Does Your Sales Team Deliver? A Quantitative Look

As we approach the end of 2026, it’s time to look forward to the year ahead—starting with an assessment of your sales team’s performance over the past year. How did they do? Where do the need to improve?

More importantly, how do you measure their performance so you can answer those questions?

To remove the subjectivity and help you take a quantitative approach in evaluating your team, we’ve developed a list of questions that get at the answers. Use the questions to distinguish the producers from the laggards. And use these questions to determine which skills your salespeople need to improve on in order to meet and exceed goals.

Also see if you can match the question posed with the corresponding sales skill. (You’ll find the answers at the end of this article.)

Questions for quantitatively measuring sales performance:

  1. How many of the qualified opportunities in your current sales pipeline were initiated by the seller?
  2. What title(s) most commonly appears in the field for primary point of contact? Is that a decision maker’s title?
  3. How well matched are your company’s product or service capabilities with the prospect’s business objectives?
  4. What value (outside of product/price) will the prospect’s organization be able to identify while working with your company?
  5. How much research does a prospect do before engaging with a salesperson?
  6. Who on your sales team held the margin line in the negotiations, and who caved to the buyer’s pressure?

In addition to answering these questions, also evaluate your team individually. How well can the individuals on your teams execute each skill? By using the questions above, managers can identify who has which skills and where improvement is needed. This is how your qualitative analysis of skills can be analyzed in relation to the quantitative assessment.

Here’s an example of the kind of insight you can gain: We worked with a company that calculated the cost of every sales call to be $400.00. They discovered that many of the calls were to prospects who would never produce enough revenue to cover the cost of the calls made. The managers were then tasked to analyze how well the reps could execute each step, and then identify where coaching was needed. As a result, the reps’ overall skills improved, the amount of time spent on the wrong prospects was reduced, and revenue results increased with fewer overall calls being made. In essence, the focus is on the quality of the calls versus the quantity of calls conducted. All because they took a quantitative approach using these questions.

Here are the skills that match each question above: 1) New Business Development 2) Accessing Key Players 3) Qualification and Positioning 4) Establishing Value 5) Opportunity Management/Forecasting 6) Negotiation.

 

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Is It The Horse or The Rider?

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How Skills Development Coaching Fills Your Sales Pipeline

Watch video HERE.

Many sales executives are laser focused on filling their pipelines for the rest of the year. Successful sales leaders know that a pipeline filled with qualified opportunities is essential to building sustained and repeatable revenue results, which is ultimately the fuel that drives organizational success.

The path to get to a healthy pipeline is not necessarily well understood and includes a number of variables, including the talent of the sales reps, market shifts, government regulations, and the competitive landscape. Despite these factors, there is one element that remains constant – selling skills. To have sales reps who successfully fill the pipeline with qualified opportunities, they must know how to identify, qualify, develop and close opportunities.

Most sales managers are well-versed in deal coaching. This means they know how to help their reps assemble the right mix of product and pricing to meet a customer’s requirements. While this is important, it does not address the fundamental need to understand how well the rep has qualified the opportunity, identified key players, and aligned your product/service offerings to meet the prospect’s business objectives.

Each of these three steps requires specific skills, and managers who help their reps improve these skills are ones that will see the biggest impact to their overall sales pipelines and year-end results.

Want to understand what prevents your sales managers from prioritizing skills coaching? Check this article out. And look here for tips on successful skills coaching strategies.

 

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Proven Tactics That Sell Commercial Value

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When I’m retained by clients to help their sales team, the first thing I do is to ask to interview their top performers. My purpose is to decode their selling DNA and identify the markers that make them successful.  

Invariably, effective salespeople sell value, not solutions or services. They recognize that it’s the ‘why’ that resonates with buyers – the business value. Equally revealing is illustrating how today’s problems impact the overall bottom line. But selling value and the total cost of problems facing a customer is where many sales teams run into trouble.  

