MAD Success Newsletter · Issue #15

Better Sales Performance Starts With Better Conversations

Why trust, alignment, discipline and the right sales habits matter more than activity alone.

A busy sales team does not always mean a productive sales team.

Calls can be happening. Meetings can be booked. Proposals can be moving. Yet deals can still get stuck.

The reason is simple:

Activity tells you what happened. Conversation quality tells you whether the buyer actually moved.

1. Make people feel valued before asking for more

High-performing teams make people feel valued and safe

High performance starts with people who feel valued, heard and safe.

That applies to leadership, sales and client relationships.

People are more willing to speak honestly, share concerns, collaborate and recommend you when they feel understood rather than managed.

2. Referrals are often earned before they are requested

Most salespeople ask for referrals too directly.

A better approach is often much simpler: understand the person well enough that future conversations become natural.

Learn the small details

What matters to them? What do they enjoy? Who do they spend time with?

Remember something specific

Follow up because you listened, not because your CRM reminded you.

Make the gesture shareable

A thoughtful gesture can naturally enter another conversation.

Stay remembered

The goal is not to force an introduction. It is to build a relationship worth introducing.

3. One relationship is not enough in complex B2B sales

A strong champion is valuable.

But if one person leaving, losing influence or changing roles can stop the deal, the opportunity was too dependent on one relationship.

Strong sellers build alignment across the full buying group.

The User

Will this actually solve our problem?

The Champion

How do I get others behind this?

The Technical Gatekeeper

Will this work safely with what we already have?

The Economic Buyer

Is this worth the investment?

The Executive Sponsor

Does this support where the business is going?

A champion should help the deal move. They should not have to carry the whole deal alone.

4. More sales activity does not automatically create more progress

More calls, more meetings and more follow-ups can still produce weak results.

Before asking a team to work harder, look at what the system is actually rewarding.

Inversion

Instead of only asking how to win more deals, ask what causes deals to fail.

Pareto Principle

Identify the activities that create disproportionate value and improve those first.

Goodhart’s Law

Be careful what you turn into a target. Activity metrics can distort behaviour.

Diminishing Returns

More effort stops helping when the real bottleneck is poor execution.

A metric should help you understand performance. It should never become a substitute for performance.

5. Seven sales habits quietly destroy trust

Overpromising to win
Listening only to reply
Faking personalisation
Using vague sales language
Multi-threading without alignment
Chasing every prospect
Pushing past unresolved concerns

Most of these mistakes are not caused by lack of effort.

They are caused by poor judgment.

The Better Sales Conversation Audit

Value

Did the buyer leave with something useful?

Understanding

What did I learn that I did not know before?

Evidence

What did the buyer actually confirm?

Alignment

Who else needs to understand or support this?

Trust

Did my behaviour increase or reduce confidence?

Next Step

Did we agree on a meaningful next action?

Your Monday Action

Pick one meeting from last week.

Do not measure it by how long it lasted or how well you presented.

Ask:

What changed because that conversation happened?