Walk the Floor, Don’t Point the Finger

When Sales Take the Blame

When business performance dips or sales figures slide, there is one department that almost always takes the hit: Sales.

Fingers point, voices rise, and suddenly the conversation becomes all about sales targets, sales effort, and sales performance.

But pause for a moment. Is it really that simple?

Yes, Sales carry the commercial responsibility and they are at the frontline of revenue generation. But a company’s commercial health is rarely determined by one function alone. Often, the problem lies not in the selling, but in what is being sold, and how well the rest of the business supports that process.

- Is the product or service truly competitive?

- Does it perform as promised?

- Is it delivered on time and to the expected standard?

- Is it priced right, packaged right, and promoted effectively?

- Does it have a clear USP or genuine customer benefit that stands out in the market?

These are questions that go far beyond the sales team.

Too often, management are quick to demand more from Sales without first taking a hard look inward. How well are we equipping our teams to succeed? Are our marketing messages aligned with reality? Is our product training current and meaningful, or just a tick-box exercise? Are we listening, really listening, to customer feedback from the field?

Worse still, are so-called efficiency measures and cost-cutting initiatives unintentionally stripping away the very things that make customers buy from us in the first place?

It is no coincidence that we regularly see public complaints on LinkedIn and other social platforms calling out courier and parcel delivery companies, often the same one or two names.This is not a sales issue; it is a service failure.

The root cause generally lies in ineffective customer service and the over-automation of the customer interface. Automation works fine when things go smoothly, but when something goes wrong, the experience collapses. The customer cannot reach a person, cannot resolve the issue, and loses trust.Sales have no control over that, yet their numbers will inevitably drop alongside the company’s, and worse, they will probably spend valuable time firefighting and apologising for failures they did not cause.

When sales numbers fall, it is easy to reach for the simplest answer: “Sales need to do better.”

But great sales performance does not exist in isolation; it is the outcome of an aligned, customer-focused business where everyone, from product development to delivery, plays their part.

So next time the revenue chart dips, resist the urge to point the finger.

Instead, walk the floor.

One CEO I worked for was the best in class at this. On every customer visit he would make sure that both he and the company he represented were known throughout the client’s building. He would ask for a walkaround, introduce himself to key people, and make a point of meeting not just senior management but the people who actually used our products and those who paid for them. His belief was simple: if we were a key supplier or partner, we should have multi-department and multi-level visibility throughout the customer’s organisation. It was something I learned from and followed throughout my career, and it made a lasting impression on clients and teams alike.

Also…

- Talk to customers.

- Test your own service.

- Ask yourself …are Sales really failing the business, or is the business failing Sales?

Because when the rest of the business is not performing, even the best salespeople in the world cannot sell their way out of it.