Don't start with sales training

The board meeting goes badly. Growth is at 7% against a plan of 15%, the forecast has been missed two quarters running and the operating partner wants to know what's being done.

Within a fortnight, a sales training programme has been booked. New methodology, two days off-site, certification to follow. It feels decisive. It's visible. It's also usually the wrong first move.

Why training rarely fixes it

Training assumes the problem is the people. Sometimes it is. More often, the people are doing exactly what the system pays and asks them to do.

If the comp plan rewards new logos and the plan depends on the base, they'll chase new logos. If stage definitions are vague, they'll forecast optimistically. If nobody owns renewals, uplifts get waived. If the team is two heads short of what the number needs, no amount of methodology closes the gap.

Train them anyway, and they come back to the same system. Three months later you've spent the money, the number hasn't moved, and the board's patience is shorter.

I spent several years being sent into operating companies that had fallen behind plan. The fix was rarely in the sales team's skills. It was nearly always somewhere in the engine around them.

Days 1 to 10: get a baseline

Before you change anything, measure where you are. Take these numbers from the data, not from what people tell you:

Pipeline coverage, counting only opportunities younger than one sales cycle with a dated next step.

Win rate from qualified opportunity, by segment and by rep.

Average days in each stage.

Forecast accuracy over the last four quarters, measured at the start of each one.

Gross and net revenue retention, by cohort.

Capacity: headcount, ramp time and realistic attainment, multiplied out against the target.

Contracted versus billed: uplifts not applied, usage above entitlement.

Most businesses find at least one of these has never been measured properly. That's often where the answer sits.

Days 10 to 20: find the gap, in pounds

Now work out where the shortfall actually is. Not in general terms. In pounds, by cause.

Usually it's in four places. The team can't carry the number with the headcount it has. The pipeline isn't real enough to convert. The base is shrinking faster than anyone admitted. Or revenue that's already owed under existing contracts isn't being collected.

It's rarely all four. Put a value against each, agree it with the CEO and the sales leader, and rank them. Three or four things that matter will be worth more than twenty that don't.

Days 20 to 30: stop some things, start others

Stop anything that isn't aimed at the top of that list. Including, possibly, the training programme.

Start a weekly business review. Same day, same format, same handful of numbers, with a named owner for every action and a date to report back. Not a slide show. A working meeting where people are held to what they said last week.

Start a weekly deal desk for every deal above a threshold, so the forecast gets tested before it reaches the board.

Start collecting what's already owed. Uplifts due in the next 90 days, customers using more than they pay for. It's the fastest money in the business and it's almost all margin.

What the board gets

At the end of 30 days, the board should see a one-page account. Where the gap sits, in pounds. What's being done about each part of it, by whom, and by when. The baseline every action will be measured against.

That's a plan they can track. It's also a lot more convincing than a photo of the team at an off-site.

When training is the answer

Sometimes the baseline shows the engine is sound and the sellers really are the problem: low win rates across the board, with good pipeline and fair territories. Then train them, properly, and measure the result. But you'll only know that once you've looked.

Veridian runs a 12-week Revenue Turnaround and Recovery programme for software businesses behind plan. Start a conversation.