Pinpointing and helping customers articulate these positions may not come naturally but it’s a necessary practice if you want to meet or beat your goals. Top performers use the following three tactics to draw out the answers to business value and the cost of challenges.  

  1. Get to the cost of today’s problem. Buyers face a number of problems and challenges.  Great salespeople help buyers define – in totality – all of the costs these problems bring. While costs may be non-monetary, such as frustration or low morale, the numbers that hit the bottom line are those that are heard by every person involved in the buying decision. Great sellers shape and frame conversations around the costs of the buyer’s problems. This is especially important if the solution’s value comes with a higher price tag. Early conversations around costs will help sell more and ensure that the necessary margins are hit in the end. 
  2. Tell stories. Stories help buyers discover for themselves the problems that they are facing and the solutions they need. High achievers have several stories at the ready that they can tailor and share based on the buyer’s situation or desired outcome. When the conversation lulls and the buyer is unable to explain their problem, share a story! Start by framing who the experience is about. Then identify the problem, turning point and resolution. Buyers who hear successes and failures of industry peers become more willing to share details about themselves and have an easier time finding their voice. Stories not only get to problems, they also help describe how others use and derive business value from your products. Stories have purpose and great salespeople use them again and again. 
  3. Summarize conversations in writing. This is a tactic that all sellers tell me they do, but few do it well. I sell my services to many companies in different industries. I constantly refer to follow-up emails I’ve written after conversations. The emails sum up problems a client is facing and the associated costs, the solutions we discussed and their value, and of course, proposed next steps. These emails help the customer and I keep the focus on the problems we are trying to solve. Top performers don’t rely on memory. They simplify, write the plan down, share it with the customer and allow the customer to give feedback. 

If you want to sell the business value your products bring, incorporate these techniques and the process will be habit in no time.   

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Access and Value: The 2026 Theme for Customers

As we look ahead to 2026, one theme continues to surface in nearly every conversation we have with sales leaders, managers, and sellers:

Access and Value.

Not as slogans. Not as abstract ideas. But as practical, repeatable capabilities sales teams must execute consistently if they expect to win in more complex buying environments.

Every sales process we co-develop with customers is built around core concepts. For 2026, Access and Value sit at the center. Not because they are new, but because most organizations still struggle to operationalize them.

Access: The Foundation for Everything Else

Without access, nothing else matters. And access today is harder to earn, easier to lose, and more tightly controlled than ever.

In the sales processes we build with customers, Access is applied in three specific ways:

  • Access to the top of the funnel while prospecting. High-performing sellers don’t just research; they use insight to earn relevance and credibility in the first conversation.
  • Access to Key Players. Deals rarely stall because solutions fail. They stall because sellers don’t reach the people who own outcomes, budgets, and risk. Access must be intentional and earned.
  • Maintaining Access throughout the buying process. Access is not permanent. It must be reinforced by adding value, advancing clarity, and helping buyers make better decisions.

Value: Created, Not Claimed

Value is not what you say your solution does. Value is what the buyer recognizes, internalizes, and can defend.

Value shows up in three ways:

 

  • In every conversation, each interaction should leave the buyer clearer or better informed.
  • Value from the prospect’s perspective is connecting your capabilities to operational, financial, and motivational impact.
  • When Value is clear, negotiation becomes about tradeoffs, not discounts.

Tactical Execution

To support this 2026 focus, we will provide access to our customers the blog posts aligned to each of these six topics. This allows teams to turn Access and Value from concepts into execution.

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Sales Tip Tuesday: Understanding how your capabilities match up with your prospect or customer’s challenges.

Understanding how your company’s capabilities match up with a prospect or customers’ challenges is a key component to establishing VALUE. Regardless of where the conversation begins, sellers must be flexible enough to navigate through this dialogue. Click the video to hear more on this Sales Tip

 

 

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Why Most Sales Strategies Fail Without Tactical Execution

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When I think of the word “insights” as it relates to our business (sales process), the name Anthony Iannarino comes to mind. Anthony sees things differently, before and after they happen in the marketplace. I have relied on him for business and personal topics for several years, and am pleased to call him a friend and colleague.

