Revenue teams stall for a handful of reasons, and owners usually guess wrong about which one applies to them. Below are the questions I field most often, with the answers I give.
My team hits activity targets but not revenue targets. What’s broken?
Usually the message rather than the effort. Activity without a tested sales story produces motion and very little else. I’ve watched teams triple their outreach and hold revenue flat, because every conversation opened the same weak way it always had.
Fix what gets said before you worry about how often it gets said.
Is my problem people or process?
Assume process until somebody proves otherwise. I worked with an independent insurance agent inside a thirty-agent commercial firm. Smart guy, strong industry background, and ready to fold the business. The firm’s standard approach demanded huge volumes of cold calls, and he hated every minute of them. He’d been handed a process incompatible with the way he operates, and he’d concluded the problem was him.
We built him a different one, focused on a 10X referral process through known Champions. His sales exploded. He’s now acting President of the company.
Nothing about him changed except the process he was running.
What about an owner who never trained in sales?
This situation occurs frequently. It typically strikes those who launched a business using their own deep knowledge of a craft. A coach came to me struggling. Years of corporate experience behind him, no startup experience at all, and none of the fundamentals: lead generation, branding, public speaking, priority management.
We built a curriculum around exactly those gaps, starting with my Professional Selling for the Non-Selling Professional course, then executive goal setting, then the Sales Communication Blueprint. Within thirty days, he signed a client at $6,000 a month. Five months in, his billing moved from $3,000 a month to over
He’ll carry those skills for the rest of his career, which matters more to me than the numbers do.
How long before we see movement?
Faster than most owners expect when the fix is a skills fix. A direct sales entrepreneur came to me working sixty-plus hours a week and making
Sales doubled in the first month of the program.
Structural problems take longer. Rebuilding a compensation plan or repositioning an offer runs over quarters, not weeks.
If I can already see the problem, why hire someone to point at it?
Understanding the solution is one thing. Actually making it happen while you are stuck in the daily grind is another story. It is tough to hold people accountable when you work right next to them every single day. I bring a tested process and a view from outside the payroll, plus enough distance to keep the new habits in place when month-end pressure shows up.
What should I fix first?
Whichever piece is costing you the most conversations. For most teams, it’s the opening thirty seconds and the request for a next step. Both are teachable in an afternoon, and both get skipped constantly.
I’ve logged over 15,000 hours of coaching, training, and consulting, and I’ve taken seven Brian Tracy Awards for Sales Excellence. What’ll matter to you is something narrower than any of that: whether your team can run a repeatable process on an ordinary Tuesday without you standing over them.
Scottsdale teams face the same math as everyone else. The market is competitive, the buyers are informed, and the fundamentals still decide it.
Tell me where your sales conversations break down, and I’ll tell you honestly whether coaching is the right tool for it.
