Stop Losing Winnable Deals: 10 Strategies to Improve Sales Performance
THE BOTTOM LINE Sales performance begins with selection. Put naturally suited people in clearly defined roles, support them with strong product knowledge, modern skills, effective coaching, and the right technology, and revenue follows.
A company can have a strong market, a compelling offer, and a generous compensation plan and still miss revenue targets. The reason is often not the strategy. It is the fit between the person and the work. Hiring a salesperson because the resume looks good, promoting the best producer into management, or asking a natural account manager to hunt can create expensive, avoidable failure.
The practical message from this session is simple: assess first, place people where their natural strengths fit the job, and coach them to stretch where needed. Then build the processes and tools around them. That sequence reduces turnover, improves engagement, and helps companies stop losing deals they should win.
1. Why does sales hiring fail so often?
Sales hiring breaks down when leaders rely on instinct, interviews, resumes, and friendly references. Candidates naturally present their best side. References usually do the same. Those inputs matter, but they do not reliably answer the most important questions: Does this person have the intellectual capacity for the role? Do they have the natural talent the role demands? Will they behave with honesty and integrity? Do their demonstrated behaviors fit the work? Will they strengthen the culture?
A disciplined hiring process evaluates all five. For technical selling, the candidate must be able to talk credibly with a technical buyer. A role-specific personality assessment helps reveal natural fit. An integrity assessment provides another layer of evidence. Structured behavioral questions test judgment in realistic situations. Reference calls let the hiring manager probe beyond the written recommendation. Culture fit is then evaluated against explicit company values, not vague chemistry.
Culture can be made concrete. Ask the executive team, ‘What does it take to get ahead in this company?’ Compare the answers and identify the recurring behaviors. Those patterns reveal the culture people actually experience.
ACTION STEP Before the next sales hire, convert your process into a five-part scorecard covering cognitive capacity, natural aptitude, integrity, demonstrated behavior, and culture fit. Require evidence in every category before extending an offer.
2. What creates an elite salesperson?
Natural talent matters, but it does not operate alone. Elite performance appears when five conditions reinforce one another: strong product knowledge; learned sales skills and tools; suitability for the role, including cognitive ability, natural aptitude, and emotional intelligence; motivation supported by a compensation plan the salesperson values; and a competent sales manager working inside strong company processes and technologies.
Product knowledge creates confidence and credibility. Skills turn knowledge into buyer movement. Aptitude makes those skills easier and more natural to apply. Motivation sustains the effort. Management, onboarding, coaching, process, and technology make performance repeatable. If one factor is weak, it becomes a constraint on the whole system.
The transcript cites a familiar 80/20 pattern in sales performance: a relatively small group of elite producers creates a disproportionate share of new business. Whether the exact ratio changes by company or market, the management lesson remains the same. Do not treat sales performance as a mystery. Diagnose the conditions that separate your best performers from the rest.
ACTION STEP Rate every salesperson from 1 to 5 on product knowledge, selling skills, role suitability, motivation and compensation fit, and management and process support. Address the lowest score first because it is the current constraint.
3. Why should natural aptitude shape role placement?
The principle is straightforward: get the right people in the right seats based on natural talent. Find out what people are good at, give them work that uses those strengths, and stop assuming every weakness can or should be repaired. People can learn skills and adapt behavior, but sustained work against natural preference creates friction, fatigue, and inconsistent performance.
This is why the best account manager should not automatically become a hunter, and the best salesperson should not automatically become the sales manager. A promotion can reward past success while placing the person in a role for which they have little natural fit. The business can lose a top producer and gain a struggling manager in the same decision.
Goal-based management is a better companion to role fit than micromanagement. Set goals the person understands and accepts, then manage to results. If turnover rises in one area, examine the manager and the role design before blaming the labor market.
ACTION STEP Review every promotion and role change planned for the next six months. Separate ‘earned a promotion’ from ‘suited for this role,’ and assess the candidate against the actual responsibilities before making the move.
4. What does a high-potential hunter look like?
For an outside hunter, several personality traits should generally be high: intensity and drive, independence, assertiveness, optimism, and drive for recognition. Three traits are more useful in the middle: need to serve, self-protection, and interpersonal trust. Need to analyze is generally better on the lower side for a hunter, because excessive analysis can slow action and create paralysis.
The most important traits are not necessarily the most visible ones. In the job-fit bands described during the webinar, narrower acceptable ranges signal greater importance. For a hunter, intensity and drive, independence, assertiveness, and a relatively low need to analyze carry particular weight.
These are role patterns, not judgments about human worth. A trait that supports hunting may work against customer service, account management, sales engineering, or management. The goal is not to label people as good or bad. The goal is to predict where their natural behavior is most likely to produce results.
ACTION STEP Define a role-specific success profile for each sales position. Do not use one generic ‘salesperson’ profile for hunters, account managers, customer service representatives, sales engineers, and managers.
5. How does emotional intelligence improve performance?
Emotional intelligence starts with self-awareness. First, understand your natural traits. Second, identify the extreme traits that can become strengths or blind spots. Third, recognize the specific red flags those traits create in your current job. Fourth, learn to communicate effectively with personality styles different from your own.
Most strengths carry a shadow. High drive can create achievement, but it can also lead a leader to exhaust people who do not share the same pace. High independence can fuel initiative, but it can resist structure. High optimism can create energy, but it can miss risks. High trust can build relationships, but it can invite poor deals. Low need to serve can support objectivity, but it can feel cold. High self-protection can make rejection easier, but it can make coaching harder.
The answer is not to change your personality. It is to stretch your behavior when the situation requires it. The transcript offers a useful example: a naturally uncoachable leader can deliberately stop, face the person offering feedback, listen, take notes, and act on the useful parts. That is emotional intelligence in practice.
