Top 20 Reasons Salespeople Miss Quota and How to Fix it

I’m Not a Baby

People have been babying me.

The hot weather finally arrived and I’m hearing things like, “Would you like to get out of the sun?” “Would you be more comfortable in the Air Conditioning?” “Would you like to move to a shadier area?”

I’m fine. I don’t walk around like an old man, someone with a heart condition, or someone with a disease. I’m perfectly healthy. My quadruple bypass surgery was nearly 18 months ago and I don’t need to be coddled. I’m active, busy and doing great. I’m working full time, have a full calendar, spend hours each day doing yard work, and I can probably outwork you.

But people still baby me. It’s the first question everyone asks. “How are you feeling?”

My Kid Wasn’t a Baby Either

When our son was around 3, I was pitching wiffle balls to him – underhanded and from very close – and he was swinging at and missing every pitch. When he was playing college baseball I reminded him of that to get a laugh. A parent who babies their kid would move closer and throw the ball even more slowly, and still underhanded.

I moved further away, threw harder, and threw it overhand, and after a several pitches, he started making contact. “Hell yeah! He’ll be a major leaguer!” If babying were a thing in the MLB, they would move the outfield fences closer to home plate so singles hitters could hit home runs too. It’s not so far fetched. They already coddle the pitchers with their pitch counts and they want more offense so…. how does this relate to sales and selling? If Mr. Rogers of the decades-long-running PBS kids show was still around, I could hear him asking, “Can you say Salespeople are babied?”

The Sales Leadership Babying Epidemic

This babying BS has become a big part of sales leadership. We all know that anywhere from 57%-83% of salespeople fail to hit quota. The results are awful, and everyone should feel discouraged, demotivated, frustrated, and defeated – but they don’t because it’s the new normal. So what do many companies do to fix the quota attainment problem?

Coach them up? No.

Get them training? No.

Hold them accountable? No.

I can’t think of anything more infuriating than what so many sales leaders actually do in this scenario: They LOWER the quota.

They say things like:

• “Maybe it was too difficult.” (that’s why you offer training and coaching )
• “Maybe they aren’t ready for a quota like that.” (that’s why you offer encouragement and direction and support)
• “Maybe the business isn’t out there.” (you can’t steal 2nd base with one foot on 1st base)
• “Maybe it’s our price points.” (that’s why they must learn to sell value)
• “Maybe we’re not being realistic.”
• “Maybe people are holding back because of the economy, or the war, or gas prices, or the President,” (cue the tiny violin)
• Insert your favorite f’d up excuse here.

It’s classic babying!

Stop Lowering the Bar and Raise it Instead

Instead of lowering the quota, do what I did with my 3-year-old son and RAISE the bar, but let them know you’re there to help in any way possible. Tools, training, coaching, support, direction, accountability. You are there.

Instead of making excuses for them and rationalizing their results, call them out on it. Tell them they’re rationalizing their failure to hit the target, and why they struggled and failed (YES THEY FAILED).

Instead of saying, “Go get ’em next year,” do an honest assessment of the bottlenecks and combustion points and help them identify WHY they failed. Which of these possible 20 reasons could it be?:

1. Not enough opportunities in the pipeline
2. Not the right size or type of opportunities in the pipeline
3. Lack of pipeline building activities
4. Ineffective discovery calls/meetings
5. Lack of relationships
6. Failure to uncover compelling reasons to buy
7. Failure to effectively differentiate
8. Ineffective monetization of their problem or opportunity
9. Not thoroughly qualifying their opportunities
10. Not reaching actual decision makers
11. Not getting past “nice to have”
12. Jumping the gun and generating unqualified quotes/proposals and going into chase mode
13. Failure to follow an effective sales process
14. Failure to build a case
15. Ineffective at selling value
16. Delusional relationships
17. Lack of alignment on timing of the close
18. Lack of alignment on urgency
19. Complacency/Motivation
20. Fear of Rejection

There are many more possible reasons but 20 will certainly get you started! This list includes only Excuse Making from the 5 Will to Sell competencies; only Rejection from the 6 Sales DNA competencies; but it does include most of the 10 Tactical competencies. Each competency has between 6-12 attributes so there are easily 150 sales attributes to consider.

Opportunity

There is a huge upside with salespeople who miss quota. You must simply decide that YOU’VE had enough of the misses, failures, and lost opportunities to grow and earn more income.

A predictive custom sales process that is staged, milestone-centric, and buyer-focused makes a huge difference when everyone follows and is held accountable to consistently executing it. Add a win-centric custom scorecard and the win rate jumps!

Once the sales process is in place, targeted sales training creates a big lift because it equips salespeople with the right strategies, tactics, timings, messaging and modeling to execute the process effectively. Company-wide adoption of an effective Sales Process drives a 20% increase in sales.

Coaching provides an even bigger lift when it’s both consistent (daily) and effective (role-plays and debriefs). Consistent and effective coaching drives a 42% increase in sales.

What’s Next

Attempting to tackle everything mentioned above is overwhelming and time-consuming, especially when you haven’t taken this journey before.

There are many approaches, rankings, and options as you begin to work through the quota attainment problem. If you feel like you could use some help:

We can speed things up in a big way, and provide very thorough insights and actions with a sales team evaluation. Samples.

We can train sales management/leadership and get them coaching consistently and effectively.

We can review and optimize your sales process.

We can provide impactful sales training that is optimized for selling in 2026 and beyond.

More importantly, we are happy to simply talk, hear about your team, and make suggestions.

You can request one of our powerful white papers here or you can stop being a baby and simply reach out to us here.