One of today’s biggest issues for senior management is to achieve the predictability, reliability and consistency of business results demanded by key stakeholders.
If sales forecasts are running short of expectations, it’s human nature to point towards factors outside of our control, such as conflicting demand signals from sellers or a shaky market. Sales teams must, however, also explore the internal reasons why deals stall or are lost, and initiate remedial actions where necessary.
Proactive sales teams address softening demand and market disruption by rapidly assessing what is working internally and what is not. They draw conclusions quickly and make the adjustments necessary to their sales operations. Applying tools and processes that arrive at the true root causes of selling issues is therefore critical.
Indeed, Gartner suggests that 20% of stalled or lost deals result from internal complexity, such as workflows, policies and procedures within the sales process. This internal complexity typically leaves sellers operating at a 12% lower conversion rate than they could — not a great position to be in when times are tight and every deal counts.
Sales organisations often fall into the trap of identifying root causes that are unquantifiable, or that point to problems outside their domain. The real causes usually sit inside the process.
A Structured Approach
In most cases, issues arise because of a sub-optimal process, or no process at all, affecting one or more key areas. A simple, well-structured approach that provides a clear view, and an important starting point, is essential.
The use of a diagram such as an ‘Ishikawa’ (fishbone) is arguably the best way to present groupings of the most important areas for consideration when uncovering root causes. Giving meaningful groupings to areas for improvement, using an Ishikawa or similar, helps Sales to identify and solve the fundamental problems that limit their results.
By working through each group and its components in detail, teams are encouraged to deal with each problem area separately, select the most likely root causes, and then prioritise, plan and implement actions.
Keep Asking “Why?”
We recommend the “5 Whys” approach. If you can still ask the question “Why?” about a problem, you have not yet got down to the root cause and isolated it. Keep asking “Why?” until you reach a point where the question cannot be asked any more.
True root causes nearly always impact more than one problem. The more thorough the analysis, the wider the potential improvement and the broader the impact of remedial actions on the bottom line. Positive outcomes include:
- Cost reduction, enabling your pricing to be more competitive.
- Capacity to redeploy resources to improve the quality of prospecting, or other key activities.
- Improved effectiveness of the sales process.
- Greater people productivity.
These outcomes all contribute to better odds of winning deals and the ability to forecast the resulting business more accurately.
From Periodic Exercise to Continuous Insight
The catch with root-cause analysis is that it is usually a periodic exercise — a workshop after a disappointing quarter. The internal causes, though, operate on every deal, all the time. That is where applying the discipline continuously changes the game: SCOTSMAN® AI captures the same evidence on every opportunity as it runs, surfacing the recurring patterns and process friction that quietly cost you deals — so root causes are spotted and addressed as they happen, not diagnosed long after the loss.
