Are You Stifling Your Sales Team with a Sales Process That’s Too Tight?
Let’s be honest. We all love a good process. In business, process equals predictability, and predictability equals profit. I’ve spent years building sales organizations, and the temptation to create a sales playbook so detailed it could double as a legal brief is always strong. But I’m here to tell you that the quest for the perfect, rigid sales process is often the fastest way to destroy the very thing that makes sales successful: genuine human connection.
The Factory Floor Mentality Doesn’t Work on People
Think about manufacturing. You want every widget to come off the line identical, right? That’s efficiency. Sales isn’t manufacturing widgets. Your buyer isn’t a machine waiting for the next step in the assembly line. They are complex, emotional, often irrational beings navigating their own messy business problems. When we force our reps to follow a script or a stage-gate process with military precision, we’re training them to sell the process, not the solution.
I remember coaching a young, brilliant salesperson, Sarah. She had incredible empathy, but her manager kept hammering her for not hitting Step 4 exactly as documented in the CRM. She’d gotten stuck. She was so busy worrying about ticking the box for ‘Discovery Complete’ that she missed the actual clues the prospect was dropping about their real pain point—a pain point that fell outside the neat little box the process defined.
The Three Killers of Authentic Selling
When your process becomes gospel, three things invariably happen:
- It Kills Agility: Markets shift. Competitors pivot. If your sales team has to wait for the next quarterly review to update the ‘official’ process, you’ve already lost momentum.
- It Masks Skill Gaps: A fantastic process can hide a mediocre salesperson. They look good because they follow the steps. But the second a nuanced, complex deal lands that doesn’t fit the mold, they crash. You end up promoting process followers instead of problem solvers.
- It Sounds Fake: Have you ever been on a call where you could practically hear the prospect thinking, “I know exactly which slide you’re about to show me”? That’s rigidity in action. It makes you sound like every other vendor they spoke to that week.
My Proposal: Frameworks, Not Formulas
We need structure, absolutely. We need guardrails so our team doesn’t drive off a cliff. But those guardrails should define the destination and the values, not dictate every single turn of the steering wheel.
Think of it like parenting, which is arguably the toughest management job there is. I don’t give my kids a minute-by-minute schedule for how to handle sibling conflict. That would be absurd. Instead, I teach them the framework: Listen actively, validate feelings, and seek mutual resolution. Within that framework, they have the autonomy to navigate the actual, messy interaction.
In sales, this means:
1. Define the Non-Negotiables
What must happen for a deal to qualify? What is the core messaging that absolutely cannot be missed? Define those few anchors firmly. Everything else is flexible.
2. Empower the Discovery Phase
If your process dictates discovery is 30 minutes, but the prospect is ready to talk for an hour about their deepest operational headaches, listen to the prospect, not the CRM timer. Reward reps who dig deep and uncover unstated needs, even if it means the subsequent steps get slightly re-sequenced.
3. Coach on Intent, Not Execution
Stop asking, “Did you hit Step 5?” Start asking, “What was your intent with that question?” or “How did you pivot when they brought up the competitor?” We coach the ‘why’ behind the action, which builds strategic muscle memory far better than mere compliance.
We hire smart people because they are smart. If we build systems that treat them like cogs in a machine, we shouldn’t be surprised when they either quit or start behaving like cogs. Give your sales team a strong, values-based framework, then give them the air cover to actually talk to human beings like human beings. That’s where the real magic—and the real revenue—happens.
