If no one is using our sales processes, do we even need them? Are we just wasting a lot of time?
I’ve argued for years that every buyer’s situation is different, every decision process is different. Given that, maybe a sales process is just a distraction. Maybe it’s slowing us down. Maybe it just doesn’t matter.
When I work with clients, they always talk about their sales process. Salespeople update CRM, mostly because their managers want to inspect the pipeline and make the forecast. But when I start asking about specific deals; why is this one in this stage, what’s actually happening, the answers aren’t aligned with where they are in the process.
Some say, “I moved it forward so my manager can see I’m making progress.” Others say, “My manager wants a 3x pipeline, so I move things into qualified to get him off my back.” When we dig into where the deal actually is, what the next steps are, none of it lines up with where it sits in the pipeline.
What I always want to hear is: “This is where the customer is in their process. This is what I’m doing to align with that. This is how I’m helping them move forward.” I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard anything close to that.
So, I’ve started thinking, “If this is so pervasive, are we just wasting our time talking about the sales process? Do we really need it? If no one is using the process, it’s really not a process. Pretending that we are using it is a waste of time.
And maybe buyers don’t care anyway. Most of them are already doing their own work and want to do it without sellers. They only bring sellers in at the end, “Answer our questions, do the demo, tell us why you’re better than the other guys…” With some finger crossing and a last-minute discount, the seller might get the order. If that’s reality, where does “sales process” fit?
Looking at this “reality.” I keep coming back to the question, “Are we wasting our time with sales processes? If buyers and sellers are ignoring ‘process,’ why are we talking about it?”
Then I look at the data. And it tells a different story.
We know that over 60% of committed buying processes end in No Decision Made. Along with this, over 70% of customer internal projects fail to achieve their goals. We know that a high percentage of buyers experience regret. Perhaps they have chosen the wrong solution, perhaps they worry if they have done the right thing. And over time, we see retention and renewal declining.
On the selling side, only about 35% of salespeople are hitting quota. Win rates are 15-25%. Sales cycles are getting longer. Turnover is up, engagement is down.
Both sides are struggling. Something’s broken. The question is what.
In looking at this, I always start with the buyer. We assume they know how to buy. They don’t.
Their day jobs aren’t about buying, they’re about getting work done. When they need to make a change that involves bringing in an outside solution, most of them are doing it for the first time in years, and everything has changed. They’re figuring it out as they go, inventing the next steps. The Gartner spaghetti chart shows how this works. Buyers start and stop. They shift direction and priorities. The problem definition changes. The urgency and risks aren’t understood. And most of the time they fail.
This isn’t a criticism. It’s just they don’t do this frequently. Sellers work deals constantly. Buyers make major purchase decisions once every few years. They are, by definition, less experience than the sellers they work with.
Most sellers don’t see this. They assume buyers know what they’re doing. They run their own playbook, checking off their steps, and wonder why deals stall. Inevitably, they fail, just as the buyers they work with fail.
But some sellers do see it. And they operate completely differently.
These sellers aren’t primarily focused on their CRM stage. They’re focused on where the customer actually is. What they are trying to achieve, what the customer understands, what they’re missing, where things are off but the customer doesn’t see. They bring experience the customer doesn’t have. They’ve worked with hundreds of customers through similar changes. They know the patterns. They know where buying processes fail. They know what good looks like at each stage, and they know how to help a customer get there.
They’re asking: has the customer involved the right people? Do they have internal alignment? Have they defined the outcomes they’re trying to achieve? Have they thought through implementation? Is the urgency real? They focus on what the customer is trying to achieve, not when do we do a demo and provide a proposal. Through this they create real value for the buyer.
This is what a real sales process is for. Not pipeline management. Not forecast accuracy. Not getting your manager off your back. It’s an aggregation of hard-won experience, structured so that every seller creates value through helping buyers accomplish what they want to achieve.
Organizations that do this out build a different kind of process. One where the seller’s job isn’t just to advance the deal but to advance the customer’s ability to make a good decision. It’s where the process itself becomes the differentiator because the customer experiences something important to them.
The process isn’t the problem. The processes that focus on our outcome are the problem.
The question isn’t whether we should have a process. The real question is whether we have the defined the right process. Whether it’s built on the seller’s need to hit their numbers or focused on helping the customer succeed.
Having a process is critical, but only if it’s a process that focuses on the customer success.
Afterword: The opening line in this AI generated discussion blew me away. It was both hilarious, and remarkably insightful. This is a discussion a great discussion of this post. Enjoy!
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