Error Proof Your Sales Execution

Understanding Sales Execution

Sales execution is the plans, actions, processes, and behaviours that bring a company’s sales strategy to life. The term refers to the steps that sales leaders and sales teams take to capture, convert and close new leads.

Done correctly, sales execution ensures an environment of Unstoppable Sales. Done poorly, however, and sales are inconsistent and unpredictable. The resulting peaks and valleys result in further stalled sales momentum, directly impacting a company’s profitability and cash flow.

 

Starting Point: Assessing Your Current Sales Execution

To determine how effective your sales execution is, there are three pillars to consider.

• Leads: Understanding, attracting, and prioritizing the best-fit leads.
• Methods: Introducing the process and technology to close new leads consistently.
• Team: Onboarding, up-skilling, and leading a high-performing sales team.

Within each of these pillars are the core drivers of effective sales execution.

To determine the effectiveness of your sales execution, it’s important to assess your existing capabilities and capacity within each of these three pillars. You can begin by answering the following questions:

Questions to determine the effectiveness of existing lead capture processes:

• Where does the predominance of our qualified leads come from today? Are we able to scale up or scale down this flow of leads as desired?
• What percentage of leads are inbound versus pursued?
• What percentage of our leads are qualified to buy?
• What percentage of leads convert to a final sale?

Questions to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of existing sales processes:

• How effective are our prospecting processes at capturing qualified leads?
• How effective are our conversion processes in converting leads to buyers?
• How quickly can we transition a lead to a buyer (i.e., hours, days, weeks, or months)
• How many people are involved in the conversion process today? Are there opportunities to add technology to increase our effectiveness?

Questions to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of our onboarding and skill acceleration:

• How quickly can we onboard a new sales team member?
• What typical gaps exist for new hires that we need to revisit or address?
• What is the “time to first sale” for new team members? Can this be improved?
• What is our retention of sales team members (as compared to the industry average)?
• How effective is our coaching program at improving sales team performance?

Now let’s turn to the steps to transition to a more customer-centric approach to selling.

 

Step 1: Transitioning to a Customer-Centric Approach

As discussed in my book The Sales Multiplier Formula, selling is a team sport.

When everyone in an organization focuses on putting customers first, the result is stronger sales, specifically more upsell and cross-sell opportunities, along with a steadily increasing number of unsolicited and solicited referrals. Customer Centricity results when everyone on the sales team, and across the organization, recognizes how their role impacts the customer. This sounds easier to accomplish than it actually is, because most roles outside of sales are rewarded based on being efficient, not customer-centric.

For example:

Accounting is expected to process outstanding customer payments (accounts receivable) quickly, which can mean how they reach out to customers, and the messaging they use to solicit payment is not always in the customer’s best interest.

Engineering is expected to produce designs and drawings that are functional and efficient to produce. This doesn’t always mean, however, that the designs are customer-friendly. The Apple Magic Mouse, for example, had a charging port on the bottom, resulting in it being unusable while charging.

Even sales can be guilty of not being customer-centric. For example, activity measures such as the number of calls per day can push sales to make more calls, while inadvertently ignoring the customer’s needs or desire for more in-depth conversations. Not every customer converts at the same speed.

Becoming More Customer Centric

Ensuring that all departments are clear on how their roles impact customers and what customers expect is the first step in shifting to a more customer-centric culture.

For the sales department, this is achieved when team members and leadership recognize that buyer needs, expectations and pain points come first. Measures of sales performance, such as prospecting activities, matter less than the actual customer conversations. These are measured by the size of the sale, the speed of conversion, and the referrals generated by each new customer.

 

Step 2: Leveraging AI and Sales Automation

Sales execution can improve when the right technology is introduced, which in turn helps sales be more effective. For example, I still know companies today that use a spreadsheet instead of CRM software. For some, based on the simplicity and one-time nature of their sale, a spreadsheet that can easily be viewed, updated, and shared is sufficient. This, despite what the companies that sell C.R.M. software will suggest.

AI has increasingly become popular to support sales execution in various ways, for example:

• Support the development of customized messages for email and text
• Assist in the development of customer presentations
• Handle inbound inquiries to support the qualification and assignment of leads
• Prompt reminders for lead follow-up and acceleration through the pipeline

The key is selecting the right AI and automation based on sales team capabilities, capacity and customer expectations.