And thanks for this GREAT article below. Pictured here at The Kennedy Space Center Selling Power 3.0 Conference hosted by Gerhard Gschwandtner in December 2022. We watched a rocket land upright that day….unbelievable!

Article Below By Anthony Iannarino 

International Speaker, Sales Leader, Writer, Author

Strategy without tactics is like a blueprint with no builders—useless, no matter how brilliant it looks on paper.

Most of the time, leaders and managers are hyper-focused on strategy. That’s understandable. Strategy is the exciting part. It’s the big idea, the grand vision, the framework that’s going to guide the team toward a better future. But while strategy is important—crucial, even—it’s rarely enough to produce the outcomes we need in the real world.

To make this practical, let’s look at the idea through the lens of B2B sales. Sales leaders, sales managers, and frontline sellers often put their faith in the overarching strategy. They believe their sales approach—whether consultative, value-based, or insight-driven—is what’s going to produce results. And they’re half right.

My strategy, for example, is to be One-Up (see Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative). That means I show up as the expert in the conversation. I am the person with the authority, the insight, and the experience to create value for my clients—often in ways they didn’t expect.

But here’s the truth most people miss: even the best strategy dies on the vine without the right tactics. A strategy without tactical execution is impotent. It can’t do the heavy lifting. It can’t produce outcomes on its own. It’s nothing but an elegant theory.

Let me say it another way. A strategy without a supporting set of modern sales tactics is a failure waiting to happen.

Over time, through building sales methodologies and frameworks for hundreds of clients, I’ve identified the tactical levers that bring strategies to life. These tactics are not arbitrary. They’re designed to create value inside the sales conversation—where deals are won or lost. Below is a short list of effective B2B sales tactics that support any value-based or consultative strategy.

Modern B2B Sales Tactics That Make Strategy Work

Insight-Led Discovery – Don’t start by asking the same tired questions as your competitors. Begin discovery with insights about your client’s market, their industry shifts, or economic trends. This repositions you immediately and reframes how the client sees their challenges.

Problem Reframing – Most clients describe their symptoms, not their disease. One of your jobs is to help them see the root cause of their issues—often something deeper, more structural, and more strategic than they realized.

Gap Analysis – Use data to calculate the distance between where the client is now and where they want to be. Show them, in real terms, the ROI of making a change. This makes your solution a business decision, not just a purchase.

Strategic Questioning – Don’t just ask questions—craft questions that create clarity, uncover blind spots, and connect tactical pain to strategic risk. Your questions should do more than gather information; they should deliver value.

Pain Amplification – Not in a manipulative way—but in a real, ethical way. Clients often underestimate the cost of doing nothing. Help them explore the implications of inaction and align internal stakeholders around the urgency to change.

As a strategist, your job is not done until you’ve defined the tactics required to execute. If you’re a sales leader, a manager, or a consultant, you must also be a tactician. Otherwise, your strategy is nothing more than an aspiration.

The future belongs to those who can marry strategy with execution—who can connect ideas to actions that produce results. The tactics above are just a handful from a longer list I use with clients to drive real-world outcomes in enterprise sales environments.

If your sales strategy isn’t producing, don’t revise the strategy first. Look at your tactics. That’s where the gap almost always lives.

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Uncovering Revenue Leaks: A Checklist for Sales Leaders

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Watch the video to learn more about what sales leaders need to find out where revenue leaks are and what they should be checking for.

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Leveraging Upselling and Cross-Selling in Acquisitions to Drive Growth

When a business undergoes an acquisition, upselling and cross-selling become essential strategies for integrating product lines and maximizing value. Upselling encourages customers to buy premium or enhanced products, while cross-selling offers complementary products from the newly combined company portfolio. During acquisitions, these tactics help drive immediate revenue by enhancing existing customer relationships with broader offerings. By strategically aligning sales teams and cross-promoting the acquired brand’s products, companies can create a unified customer experience and unlock new growth channels in the expanded business landscape.

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