You Can’t Build Your Way Out of Constipated Revenue

Before we talk about driving revenue, let’s talk about driving on the highway.

You probably have a version of this near you. In my case, somebody finally decided to do something about the daily backups at the intersection of I-495 and I-90. They got worse on weekends and holidays, and in October 2022 the project started. Two new long on-ramps. Two new long exit ramps. Two additional lanes in each direction. Three new overpasses.

That should have done the trick.

It didn’t. The backups didn’t end when the construction ended. Somebody, or a whole group of somebodies, apparently believed that making the ramps longer mattered more than making them wide enough to actually move cars. One long lane doesn’t make up for the need for two. They added length, features, and infrastructure, then expected capacity to appear. It didn’t.

That’s what a lot of companies have done with their sales tech stack.

Road signs are the sales process.

The navigation system is the CRM.

The additional lanes, longer ramps, and new overpasses are ZoomInfo, Outreach, AI tools, gamification, the LMS, and Gong.

It all looks great on the project plan. It accounts for neither the cost and disruption nor the failure to change what actually moves revenue.

Revenue is still constipated.

Building and developing selling skills is essentially the same solution it was fifty years ago. The difference is that now there are far more providers, vaguer capabilities, a lot more noise, unmet promises, too many add-ons, and almost no guidance or governance. Longer ramps. More overpasses. More lanes. Same traffic.

Without turning this into a long-winded list of a hundred things you can do, here are the five priorities that actually create capacity as we finish the year and head into the next one.

Goals. Every company has them. Failure is often baked in with a margin for error greater than 10%. Set the revenue goal. Cascade it to each sales manager and each salesperson. If the number already includes a built-in miss, you’re not setting a goal. You’re writing an excuse in advance.

For more on metrics, read Too Many Sales Metrics? How to Choose One KPI That Drives Revenue

For more on accountability read The Biblical Sales Force, Part 4: Accountability

For more on training and coaching read Why Sales Managers Don’t Coach: Two Out of 500 Said Yes

You can do this tomorrow.

Don’t turn it into a four-year project that adds lanes and overpasses and leaves you with constipation. Decide. Plan. Train and coach. Execute. Review. Assess. Train and coach some more.

The ramps are already long enough. Capacity comes from how the cars are driven.

We can help.