Industry Examples: Success Stories with Automation

A client of mine in the insurance industry incorporated AI agents to handle immediate customer inquiries, and free up time of account managers to focus on more prospecting and client outreach. Another client of mine in the mining sector introduced AI tools to assist the business development team in customizing their presentations for new customers, saving the team hours of meeting preparation.

Still another client selling financial services introduced automated email scripts to be sent out to prospects after their initial call with sales to keep the prospect warm, providing ongoing education on the uniqueness of their products (as compared to competitors), and resulting in a reduced time to close.

 

Step 3: Implementing Effective Sales Coaching

Next to technology and automation, the single biggest contributor to improving sales execution is through effective sales coaching. In my book The Unstoppable Sales Team, I share a model for sales coaching that has been proven to improve sales team performance.

Sales leaders need to use coaching as both a proactive and a reactive tool, driving meaningful development for each team member by focusing on their individual areas for improvement.

The pillars of effective sales coaching are:

Awareness: Beginning with a question that confirms the coachee is aware of whether there is a change or improvement necessary.

Benefit: The coachee must understand the benefit of making a change in their behavior and methods.

Belief: The person being coached must believe that they have the ability to introduce the skills and behaviors they are being coached on.

Ability: There must be a perception that the coachee can change their behavior, having access to the resources, knowledge and tools to achieve the desired behavior.

Results: If the behavior change is to be sustained, there must be results realized to encourage continued application of the new desired behaviors or methods.

Managing Time for Increased Sales Efficiency

The biggest trap most sales professionals fall into is losing time. This can come as the result of various things, for example:

• Time invested in managing existing customer relationships, rather than moving on to finding new customers.
• Time invested in administrative tasks such as
• Updating trip notes
• Updating CRM notes
• Updating proposals
• Time spent attempting to satisfy high-demand prospects, such as attending ongoing prospect meetings, or time to develop customized resources.

If you want to improve sales execution, regularly assess where your sales team is spending their time, then work to address areas where time is sunk with little to no results. I’d recommend you begin by setting reasonable expectations on time for each of the three areas listed above, then look at variances outside of expected norms for opportunities to improve sales team efficiency.

 

How to Close the Gap Between Your Sales Strategy and Sales Execution

The consensus amongst several studies conducted by organizations, including McKinsey and Harvard, suggests that approximately 70% of all strategic initiatives fail. Your sales strategy falls into this category. If you put the time, effort and focus into developing a sales strategy, how can you ensure it is achieved, possibly even exceeded? The answer lies in ensuring sales execution prioritizes and supports the achievement of your sales strategy using the following steps.

• Your sales strategy must consist of clear and achievable objectives.
• There must be sufficient resources, skills and time to achieve the objectives set forth.
• Progress towards objectives must be measured regularly.
• Delays or gaps in progress must be addressed with immediate action.
• Recovery plans must be developed and introduced when strategy objectives fall behind.

Closing the gap between sales strategy and sales execution isn’t overly complex, but it does require thoughtful development of the strategy and then sufficient action towards its attainment. If your sales execution is weak, then it’s reasonable to believe that your sales strategy will not be achieved.

 

How to Improve Sales Execution

Improving sales execution is not as difficult as you might think; however, it comes down to three factors: Awareness, Time, and Resources.

Awareness: To improve sales execution, you must first be aware of your company’s or sales team’s weaknesses when it comes to execution. Where are the gaps in your sales processes? What areas could be improved that would have a direct impact on sales?

Time: It takes time to fully understand weaknesses in sales execution and to uncover root causes. Jumping to resolve issues without first taking the time to understand them can result in wasted time and effort. It also takes time to introduce changes, assess their impact, and make further adjustments.

Resources: Understanding gaps or issues in your sales execution will often require additional resources to resolve. These can include hiring more sales team members, introducing new software, and or investing in sales training to develop new sales skills.

Common sales execution gaps that arise and require improvement include the following:

• How can I shorten sales cycles
• Boost win rates?

To shorten your sales cycle

• Boost win rates
• Begin by identifying what a reasonably achievable sales cycle time is
• Then break each component of the sale into timelines (i.e., time to qualify; time from qualify to proposal; time to handle objections; time to close).

