Find the gap holding your sales team back and focus the next 30 days on closing it.
Q4 is approaching, and the same opportunities are still sitting in your forecast.
One salesperson needs more qualified meetings. Another has proposals waiting for approval. A third is protecting a renewal while overlooking an opportunity to expand the account.
You could ask everyone to increase activity. But which activity would actually improve the result?
More prospecting will not fix weak discovery. More follow-up will not give a buyer the financial justification missing from your proposal. A satisfied customer will not automatically tell you where your company could help them next.
Before asking your team to work harder, identify the capability that most needs to improve. Use these three steps in your next sales meeting.
Ask everyone to answer two questions independently:
What is the biggest sales challenge holding our team back?
What would solving it mean for our 2026 results?
Give them three minutes to write before anyone speaks. Write your own answers, too, but let the team share first. The goal is to gather observations from across the team before one person's explanation becomes the group's conclusion.
Push to clarify broad answers:
Then connect each issue to a consequence: fewer qualified opportunities, delayed revenue, lower margins, renewal risk, or missed expansion.
Group similar answers and look for repetition across people and accounts. One unusually difficult deal may need individual coaching. A problem appearing across several opportunities may deserve the team's attention.
Leave this step with two or three recurring problems and a clear explanation of what each is costing you.
A problem often becomes visible later than it begins.
A proposal stalls in September, but the missing information may trace back to a discovery meeting in August. A customer declines an expansion offer, but the team may never have discussed the customer's growing priorities.
Use the full customer lifecycle to investigate:
Consider this hypothetical manufacturing example:
An equipment supplier has several proposals stalled. The sales manager initially suspects inconsistent follow-up and instructs the reps to "go schedule a meeting to follow up."
The team reviews three opportunities. In each, the salesperson documented the equipment requirements and prepared a detailed quote. But none confirmed what additional capacity would mean financially or how the investment supported the customer's growth plans.
That finding changes the coaching priority. The salesperson needs to investigate questions such as:
"If this equipment removes that production constraint, what additional business could you fulfill?"
"How does that support the growth target leadership has set?"
"Who needs to validate those numbers before the investment can move forward?"
Those answers can strengthen the customer's investment case. Another message asking whether they have reviewed the quote cannot supply the missing information.
Choose recent examples after identifying the suspected pattern. Then examine whether the evidence supports your diagnosis.
Leave this step knowing where the gap starts and which skill, question, or action needs to improve.
You will probably identify more than one worthwhile improvement. Use three tests to decide where to focus:
Business impact: What does this sales problem cost in revenue, margin, customer confidence, or growth?
Repeated pattern: Is it affecting several people or accounts?
30-day action: Can the team practice and measure a better approach within the next month?
Would a guest coaching expert leading a 2-hour workshop give your team a new voice to listen to even though you may have been telling them how to improve their approach for months?
Choose the gap with the strongest combination of consequence, repetition, and opportunity to improve.
Build a simple 30-day action plan:
Track execution as well as sales results. A long sales cycle may not produce a closed deal within 30 days, but you can still determine whether the team is developing the capability needed to advance it.
See how managers reinforce one skill every week →
Once you've identified the gap holding your team back, invite a guest sales coach to lead a focused workshop around it. An outside perspective can help your team recognize habits they've stopped questioning, examine why opportunities stall, and practice a more effective approach.
For a busy sales leader, the benefit is also time. A prepared coach brings the structure, exercises, and tools, freeing you to participate, observe where your people need support, and reinforce the learning afterward.