Your Sales Process Is Broken. That’s Why You Don’t Need More Leads.

Most CEOs think they need more leads.

They don’t.

They need to stop wasting the leads they already have.

I was talking to a CEO last week whose company spends $40,000 a month on marketing. His close rate is 18%. Industry average is 35%.

Quick math: He’s burning $22,000 a month because his team can’t convert what marketing delivers.

But instead of fixing conversion, he wants to spend more on ads.

Here’s what’s really happening:

Your sales team is running the same broken process that worked when you were smaller, scrappier, and the founder was closing every important deal.

Now you’ve got three reps who “all do it their own way.” Which means you don’t have a process at all. You have three different experiments running simultaneously with no way to measure what works.

The cost of “doing it their own way”:

Your pipeline forecasts are fiction because everyone defines stages differently.

You can’t coach performance because you don’t know what good looks like.

New hires take forever to ramp because there’s nothing consistent to teach them.

Your best rep’s success can’t be replicated because it’s all in their head.

What this really costs you:

That CEO I mentioned? His average deal size is $25,000. If he could get from 18% to 35% close rate without spending another dollar on marketing, he’d add $850,000 in annual revenue.

But he’s focused on the wrong problem. He thinks he needs more at-bats when he actually needs to learn how to hit.

The fix:

Build a process that’s simple enough for your people to remember and follow, but thorough enough to actually work.

This means:

→ No more than 5-6 stages that everyone can recite

→ Clear exit criteria for each stage (not just “had a meeting”)

→ Required information before deals can advance

→ Regular pipeline scrubs where you beat up every deal like an investment on Shark Tank

Here’s the test:

Pull three random deals from your pipeline right now. Ask different reps to explain where each deal stands and what needs to happen next.

If you get three different frameworks for thinking about the same deals, you don’t have a sales process. You have expensive chaos.

Wrapping up: 

More leads won’t fix a broken conversion engine. More ads won’t solve a qualification problem. More activity won’t help if your team is doing the wrong things consistently.

Fix the process first. Then spend on leads.

Your marketing budget will thank you.