Sales leadership in practice

A sales leader can have full visibility into activity and still know surprisingly little about why sales are actually going well or poorly.

Number of customer meetings. New leads. Pipeline. Proposals. Hit rate. Forecast. Revenue.

All of this matters. Without goals, structure and management information, sales leadership quickly becomes a matter of gut feel.

But the numbers rarely tell the whole story.

They do not necessarily explain:

• why one salesperson succeeds more than another
• why a customer does not move forward
• why the pipeline grows without sales following
• why high activity does not produce the expected results

That, in my view, is where the most important work in sales leadership begins.

The numbers should start the conversation, not end it.

This distinction matters especially in complex B2B sales, where customer journeys can be long and several people influence the decision.

When more activity is not the answer

I have often encountered situations where results or activity were lower than desired.

The natural first reaction can be simple: we need more customer meetings, more proposals, more calls and higher activity.

Sometimes that is right.

But before raising activity requirements, the leader should understand what is actually behind the result.

It may be that:

• the salesperson spends too much time on customers with low potential
• existing customers take a disproportionate share of capacity
• prospecting is not targeted enough
• the salesperson gets meetings but does not get far enough into the customer's real needs
• opportunities remain in the pipeline long after the probability of a sale has dropped
• internal processes and administration take too much time away from customer work
• competence, motivation or confidence limits progress

The same KPI deviation can therefore require completely different leadership interventions.

I have myself experienced situations where the obvious solution at first appeared to be higher activity. When we looked more closely at the customer work, the challenge instead turned out to lie in customer prioritisation and the quality of follow-up.

A general requirement for more meetings would probably have created more of the same activity.

The leadership task instead became understanding which customers should be prioritised, why opportunities stalled and what the employee could concretely do differently.

The result of such an approach is not necessarily more activity. It can be better activity.

That is an essential difference.

KPIs show where we should look

KPIs have great value when used correctly.

They can reveal development, create shared direction and make it easier to detect deviations early. Pipeline can show where opportunities stop. CRM can show what we know about the customer. Forecast can reveal risk.

But none of these tools alone can explain why something happens.

Ten customer meetings are not necessarily better than five if the five right customers receive better follow-up.

A large pipeline is not necessarily strong if a significant share of opportunities should never have been qualified.

And high activity is not the same as high quality.

In my own leadership practice I have therefore become increasingly focused on using management information diagnostically.

First identify where something appears to stop. Then understand why. Finally decide what we should do about it.

That also changes the leadership dialogue.

Instead of only asking:

• How many customer meetings do you have this week?
• How much is in the pipeline?
• When will the proposal go out?
• How confident are you about this opportunity?

the leader can also ask:

• Why are you prioritising exactly these customers?
• What do we still not understand about this opportunity?
• What would need to change for the customer for the sale to move forward?
• What did you learn from the last meeting?
• What would you do differently if you took the meeting again?

Such questions may not produce equally quick answers. But they can develop something far more important: the salesperson's own judgement.

Coaching is about more than pipeline

It is easy to call a meeting coaching because a leader and an employee sit together and go through the sales list. But pipeline review and coaching are not necessarily the same thing.

Pipeline review should give the business the necessary overview:

• What do we expect to sell?
• When do we expect it?
• How likely is it?
• Where is the risk?

Coaching adds a different perspective:

• Why is the opportunity standing still?
• What is the employee doing well?
• What is difficult?
• What should be tried differently?
• Which skills need to be developed?
• Where does the employee need support, and where should they be challenged?

Frank V. Cespedes at Harvard Business School has pointed to the challenge of a standardised approach to sales coaching. Performance challenges can have different causes related to skills, motivation and the specific tasks the salesperson faces.

Research on effective sales coaching also points to adaptation, involvement and relationship quality as three central dimensions, and shows a link between these and sales results.

This aligns well with my own experience. Some employees need clearer structure. Others need more room to act. Some must be challenged more, while others first need the confidence to try, fail and learn.

