Stop Blaming Your Sellers for Stalled Growth

When revenue stalls, the board points at the CEO, the CEO points at the CRO, and the CRO points at—you guessed it—the sellers. Cue the “my team just isn’t good enough” narrative. It’s a familiar script, but also one of the most damaging traps mid-market companies fall into.

Here are a few uncomfortable truths:

1. Quota misses don’t always mean bad sellers. In fact, in 2023 only about 43% of reps hit quota across B2B markets. Was everyone suddenly incompetent? No—the market, product fit, and competitive dynamics shifted under them.
2. Knee-jerk blame kills culture. Replace half your sales team, and you’re not solving a growth problem—you’re creating a ramp-time problem. It takes 12–18 months for new sellers in complex B2B to hit stride. Meanwhile, morale tanks, feedback dries up, and customers get whiplash.

3. The disease is rarely sales talent. Growth stalls usually come from strategy, product, marketing, pricing, or incentives. In fact, 87% of stall causes in one study were within management’s control, and 70% were strategic. That’s not a “bad sellers” problem—that’s a leadership problem.

4. Great companies engineer an environment where 70–80% of sellers win. That doesn’t happen by cracking the whip. It happens when the product resonates, marketing generates real pipeline, and incentives are aligned. A strong sales culture is built, not hired.

When win rates slide and cycles elongate, the message from the field isn’t “excuses,” it’s market intelligence. If your best reps can’t win with what you sell at the price you demand, the issue is offer, price, or positioning—not effort.


Try this: Instrument a ruthless win/loss program, route the signals straight into roadmap and pricing decisions, and make “voice of field” a standing agenda item at the exec table. If the data says you’re losing on “missing capability X” or “price 30% higher,” believe it—and act.