The Sales Process Scramble

The one thing I hear most frequently from salespeople I train or coach is, “How did you know?”

I always know. Every time.

Or they say, “I never considered that!”

But I have – I’ve seen everything. Nothing in sales can surprise me.

So most people think I’m this super smart person who knows everything.

The truth is I only know everything about sales, sales leadership and selling. Change my lane and everything about what I know changes!

For example, the thing I rank second for is my knowledge of baseball.

Back in March of 2026, on my baseball podcast, I predicted that Jarren Duran, the Red Sox’ left-fielder, would have such a great season, it would rival Carl Yastrzemski’s Triple Crown season of 1967. I made that prediction based on the way he was hitting left-handed and high velocity pitching in spring training. He was absolutely crushing the ball.

Fast forward to August of 2026, and Jarren Duran is statistically one of the worst hitters in baseball. And that’s INCLUDING an amazing month of May where he absolutely crushed the ball like I saw during spring training. We’ve seen flashes of it, but not the consistency. And the sample size I based my prediction on was isolated and small.

So I was not only wrong, I was embarrassingly wrong. And I own it.

Here’s one more example that will take us right to the point of this sales article.

Two years ago, I wandered into a small breakfast cafe and ordered a breakfast sandwich. They didn’t appear to have a griddle or even a frying pan so I asked how they managed to scramble the eggs. The college student who waited on me said that after they crack the egg and whisk it, they put it in a small dish and microwave it for 120 seconds. Wow!

Since then, I’ve “scrambled” my eggs like that dozens of times and it always produces a quick, no-fuss, no-mess, perfectly sized egg scramble for a breakfast sandwich.

But yesterday, I accidentally skipped a step. I forgot to whisk the egg and instead, poured it straight into the dish. I thought something might be wrong when banging and popping sounds began coming from inside the microwave. When the bell rang and I removed the dish, I was convinced something went wrong because instead of a nice round yellow finished egg, I had a mostly white mound with a small, ugly, yellow middle. It tasted awful and had the texture of rubber. I skipped one little step and basically lost my breakfast sandwich.

The exact same thing happens to salespeople every time they skip a key milestone in the sales process. They could very well lose the sale they thought was a done deal.

This usually happens in one of five ways:

1. They thought they were justified in skipping a milestone. Example: They weren’t able to speak with the actual decision maker but the contact said it didn’t matter because they would be advising the decision maker on what to buy and who to buy it from.
2. They didn’t realize they skipped a milestone because their sales process didn’t include that milestone. Example: Most sales processes never require the salesperson to uncover a compelling reason to buy, a compelling reason to buy from us, or develop what I call SOB Quality (the emotional heat that makes the prospect sick of the status quo and ready to change.). Baseline Selling is the only process that makes those three milestones non-negotiable. See these three milestones in the context of the Baseline Selling process.
3. They didn’t realize they skipped a milestone because there isn’t a sales process or they don’t follow it. That’s Sales Malpractice!
4. They completed the milestone but they weren’t thorough enough. Example: They asked about budget and got a number for an entire project but the salesperson’s solution addresses only a part of that project and they didn’t learn what part of that budget is allocated to their specific part of the project.
5. They tried but weren’t able to complete the milestone because the prospect didn’t qualify. But they continued as if the prospect did qualify, and switched their strategy from process-centric to hope-centric. Example: The prospect won’t be able to fund the solution for two years but the salesperson assumed they would somehow come up with the money now.

Let’s call these five variations of skipping a milestone the Sales Scramble.

It doesn’t matter why a sales process was AWOL, incomplete, or improperly sequenced. It doesn’t matter that salespeople may or may not have been following a formal sales process. What matters is what you do next – starting today!

I looked at the number of my articles that were assigned the category “sales process” and found 80 (out of 2,300) of them!

If you are a new reader, I forgive you if your sales process is AWOL or not what it needs to be for selling in 2026 and beyond.

If you have been reading some or all of my articles for any of the past twenty years, and don’t yet have a formal, structured, staged, milestone-centric, buyer-focused sales process, you are in deep doo-doo. The right sales process is a game changer. Think of sales process as your framework for generating revenue.

On average, my clients see a 20% increase in sales within a year of introducing the sales process to their sales teams and training them to use it effectively!

That’s right. The delta between a crappy, ineffective sales process or no process at all, versus an effective, repeatable, predictable sales process is 20% more business.

So why do companies and salespeople reject sales processes?

The sales process destroys hope!

Wait, what?

Check it out. A salesperson is following Baseline Selling and the prospect lacks a compelling reason to buy. No compelling reason? Baseline Selling says there is no reason to proceed, no sale, no deal, no new account, no nothing. You’re done, at least until there is a compelling reason. Next.

Most salespeople continue trying to sell something to that prospect, so, instead of disqualifying them, the pipeline shows this as an actual opportunity. Opportunities like this one lowers the win rate, skews the forecast in the wrong direction, and becomes a “delayed” close.

When key milestones are missing from their sales process, sales leaders don’t ask the consequential questions so the opportunities remain in the pipeline, no questions asked.

We know it won’t close, but the sales team moves it forward based on Hope. A good sales process destroys hope. And it should. There are no feelings in a pipeline review and hope is a feeling.

If you need to have your sales process reviewed, optimized, customized, rebuilt, resequenced, or scorecarded, let us know and we would be happy to help.