ACTION STEP Choose one extreme trait that helps you succeed but sometimes creates friction. Ask two trusted colleagues how it shows up under pressure, then define one visible behavior you will use to stretch from it this month.
6. How should leaders use the four personality styles?
The webinar groups people into four broad styles. Drivers are task-oriented, big-picture, and impatient for progress. Communicators are people-oriented and big-picture. Supporters are people-oriented and detail-oriented. Thinkers are task-oriented and detail-oriented. None is better than another. Each sees information, risk, relationships, and action differently.
A balanced executive team benefits from that diversity. A chief executive may lean driver, a sales leader may lean communicator, a people or service leader may lean supporter, and a finance or technology leader may lean thinker. The mix improves decisions because the team sees momentum, people, execution detail, and risk.
A hunter team is different. Everyone responsible for opening relationships and winning new logos still needs the traits that support hunting.
ACTION STEP Map the dominant style of each executive and fill missing leadership perspectives. Separately confirm that every hunter matches the hunter success profile.
7. Can role redesign unlock growth without replacing the team?
The engineering-services case study shows how much value can be trapped in poor role design. The company had stalled after years of growth. A few strong hunters produced most of the new business, but they were overwhelmed by account-management work. Several lower-producing hunters were better suited to managing accounts or serving customers. The sales leader was not actively managing the group, and the compensation structure rewarded a blended role that did not fit everyone.
The solution was not a blanket termination program. Junior account-management support freed the strongest hunters to hunt. Larger accounts moved to people better suited to account management. Other team members shifted into inside sales or customer service. The sales leader became more involved. Compensation for the service-oriented roles shifted toward upselling, cross-selling, and referrals. New hunters were recruited against the right profile, and the whole group received training and coaching.
According to the case shared in the webinar, the restructuring took about six months and moved the company beyond its original goal, producing rapid growth and substantially stronger profitability. The larger lesson is that role clarity, placement, training, coaching, and compensation must change together.
ACTION STEP Run a role-and-revenue workshop with sales leadership. Identify who should hunt, who should manage accounts, who should support customers, and what work can be reassigned so the strongest new-business producers spend more time producing new business.
8. What skills do modern salespeople need now?
Fifteen years ago, foundational selling skills could carry a strong producer. Today, sellers need four layers: foundational selling skills, neuroscience-informed communication, adaptation to changed buyer behavior, and intelligent use of AI assistants and agents.
Buyers have shorter attention spans and far more access to product information. They do not need a salesperson to recite what is already online. They need relevance, perspective, diagnosis, options, and confidence in the decision. One practical neuroscience-informed technique is to offer two or three clear options rather than one rigid recommendation. Modern tools can improve research, identify intent, prioritize accounts, coach email and call performance, create pattern interruptions, support multilingual communication, and surface expansion opportunities.
Technology should make a well-designed sales system faster and more consistent. It cannot rescue poor role fit, weak product knowledge, or an undisciplined process. In the session, BDR.ai was positioned in the prospecting layer of the technology stack, helping organizations create and support new-business conversations.
ACTION STEP Audit your sales technology by workflow, not by brand. For each tool, document the job it performs, the person who uses it, the behavior it should improve, and the metric that proves it is helping. Remove overlap and close the largest workflow gap.
9. What is the most overlooked way to stop losing winnable deals?
Three fundamentals rise to the top: develop an inside coach, become a great listener, and know how to close. The first is strategic. An inside coach is an advocate within the buying organization who helps you understand the real decision process, the stakeholders, the risks, and what must happen next.
The second is behavioral. The goal of listening is not simply to wait for a turn to present. It is to understand the buyer so well that the buyer asks how you can help. That changes the dynamic from a seller pushing information to a buyer inviting a solution.
‘Always be closing’ is old sales thinking. ‘Always be curious’ is more useful. Ask about the buyer’s problems, challenges, opportunities, priorities, and consequences. Keep drilling down. Buyers want to feel understood. When they do, trust grows, the real problem becomes clearer, and the path to a winnable decision becomes easier to see.
ACTION STEP Before your next discovery call, prepare five open questions and three follow-up prompts. Set a personal goal to have the buyer ask about your solution before you describe it. After the call, record what you learned that you could not have discovered by pitching.
10. What should leadership do next?
Start with people, then align the operating system around them. Assess current talent and define the profiles required by each role. Move people toward work that fits. Train the skills the modern buyer environment demands. Coach extreme traits instead of pretending they do not exist. Align compensation with the outcomes each role controls. Give leaders visibility into the process and equip the team with technology that removes friction.
The fastest path is a sequence of evidence-based decisions. One better hire prevents a costly mistake. One role correction frees a top hunter. One inside coach reveals the buying path. One better discovery conversation advances a stalled opportunity.
Sales growth becomes more predictable when leaders stop asking people to succeed through willpower alone and start designing roles, coaching, process, and technology around how excellent performance actually happens.
ACTION STEP Within 30 days, complete three moves: score the current team against role-specific profiles, redesign one mismatched role or responsibility, and coach the team on one curiosity-based discovery behavior. Review the revenue and activity impact after 60 and 90 days.
Executive takeaway
Put the right people in the right seats. Teach them to understand themselves and adapt to others. Give them the knowledge, skills, coaching, compensation, process, and tools to perform. Then replace pressure-driven selling with disciplined curiosity. That is how a company closes more of the deals it should win.
For more information, please contact:
John Asher, CEO
Asher Strategies (Sales Advisory Services)
1300 13th Street, NW Washington DC 20005
202-469-7489 | www.asherstrategies.com