Latest / Sales Leadership with Fexingo: Quota Carriers, Sales Managers, and Revenue Teams / Why Your Sales Reps Are Ignoring the Right Deals
Transcript
- Lucas: There is a kind of sales rep that every manager knows. They're talented. They work hard. Their pipeline looks healthy — lots of deals, lots of dollar value. And yet, when you actually look at what they're chasing, you realize they're spending 80 percent of their time on deals that have maybe a 10 percent chance of closing. Luna: I've seen that. It's almost like they're addicted to the long shot. The big logo, the complex RFP, the deal that feels like a victory before it even closes. Lucas: Exactly. And the reason I want to talk about this today is that I think we've misdiagnosed the problem. Most managers see a rep doing this and they assume it's laziness, or poor pipeline management, or a lack of training. But I think the root cause is something else entirely. Luna: What's your read? Lucas: I think it's a bias toward what feels like progress versus actual progress. There's a study I came across from Harvard Business Review — they looked at deal selection across four hundred B2B sales teams. And they found that reps consistently overvalue deals where they've already invested time, even when the objective probability of closing is low. It's the sunk-cost fallacy mixed with a dose of ego. Luna: So they keep working a deal because they've already worked it. They don't want to admit they made a bad bet. Lucas: Right. And there's another layer. In my own experience as a rep — this was years ago, I was selling enterprise software — I once spent four months on a deal that I should have disqualified in week two. The prospect had no budget, no timeline, and no decision authority. But they were friendly. They took my calls. They asked good questions. It felt like progress. Luna: But it wasn't. Lucas: It wasn't. And I think a lot of reps, especially newer ones, confuse activity with advancement. They're doing the motions of selling — discovery calls, demos, follow-ups — but the deal isn't actually moving toward a close. It's just consuming calendar space. Luna: So how do you break that pattern? I assume it's not just telling reps to 'stop chasing bad deals.' Lucas: No, it's structural. There's a company I want to bring up — a mid-market manufacturing software firm based in the Midwest. Let's call them ManuSoft — not their real name, but the story is public enough. About two years ago, they realized their average deal cycle was 210 days. That's brutal for a product that costs sixty thousand dollars a year. Luna: That is brutal. At that price point, you'd want to close in 90 days. Lucas: Exactly. So their VP of Sales did something counterintuitive. Instead of trying to speed up the late-stage steps — negotiation, legal, procurement — she focused on the very front end. She introduced what she called a 'pre-discovery screen.' Three questions that every rep had to answer before they could schedule a formal discovery call. Luna: Okay, what were they? Lucas: First: does the prospect have a documented initiative with a specific budget line item? Not just 'we're exploring' — a real project with a number attached. Second: is there a named economic buyer who has explicitly agreed to evaluate solutions in the next 60 days? And third: has the prospect already attempted a solution internally or with a competitor in the last 12 months? Luna: That third one is interesting. Why? Lucas: Because if they haven't tried anything, they're still in the education phase. They're not ready to buy. If they have tried and failed, they know what they need and they're motivated. ManuSoft found that deals where the prospect had a prior failed attempt closed at a 40 percent higher rate than those without. Luna: So the screen basically forces reps to stop chasing prospects who are just window-shopping. Lucas: Exactly. And the result? Within two quarters, ManuSoft's average deal cycle dropped from 210 days to 192. That's an 18-day reduction just from killing bad deals earlier. Their win rate went up by about 8 percentage points. And the reps — initially they hated it. They felt like they were being told to walk away from potential revenue. Luna: I bet. There's a psychological cost to disqualifying a deal. It feels like losing. Lucas: It does. But the VP didn't just impose the screen. She also changed how she reviewed pipelines. Instead of asking 'what's the next step on this deal?' she asked 'why should we keep this deal in the pipeline?' The burden of proof shifted. If the rep couldn't justify keeping a deal, it got moved to a 'nurture' category — no forecasted revenue, no weekly updates. Luna: That's a much healthier dynamic. But it requires a manager who's willing to have uncomfortable conversations. A lot of managers don't want to challenge their reps' optimism because they're afraid of demotivating them. Lucas: True. And that's the second part of the problem. Managers often have their own bias — they want to see a full pipeline, so they tolerate weak deals because it makes the numbers look bigger. But a pipeline full of low-probability deals isn't a pipeline. It's a wish list. Luna: So what's the fix for managers? Is it purely cultural, or can you build it into the CRM? Lucas: Both. ManuSoft actually built a simple scoring mechanism into their CRM. Every deal had to be tagged with a probability — not the rep's gut feeling, but a probability derived from those three pre-discovery questions. If a deal scored below 30 percent, it was automatically flagged for review. The manager could override it, but only with a written justification. Luna: That raises the cost of keeping a bad deal. You have to explain yourself. Lucas: Right. And that small friction is enough to make reps think twice. Over time, the behavior shifts. They start self-selecting. The reps who can't adapt — they either leave or they get coached into better habits. Luna: I want to push back a little, though. Doesn't this system risk making reps too conservative? You