Why Your Sales Data Is Wrong (And How To Fix It)

This isn’t an opinion, this is what we have statistically observed.

Hundred’s of companies across all sizes and industries we have worked with.

And its the exact same behaviour.

Your Closers Are Quiet.

They often have little to no items in the sales pipeline

• They are conservative with revenue projections

• They are secretive and hold back details until the deal is done

• They hate admin work and love selling

• They operate in deep relationships that are not really process driven

• Because how good they are, they don’t feel the pressure to update others

• Their confidence from past performance keeps them in the spotlight

The Others Are Loud

• They inflate projections to appear busy

• They log every lead as a deal to hide lack of progress

• They treat pipeline updates as a performance, not a tool

• They confuse activity with outcomes

• They lack deal control, so they overcompensate with updates

• They use pipeline noise to delay hard conversations about performance

• They try to win favor through reporting, not results

• They overpromise early to keep hope alive, internally and with leadership

• They shift blame to process gaps rather than owning misses

What Should You Do As An Executive?

• Look at reps who have actually closed deals and the revenue from those deals

• Get a list of when deals were last modified on the CRM. Are they actually working or just logging deals for show?

• If a deal is in pipeline for 60+ days, get involved and find out what’s happening. If you see a pattern of this with a specific sales rep, its a huge red flag

• Celebrate deals closed in your meeting. Never the volume of deals in pipeline

• Change your question from ‘What’s in pipeline’ to ‘What’s real?’