Turnaround Strategy for Underperforming Sales Teams
A Diagnostic Framework
Most sales leaders approach a revenue plateau with a predictable, yet flawed, playbook: increase quotas, implement Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) for the bottom 20%, and hire a motivational speaker for the annual kickoff.
This approach fails because it treats a systemic failure as a personnel problem.
When a sales team consistently misses targets, it is rarely because you hired an entire room of incompetent people. It is usually because the environment—the incentives, the process, and the behavioral cues—is perfectly designed to produce mediocrity.
A true turnaround strategy for underperforming sales teams requires a shift from "motivation" to "engineering." It requires viewing your sales floor through the lens of behavioral economics: humans will always follow the path of least resistance. If your sales process creates friction, your reps will bypass it, and revenue will stall.
The 5 Stages of a Sales Turnaround:
- Diagnostic Assessment: separating pipeline fiction from mathematical reality.
- Process Re-engineering: aligning internal stages with the external Buyer’s Journey.
- Talent Audit: applying the Skill/Will matrix to make hard personnel decisions.
- Operationalizing Micro-Habits: shifting focus from lagging results to leading indicators.
- Cultural Reset: establishing a system of continuous Deal Autopsies.
The Revenue Plateau: Why Standard Motivation Tactics Fail
If you are reading this, you are likely facing a "Revenue Plateau"—a stagnation point where adding more headcount no longer yields proportional revenue growth.
The standard reaction is to apply pressure. However, pressure applied to a broken system only accelerates the breakage. "Spiffs" (immediate financial bonuses) and PIPs are band-aids that address symptoms rather than the root cause. A PIP might scare a rep into temporary compliance, but it does not fix the friction in the CRM that makes data entry a nightmare, nor does it fix a value proposition that no longer resonates with the market.
Symptoms vs. Systems
At Rose Garden Consulting, we operate on a core principle of Behavioral Economics: People respond to incentives, often in ways you did not intend.
If your team is underperforming, you must first ask if you are inadvertently incentivizing the wrong behaviors.
- The Symptom: Reps are flooding the pipeline with unqualified leads to meet "activity metrics."
- The System Failure: You incentivized "demos booked" rather than "qualified opportunities," leading reps to prioritize quantity over quality.
- The Symptom: Deals are stalling in the "Proposal Sent" stage.
- The System Failure: Your process allows reps to send pricing before establishing value, removing the tension required to close.
Before firing your staff, you must audit the system they operate within.
Phase 1: The Diagnostic Assessment (The Math of Failure)
The first step in any turnaround is to stop relying on "gut feeling" and start relying on the math of failure. Most underperforming teams suffer from pipeline bloat—deals that have been dead for months but remain in the CRM because reps are afraid to mark them "Closed Lost."
To get a clear picture of your actual health, you must calculate your Sales Velocity.
Analyzing Sales Velocity
Sales Velocity is the single most important metric for diagnosing the health of a sales organization. It tells you not just how much you are selling, but how efficiently you are selling it.
The Sales Velocity Formula:
$$V = \frac{\text{Number of Opportunities} \times \text{Deal Value} \times \text{Win Rate}}{\text{Length of Sales Cycle}}$$
- Number of Opportunities: Qualified leads in the pipeline.
- Deal Value: Average revenue per sale (ACV/LTV).
- Win Rate: Percentage of opportunities that convert.
- Length of Sales Cycle: Time from first contact to signed contract.
How to use this for a turnaround: Most leaders try to improve all four variables at once. This is a mistake. A diagnostic assessment identifies which single variable is the bottleneck.
- If your Win Rate is low but Volume is high, you have a qualification problem (process issue).
- If your Sales Cycle is long, you have a friction problem (buyer journey issue).
- If your Deal Value is low, you have a negotiation or targeting problem (skill issue).
By isolating the variable dragging down your velocity, you can apply a surgical fix rather than a general one.
Phase 2: Fixing the Broken Sales Process
A broken sales process is often characterized by a misalignment between what the salesperson wants to do (sell) and what the buyer wants to do (solve a problem). When these two trajectories diverge, friction occurs, and deals die.
How do you fix a broken sales process? You must dismantle the linear, admin-focused stages of your CRM and rebuild them around the psychology of the buyer.
Steps to Repair a Broken Sales Process
- Map the Buyer’s Journey: Forget your internal stages (Prospecting, Qualification, Proposal). Map the steps the client takes (Problem Awareness, Solution Exploration, Vendor Selection, Validation).
