While Kurlan & Associates has successfully helped thousands of companies optimize their sales functions, performance and maximize revenue generation, there have been a number of companies which, instead of getting our help, or the help of another sales consultancy, decided to do nothing. In most cases it was because they either didn’t want to upset anyone, thought they could do it themselves, or thought their mediocre growth didn’t need improvement. In other cases the fear of change was simply too paralyzing for the decision makers and they “couldn’t commit” to making the necessary changes.

As my regular readers know, my son is a baseball player – a rising college senior (as of the summer of 2023) – and I still coach him in the batting cage when he’s home for the summer. I started coaching him when he was old enough to hold a wiffle bat. By the time he was thirteen years old, he responded to every piece of hitting advice with, “I know Dad!” He was no longer coachable (by me), thus beginning a stretch of six years during which we hired various coaches to work with him.

Compared with other business functions, sales has a tendency to be less adaptable. At many companies, sales process remain the same for long periods of time. Now, as digitization changes the way many customers buy, sales teams need to evolve continuously. Four practices can help with this shift: Anticipate where customers are going, redeploy resources to match customer behavior, shift emphasis from closing sales to helping customers realize value, and embracing agile decision-making.