At each of these times, look for delays, skill gaps (e.g., addressing objections), or opportunities to use automation, all with the goal of moving to the close faster and with greater success.

What are the best ways to align sales and marketing teams?

Sales and marketing go hand-in-hand, and as such need to communicate on a regular basis, beginning with weekly meetings to discuss new lead generation opportunities (i.e., marketing priorities) and support to increase value-added resources to convert more prospects (i.e., sales priorities). In my experience, it is best to have both of these departments report into the same role (i.e., Chief Sales Officer) to ensure that priorities can be set for both teams that are complementary. Lastly, a growth strategy should be formulated that includes inputs, priorities, and actions for both sales and marketing, and to avoid confusion on overall priorities.

How do I implement AI in sales without replacing human roles?

Select and introduce AI tools that support sales execution and speed up the success of your sales team. Publicly available platforms like ChatGPT can be used to support research for new prospects (instead of Google). More advanced software, such as Gong.io, can increase awareness of prospect activity, enabling sales to follow up more consistently and at opportune times. When you view AI as a tool, rather than a resource, you’ll easily find new opportunities to implement AI in sales to support sales execution. If all else fails, ask your sales team how they are using AI in their roles today.

Why do deals stall, and how to fix it?

Stalled deals are one of the most common sales execution challenges. Ultimately, deals stall because attention shifts. When sales are distracted with too many priorities, they can tend to lose sight of the stage prospects are at. Unfortunately, this can lead to delayed follow-ups, delayed delivery of promised information or resources, and an overall lack of focus on moving the prospect to close. To avoid this, be sure to have clear stages in your sales process, and have the sales team meet weekly to discuss existing prospects, their current stage, and what’s next. This weekly accountability will ensure focus remains on progressing leads.

What sales infrastructure is future-proof for 2026?

With the rapid advancement of Generative AI, it’s easy to predict how sales will evolve in the coming months and years. Administrative tasks often handled by sales can be easily transitioned to generative AI, freeing up sales to focus on more important initiatives, such as moving prospects to the next stage of the pipeline. As a result, an infrastructure to future-proof sales considers three main questions:

• What account management activities do sales currently manage, and to what degree can these be managed by generative AI?
• What value-added activities are sales involved in today, and if sales are refocused on these areas, what impact does that have on available time and resources?
• What are our growth goals in the coming years, and how can sales be redeployed, given the answers to the questions above, to support this growth?

 

Limitations and Considerations

Improving sales execution results when you set priorities and take action to quickly address and achieve these priorities. Unfortunately, however, this is often easier said than done. There are several limitations and barriers you are likely to encounter, the most common of which are listed below:

• Missing or inadequate sales strategy
• No clear action plans and success measures to achieve the sales strategy
• Inadequate people resources
• Insufficient or under-utilization of technology
• Lack of sufficient skills to achieve the sales strategy

The most common limitation to strong sales execution is the resistance that sales team members and others within an organization can have to introducing change. A lack of commitment to making changes to improve sales execution will result in declining sales efforts, as sales execution does not remain stable; it declines over time.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

There are four stages of change that most sales teams progress through, namely:

• Consideration of Change: Often, a predominance of team members will consider the need to change
• However, without a personal impact
• Sense of urgency
• The need is often dismissed.

Contemplation of Change: Once a personal impact and sense of urgency is recognized, then sales team members will contemplate if a change is needed, and what it might look like.

Introduction of Change: If a sales team member believes that the change is reasonably achievable and will not have any negative or detrimental impacts on them, they will test the change to assess its relevance and impact.

Adoption of Change: If a sales team member has introduced a change with little effort and has experienced a positive impact, they will then adopt the change as part of their regular routine.

Resistance exists at each of the four stages, and therefore it’s important that sales leadership and company leadership prepare employees for each stage and support their transition on both a group and individual basis. This is essentially overcoming sales team objections and demonstrating the desired outcome, and the positive impact it will have on each individual.

 

How to Improve My Sales Process

When it comes to fixing sales execution, there are many different approaches you can take. The key is understanding what a good sales execution framework looks like, then identifying the gaps, obstacles, and challenges in your current execution framework.

The good news is that fixing sales execution is not difficult work, but it is a never-ending focus if you want to achieve unstoppable sales.