- Define Entry & Exit Criteria: Establish rigid criteria for a deal to move from one stage to the next. This prevents "happy ears" where reps move deals forward based on optimism rather than evidence.
- Remove Administrative Friction: Automate data entry where possible. If a rep spends 40% of their time fighting the CRM, that is 40% of their time not selling.
- Implement Gatekeepers: Require manager approval to move deals into late-stage negotiation. This forces a "Deal Autopsy" before the contract is sent.
Aligning with the Buyer's Journey
The most common point of failure is the transition from "Discovery" to "Proposal." In a broken process, reps rush to send a proposal the moment a prospect shows interest.
In a Behavioral Sales Process, we recognize that the buyer is not ready for a price until they fully understand the cost of inaction.
- Traditional Process: Discovery Call -> Send Deck -> Chase for Follow-up.
- Rose Garden Process: Discovery Call -> Problem Validation -> Co-authoring the Solution -> Pricing discussion.
By aligning your process with the buyer's cognitive steps, you reduce the Opportunity Cost of chasing deals that were never going to close.
Phase 3: The Talent Audit (Skill vs. Will)
Once the system is optimized and the math is clear, you can accurately evaluate the humans operating the machine. You cannot fairly evaluate talent in a broken system; a Ferrari driver will look like a bad driver if you force them to drive a tractor.
However, once the track is paved (the process is fixed), you must assess who belongs in the race.
Using the Skill/Will Matrix
The Skill/Will Matrix is a diagnostic tool used to categorize sales representatives based on their capability (Skill) and their motivation (Will). This determines your turnover strategy.
The Hard Truth: In a turnaround, you often have to let go of the "High Skill / Low Will" employees. These are often top billers who refuse to adopt the new process. Their refusal to adapt signals to the rest of the team that the new strategy is optional. It is not.
Phase 4: Improving Sales Quota Attainment Through Micro-Habits
To improve sales quota attainment, you must stop managing the quota and start managing the behaviors that precede it.
Quota is a lagging indicator—it tells you what happened 30 days ago. You cannot manage history. You can only manage leading indicators—the activities and micro-habits that occur today.
Operationalizing Success
A turnaround requires shifting the management cadence from "What did you close?" to "What did you do?"
1. Define the Leading Indicators: Instead of "Make 50 calls," measure "Have 3 meaningful business conversations." Quality metrics always trump vanity metrics in a turnaround.
2. Deal Autopsies: Implement a weekly ritual where the team dissects a closed-won deal and a closed-lost deal.
- Why did we win? (Was it the process, or luck?)
- Why did we lose? (Did we miss a stakeholder? Did we fail to build value?) This creates a learning loop that prevents repeated mistakes.
3. Role-Playing Culture: Amateurs practice until they get it right; professionals practice until they can't get it wrong. In underperforming teams, role-play is viewed as punishment. In high-performing teams, it is viewed as warm-up.
By focusing on these micro-habits, you utilize the Compound Effect. A 1% improvement in discovery questions, combined with a 1% improvement in objection handling, leads to exponential growth in Sales Velocity.
Establishing a Sustainable Growth System
A sales turnaround is not a one-time event; it is a cultural reset. It requires the courage to look at the data, the discipline to rebuild the process, and the willingness to make difficult personnel decisions.
Key Takeaways:
- Diagnose before you prescribe: Use the Sales Velocity formula to find the mathematical bottleneck.
- Fix the system first: Don't blame reps for failing within a broken process.
- Align with the Buyer: Map your sales stages to the customer's decision-making process.
- Hire and Fire by the Matrix: High skill does not excuse low will.
- Focus on Leading Indicators: Manage the behaviors, and the quota will manage itself.
If your team is stuck on a revenue plateau, it is time to stop guessing. You need a forensic analysis of your revenue engine.
Book a Diagnostic Revenue Audit with Rose Garden Consulting to identify the friction points in your process and build a behavioral sales system that scales.
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Jean Tang
Ali Mirza turned our sales around. After a single day of training, he really opened up how we approach our sales in a difficult market. Our conversions with prospects have been fantastic—before, we'd lose out on revenue with disappearing prospects or people going in another direction..and we wouldn't understand why. Now, using techniques learned from Ali, 92% of our qualified audience base is interested in continuing the conversation, and we are harvesting an astounding 45% higher close rate than pre-Rose Garden. Plus he's a great guy who makes the learning fun. I can't recommend this business more highly.
Zach Burkes
If you know you should be selling more or that your team is underperforming -- don't waste another minute leaving money on the table. Call Rose Garden Consulting today to jumpstart your sales for 2022.
