienced hire is struggling to adopt the new concepts, just like the others. The playbook is sitting in a shared drive that nobody opens.
What went wrong?
You were probably solving the wrong problem. Or maybe the right problem with the wrong solution. You didn't know the difference because nobody asked the questions that would have told you.
The Assumptions We Treat as Facts
Ask a leadership team why their best reps are successful, and you'll hear:
"They're great at building relationships."
"They really know the product."
"They've been here forever — they just get it."
Ask them why their best customers buy, and you'll hear:
"Our service."
"Our quality."
"We've been partners for years."
None of that is wrong. But none of it is specific enough to act on.
What kind of relationships? Built how? With whom?
What does "great service" actually mean to that customer? What would make them leave?
If you can't answer those questions precisely, you're operating on assumptions dressed up as insight.
Every decision you make about your sales team: who to hire, how to train them, what standards to coach them to, is built on that shaky foundation.
The Usual Fixes
When sales performance stalls, companies reach for familiar solutions:
Training: Bring in a program. Teach a methodology. Hope it sticks.
Hiring: Find someone with a better pedigree. Pay up for "experience."
Tools: New CRM. New sales engagement platform. New dashboards.
Pressure: More calls. More activity. More pipeline.
Sometimes these work, but usually they don't.
Not because they're bad ideas, but because they're generic solutions to problems you haven't specifically diagnosed.
It’s like prescribing medication without running tests.
What You Don't Know
Here's what most companies have never actually validated:
What do your best reps do differently? Not "relationships." The specific behaviors, questions, and choices that separate them from average performers.
Why do your best customers buy? Not "service." The specific outcomes they value, the problems you solve that others don't, the reasons they chose you over the alternative.
“What does good look like here?” Not industry best practices. The behaviors that actually work in your market, with your customers, given your competitive dynamics.
Without answers to those questions, every decision about your sales team is a guess.
Educated, maybe. Experienced, sure. But still a guess.
The Cost of Guessing
When you guess wrong about training, you waste budget and burn credibility with your team. They sat through another program that didn't help, and now they're skeptical of the next one.
When you guess wrong about hiring, you lose a year. The ramp time, the missed quota, the eventual exit, the backfill… it adds up fast.
When you guess wrong about what's actually working, you might "fix" something that wasn't broken and break something that was. I’ve done both.
When you keep guessing, you keep getting the same results. The same ramp times. The same turnover. The same revenue is concentrated in a few people who "just get it."
The Alternative
Before you make the next decision about your sales team, ask:
What do we actually know vs. what are we assuming? Be honest. "We think" is not "we know."
When did we last validate this with our best customers? Not a sales call. A real conversation about why they buy and what they value.
Can we articulate what our best people actually do? If the answer is "relationships" or "experience," you haven't gone deep enough.
What would we do differently if we knew for sure? If the answer is "a lot," maybe find out before you spend another six months guessing.
Getting It Right
The excavation work surfaces what your best people actually do, 2-3 levels deeper than the easy answers.
The validation work confirms what your best customers actually value, in their words, not yours.
Together, they give you the evidence base for decisions about hiring, training, coaching, onboarding, and everything else.
Without them, you're guessing. And you'll keep getting the same results you've been getting.
With them, you're building on what actually works. This changes everything.
Before you sign off on the next training program, the next hire, the next "initiative," pick up the phone. Ask the questions.
Get it wrong in a conversation instead of in the market.
It's cheaper. And a lot less embarrassing.
This is part of a series on the symptoms that show up when the hard work doesn't get done.
