Most B2B companies have a sales strategy, ambitious targets, and a sales organisation working hard to achieve them. Yet many CEOs and CCOs find that the effort does not translate into the expected growth. The problem is often not a lack of activity, but that the organisation spends too much time pursuing the wrong customers, opportunities, and sales activities.

Key points

• More sales activity rarely fixes a growth problem when the effort is aimed at the wrong customers and opportunities.
• A sales strategy is a set of choices: where to win, why, how, and what to stop doing.
• Progress should be measured by what the customer decides, not by what the salesperson does, and management routines must reinforce the strategy.

When sales activity increases but results don’t follow

We regularly encounter companies where the sales organisation is working harder than ever, yet commercial performance falls short of expectations.

Customer meetings are increasing. More proposals are being submitted. The pipeline is growing, and sales leaders are closely monitoring activities and forecasts.

Yet the expected growth fails to materialise.

Win rates are not improving sufficiently. Sales cycles are getting longer. Winning new customers is becoming more difficult, and the potential within existing accounts remains underdeveloped.

The natural management response is often to increase activity. More customer meetings, more leads, more proposals, and closer performance monitoring.

But after more than 25 years of working with commercial strategies and performance improvement, our experience suggests that increasing activity rarely solves a fundamental strategic problem.

The critical question is therefore not how to make salespeople work harder, but how to ensure their efforts generate the greatest possible commercial value.

A sales strategy is fundamentally about making choices

Many sales strategies are, in practice, a combination of revenue targets, customer segments, activity plans, and initiatives designed to develop the sales organisation.

These are necessary elements. But they do not, in themselves, constitute a strategy.

An effective sales strategy must provide clarity on three fundamental questions:

But there is a fourth question that often receives too little attention:

What will we stop doing?

A sales strategy has limited value if it simply adds new priorities on top of existing activities.

Companies seeking to win larger and more complex customers cannot simultaneously expect their salespeople to spend the same amount of time pursuing every smaller opportunity.

Strategic choices only become meaningful when they also lead to deliberate trade-offs.

The greatest growth potential isn’t necessarily found in the largest pipeline

We often see companies assessing their commercial opportunities primarily through the size of their sales pipeline.

A large pipeline can provide reassurance. But it reveals relatively little about the likelihood of achieving the desired growth.

A pipeline may be full of opportunities where the customer has not yet recognised a sufficiently important business problem, where the decision-making process remains unclear, or where the company has no meaningful competitive advantage.

This generates activity, but not necessarily progress.

We therefore see significant potential in shifting the focus from the number and value of opportunities to the quality of the opportunities the sales organisation pursues.

This requires management to ask:

The final question is often just as valuable as identifying new sales opportunities.

A stronger pipeline does not necessarily mean more opportunities. It means a higher proportion of the right opportunities.

Customer decisions matter more than sales activities

Another recurring challenge is that many companies measure sales progress based on what the salesperson has done rather than what the customer has decided.

A completed customer meeting is an activity. So is a presentation or a submitted proposal.

None of these activities, on their own, demonstrates that the customer is moving closer to a purchasing decision.

Real commercial progress occurs when the customer, for example, acknowledges an important business problem, involves relevant decision-makers, recognises the value of a potential solution, or commits to a specific next step.

That distinction matters.

When the sales process is managed around the customer’s buying journey rather than the salesperson’s activity checklist, it becomes easier to identify which opportunities are genuinely progressing.

This improves pipeline quality, forecast reliability, and sales management’s ability to prioritise the right support.

At the same time, it places greater demands on sales capabilities.

Salespeople must do more than present products and solutions. They must understand the customer’s business, identify relevant problems, build an economic case for change, and navigate complex decision-making processes.

This is not simply a matter of sales technique. It is a direct consequence of the sales strategy the company has chosen.

The sales strategy must be visible in everyday management

One of the most important differences between a sales strategy that is presented and one that is actually executed lies in how the sales organisation is managed.

If a company has decided to focus on strategic accounts, but sales management primarily measures the number of meetings and proposals, the organisation is sending two conflicting signals.

If the ambition is to win larger and more complex deals, but salespeople are rewarded exclusively for short-term revenue, the incentive structure may work against the strategy.

And if the company wants to move towards value-based selling, but sales managers primarily discuss pricing, discounts, and closing dates, changing sales behaviour becomes difficult.

The sales strategy must therefore be translated into specific management behaviours.

This means that pipeline reviews, account reviews, coaching, and performance management must reinforce the strategic priorities.

For example, a sales manager should not simply ask when an opportunity is expected to close.

The manager should also explore which problem the customer wants to solve, what economic value the solution can create, who needs to be involved in the decision, and what specifically needs to happen to move the customer forward.

From sales strategy to a commercial organisation built to deliver

In How to Harvest, we describe how commercial results are created through the alignment of three interconnected disciplines.

Commercial Architecture ensures that the company makes the right strategic choices regarding markets, customers, value propositions, and competitive positioning.

Commercial Transformation translates these choices into an effective commercial organisation with the right sales processes, go-to-market models, responsibilities, management systems, and resources.

Commercial Mobilisation ensures that leaders and employees develop and sustain the behaviours required to deliver results.

For the sales strategy, this means that the work is not complete once priority segments, growth targets, and sales initiatives have been defined.

On the contrary, this is where the real work begins.

The strategy must change which customers salespeople spend time with, how they develop opportunities, how they collaborate across the organisation, and how their managers help them succeed.

If these things do not change, it is difficult to expect materially different results.

Three questions every CEO and CCO should ask

When growth falls short of expectations, we recommend starting with three questions.

The answers may reveal that the growth challenge is not primarily about the effort of individual salespeople, but about the priorities and operating conditions established by the organisation.

Growth doesn’t always require more selling. It requires better commercial choices.

Companies can achieve significant improvements in commercial performance without necessarily increasing the size of their sales organisation or the volume of sales activity.

But doing so requires leadership to challenge where resources are allocated, which opportunities are genuinely attractive, and whether the sales organisation is equipped to win them.

After more than 25 years of working with commercial strategies, one of our most important observations is that growth is not simply about getting people to work harder.

It is about building an organisation where strategy, priorities, sales processes, and leadership all reinforce one another.

At Harvest, we help companies turn commercial ambitions into measurable results through Commercial Architecture, Commercial Transformation, and Commercial Mobilisation. Our approach is described in our book How to Harvest and builds on more than 25 years of experience developing and executing commercial strategies.