The leader's task is not to make everyone the same. It is to help each individual become better.

Good coaching should reduce dependence on the leader

There is also another pitfall. An experienced sales leader will often see a possible solution quickly. It can therefore be tempting to tell the employee exactly what should be done:

• Call this person.
• Ask this question.
• Send this proposal.
• Bring this colleague.
• Do this first.

That can solve the problem there and then.

But if the leader always delivers the answer, you can at the same time create an organisation where employees become good at escalating problems without necessarily becoming better at solving them.

I therefore believe that good coaching should develop the employee's ability to analyse the situation themselves, see alternatives and choose the next action.

That does not mean the leader should sit passively and ask open questions when a decision is actually needed. Leadership also involves setting direction, making demands, correcting and sometimes deciding.

But over time the ambition should be clear:

The employee should gradually become better at prioritising, assessing and acting without the leader needing to be involved in every decision.

That creates stronger salespeople, greater ownership and a more scalable sales organisation.

KPIs and CRM are the sensors of sales leadership

CRM, dashboards and management information make it possible to see far more of the sales work than before.

That is positive. But visibility must not be confused with leadership.

I see KPIs and CRM as the sensors of sales leadership. They can tell us where we should direct attention, where friction arises and which patterns we should investigate more closely.

KPIs and CRM are the sensors of sales leadership. Coaching and prioritisation are the leadership work itself.

CRM should therefore not primarily be the place where the employee reports what has already happened.

When the system works well, it helps the salesperson remember, prioritise and follow up. At the same time it gives the leader a better basis for coaching, resource prioritisation and decisions.

An important difference then also emerges in how data is used. From: "Have you updated CRM?" to: "What does this information tell us, and what should we do now?"

The first is primarily about registration. The second is about value creation.

From control to learning

When I look back at situations where sales work has truly developed, it is rarely a single initiative that has been decisive. It is the connection that matters most.

DIRECTION → PRIORITISATION → CUSTOMER WORK → COACHING → LEARNING → ACCOUNTABILITY → RESULTS

This connection matters because:

• direction without prioritisation creates too many initiatives
• prioritisation without customer insight can create the wrong focus
• customer work without reflection makes the same mistakes easier to repeat
• coaching without learning becomes mere follow-up
• learning without accountability creates little change
• result demands without development can produce short-term activity without lasting improvement

When the elements connect, I have seen something else happen.

The pipeline becomes more realistic. Customer follow-up becomes clearer. Conversations between leader and employee gain higher quality. And employees gradually take greater ownership of their own priorities and results.

This is also where I believe the difference between sales administration and sales leadership becomes clear.

What should a sales leader actually spend time on?

A sales leader should of course follow results, forecast, activity and pipeline.

But if most of the leader's time is spent gathering status and checking that systems are updated, one should ask whether sales leadership has become too administrative.

The most important time should be spent where the leader can actually influence future results:

• clarifying direction and expectations
• helping the team prioritise the right customers and opportunities
• understanding why sales work stalls
• developing skills and commercial judgement
• using data to detect patterns and areas for improvement
• removing obstacles between sales and the rest of the business
• creating a culture where employees both receive support and are held accountable

For me, this is the core of practical sales leadership. It is not about less focus on results. It is about a deeper understanding of what actually creates the results.

Good sales leadership is therefore not a choice between control and development. It is about using management to understand where effort should be directed, coaching to develop people and prioritisation to turn direction into action.

Follow-up then becomes more than control. It becomes an engine for learning, better decisions and lasting results.

Sources

Cespedes, Frank V. (2021). Avoid a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Sales Coaching. Harvard Business Review, 16 December 2021.

https://hbr.org/2021/12/avoid-a-one-size-fits-all-approach-to-sales-coaching

Nguyen, Carlin A., Andrew B. Artis, Richard E. Plank & Paul J. Solomon (2019). Dimensions of effective sales coaching: scale development and validation. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 39(3), 299–315.

https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2019.1621758