Sales has long been considered a numbers game—the more doors you knock on, the better your chances of success. It’s the first lesson new salespeople learn. Over time, seasoned reps become adept at identifying which doors to knock on, improving efficiency. But efficiency alone isn’t enough to drive consistent sales performance over the long term.
Beyond the Numbers: Timing and Prioritization in Sales
Top-performing salespeople develop productivity hacks to meet customers at the right stage in their buying journey, strategically timing their pitches and prioritizing high-potential interactions. By balancing immediate quarterly targets with building a robust future pipeline, they avoid prospect fatigue, ensuring that interactions remain valuable and relevant.
The Challenge of Scaling Leadership Impact
As sales reps progress into leadership roles—first as front-line managers and eventually as senior sales leaders—they face new challenges in managing and motivating teams at scale. With greater span of control comes an increased risk of losing precision in forecasting and pipeline quality.
These leaders dedicate time, often Friday afternoons, to meticulously review every rep’s deals, uncovering patterns and trends just as they did in their days as individual sales reps. This instinctive approach, however, is difficult to scale, relying on a small circle of trusted lieutenants who have internalized the leader’s unique playbook and developed similar sales productivity super-powers.
The Limitations of Codified Playbooks
To replicate success across their teams, sales leaders often try to codify their implicit playbooks into sales enablement artifacts. While formal training lifts overall capability, there’s a lag time in internalizing this knowledge. Many front-line managers and reps struggle during this post-enablement period, often defaulting to old habits when the immediate impact of training fails to materialize, causing the business to plateau.
Even top-performing companies hit this plateau. It’s at this juncture that leadership teams often appoint a new CRO, bringing in someone with experience in scaling other organizations and a network of trusted lieutenants. Unfortunately, the lessons of the past are frequently overlooked, and the cycle of growth and plateau repeats.
A New Strategy for Scaling Success
Ambitious CROs need a fresh approach. Rather than solely focusing on sales efficiency, the emphasis should shift toward boosting sales productivity and distributing these super-powers across the entire team. By balancing efficiency with productivity, CROs can create a sustainable, scalable sales function adaptable to the organization’s growth stage.
It’s time to rethink the numbers game. By enhancing both efficiency and productivity, CROs can ensure that every sales rep has the tools and guidance needed for success, effectively scaling the playbook for long-term impact.