Jordi Rivera
Working with Ali has been great. He gave me actionable tips to elevate my sales teams performance and energy.
Julia Wittrock Hensel
Rose Garden Consulting is amazing! Their unique approach to understanding what prospects really want has been a game changer for our sales process. They provide great advice and very actionable feedback on sales calls - I am so grateful!
Moe Peyawary
Fantastic company. I'm out of Toronto and in a very competitive business. I must have interviewed about 15 different companies but wasn't convinced by their approach. Ali was very different, he provided me with a customized sales system for my business and I have not looked back since. I strongly recommend Ali and Rose Garden Consulting for anyone who takes their sales career seriously. Thank you again for the amazing work you do.
Wayne D.
RGC continues to surpass all expectations providing exceptional sales management consulting.
Benjamin Berman
My experience with Ali and Rose Garden has been nothing but fantastic and professional. Ali is always quick to respond and his insights are always appreciated. We have been so pleased with the above and beyond service that a number of our own clients signed on. Thank you Ali and Team!
Torrey T.
Highly recommend Rose Garden- you will love them after just one call with the team. Keep up the great work!
Chris Arnold
I was ready to move my sales team to the next level by adding a sales manager to our organization and by building an engaging compensation plan. Even though I knew what I wanted, my challenge was I didn't have all the pieces to build it. I was referred to Rose Garden by another business associate. Why Rose Garden was so valuable was that they quickly helped us build exactly what we needed. I walked away with a robust compensation plan and a road map for the sales manager I was ready to hire. What I learned was that I needed help building the plane before I stuck a pilot (sales manager) in it. This is what Rose Garden did so well. They helped me build the framework, systems and processes that I needed. It was a turn-key system handed to me. By the time the consulting was finished all we had to do was execute.
wayne deslauriers
RGC provides excellent sales support and consulting services. Ali has a very successful sales background supported by experience in a wide variety of industries. As a proven sales professional he has now redirected his energies to sharing his exceptional ability with a broad range of companies. This is unique in comparison to other consultants who tend to dwell on "Proven Sales Processes" delivered by skilled presentation staff often lacking in the exceptional sales career success evident with Ali. On meeting Ali for the first time, his talent and skill level becomes immediately evident. RGC truly has a new and refreshing approach.3
Ashlee S.
The team at Rose Garden Consulting is professional and working with them has been amazing. Their approach to sales is very unique and I would highly recommend them!
Ryan Lawson
Rose Garden is great. Ali is a no-nonsense, to the point, straight shooter and his approach was incredibly helpful in bringing clarity to our (fairly complicated) business this year. They came in, helped us organize, set KPI's, see the bigger picture across multiple departments. Highly professional, would recommend.
Tazscapes Inc.
The team at Rose Garden Consulting were an absolute pleasure to work with!
Their approach to understanding our company needs were very impressive - they took the time to not only efficiently train our sales staff but also educate us about the variety of sales protocols to implement so our company can maximize future sales potential.
They took the time to build out our sales process and give us strategic ways to close deals and Ultimately increase our sales revenue in such a short period of time!
We highly recommend Ali and his team as the best sales consulting company in Atlanta - their dedication to excellence, quality service and detailed and strategic implementation of sales training have helped us immensely!
Ali is the Top sales consultant in Atlanta - Hands down! Keep up the good work!!
Britton Daley
Ali Mirza gives clear, accessible sales training using examples that just make things “click”. His roleplaying exercises build confidence through modeling (and then embodying) successful sales techniques that get clients on your side. These techniques clearly demonstrate how to build lasting relationships. He also helps you get in the head of your leads, making follow ups more thoughtful and effective (and frankly, less painful to write). Highly recommend working with him to boost your sales.
Zarifa Bahran
Hardworking, knowledgeable and trustworthy! I had pleasure working with them.
Nick Roshon
I've worked with Ali & the RGC team over the last few years to keep my team and myself high performing - he has a no nonsense attitude and is willing to tell me the good, bad, and ugly of our sales process, which helps us stay sharp and gives a critical outsider perspective to keep us honest and sharp. His coaching is spot on, and if you have any doubts read his book - this man knows the craft and isn't just spewing the same outdated frameworks everyone else is.
About Us
Rose Garden Consulting is a collective of revenue generation experts who use behavioral economics to transform businesses.
Our vision: To fundamentally change how people buy and sell. Our promise: To help your organization break through revenue plateaus, reduce sales team turnover, and create sustainable growth systems.
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