The Playbook Blog

Here’s what most executives don’t want to hear: when a sales team isn’t hitting its numbers, the first instinct is to look at the salespeople. Maybe they’re not motivated enough. Maybe they’re not working hard enough. Maybe you hired the wrong people.

But more often than not, that instinct points in the wrong direction.

As a sales leadership speaker for corporate events, I’ve walked into hundreds of organizations where underperforming sales teams had the talent to win. They just didn’t have the leadership to get there. That’s not an accusation – it’s a pattern. And until you recognize the pattern, nothing changes.

I’ve stood on stages in front of CEOs, C-suite leaders, and executive teams all over the country. And after years of doing this work as a keynote speaker on winning teams, I can tell you there is one mistake I see at the top of almost every organization that struggles to build a team that actually wins consistently.

They think they already have one.

That’s not a knock. Most CEOs are surrounded by smart, talented, hard-working people – and they confuse having good people with having a winning team. Those are two very different things. And until a leader can tell the difference, they’ll keep hitting the same ceiling over and over again, wondering why results aren’t matching potential.

Let’s fix that.