don't want to kill a deal that could turn into something unexpected. I've seen deals that looked terrible on paper but ended up being huge because the champion inside the company was incredibly resourceful. Lucas: Fair point. And the VP at ManuSoft acknowledged that. That's why the nurture category existed. If a deal didn't meet the screen but the rep had a gut feeling, they could move it to nurture — no forecasted revenue, but they could still work it. The key is that it didn't pollute the forecast. The sales manager could see a clean pipeline of 'committed' deals and a separate list of 'exploratory' ones. Luna: So you're not killing the deal. You're just being honest about where it is. Lucas: Exactly. And that honesty is what the best reps already practice. I remember reading about a top-performing rep at Salesforce who used to say 'my pipeline is smaller than most, but my close rate is three times higher.' He was ruthless about disqualification. And he was always the top of the leaderboard. Luna: There's a name for that in behavioral economics. It's the 'Ostrich Effect' — the tendency to avoid information that might force you to change your behavior. In sales, it's not checking if a deal is really dead. Lucas: That's exactly it. And it's not just reps. I've seen managers who refuse to look at their own forecast accuracy numbers because they don't want to admit they're wrong. But the best managers I've worked with do a quarterly 'deal autopsy.' They go back and look at every deal that was lost or that stalled for more than 90 days. They ask: when should we have known this was going to happen? Luna: And what do they typically find? Lucas: In most cases, the warning signs were there by week two. The prospect didn't return a follow-up call. The champion wasn't able to set a meeting with the boss. The budget conversation was vague. The reps saw it, they just didn't act on it. Luna: So there's a gap between seeing and acting. That feels like a training issue. Lucas: It is. And it's also a feedback loop issue. If a rep spends four months on a deal and loses it, they've wasted time. But if they kill it in week two, they have four months to find a better deal. The opportunity cost of not disqualifying is enormous. Luna: I wonder how much of this is driven by compensation. Most reps are paid on closed revenue, so there's no immediate penalty for chasing bad deals — only a delayed penalty when they miss quota. Lucas: That's the structural critique. And some companies have started experimenting with comp models that reward pipeline quality, not just volume. For example, they pay a small bonus for every qualified deal that reaches stage two, but only if that deal later closes. It's a way to incentivize good qualification upfront. Luna: Have you seen that work in practice? Lucas: I know a SaaS company that tried it. They gave reps a $200 bonus for every deal that passed a strict qualification review and was accepted into the pipeline. It was a small amount, but it changed behavior. Reps started being more careful about what they brought in because they wanted that $200. And the managers started doing more rigorous reviews because they didn't want to pay bonuses on bad deals. Luna: That's clever. It aligns the incentive. But I'm curious — do you think the core issue is really about psychology, or is it about skill? Are reps bad at deal selection because they don't know how to disqualify, or because they don't want to? Lucas: I think it's mostly psychology dressed up as skill. Most reps know what a bad deal looks like. They can rattle off the red flags. But they override that knowledge because they're optimistic, because they've already invested time, because they're afraid of having a thin pipeline. The skill they need isn't spotting red flags — it's the discipline to act on them. Luna: So it's a habit, not a lesson. You can't teach it in a training session. Lucas: Right. You have to build it into the workflow. The screen, the CRM flag, the manager review — those are the things that create the habit. Over time, the rep internalizes it. They start disqualifying without being prompted. Luna: I want to come back to the listener for a second. If you're a rep listening right now, what's the one thing you could do tomorrow to start being more disciplined about deal selection? Lucas: Take your top five deals by dollar value. For each one, write down the answer to three questions: do they have a budget number allocated specifically for this? Is there a named decision-maker who has committed to a timeline? And have they tried something similar before? If the answer to any of those is no, put that deal on a separate list and stop forecasting it. Just work it on the side. Luna: That's actionable. And for managers, the one thing? Lucas: Change the question you ask in your next pipeline review. Instead of 'what's the next step?' ask 'why should we keep this deal?' And if the rep can't give a good answer in 30 seconds, flag it for review. Luna: I like that. It shifts the conversation from activity to justification. Lucas: Exactly. And look, I want to be honest — this isn't easy. Changing how reps think about their pipeline takes months. But the companies that do it see real results. ManuSoft's story is just one example. I've heard similar from a dozen others. Luna: It's one of those things that seems obvious in hindsight, but in the moment, it's hard to do. Lucas: Exactly. And before we wrap, I want to say something quickly. If these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way — if you've tried a framework we've talked about, or if you've shared an episode with a colleague — that's exactly why we do this. And a couple of dollars a month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is genuinely what keeps these going. It's not a big ask. It just helps us keep the show ad-free and focused on stuff that actually helps you. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a real difference. We don't have sponsors, so listener support is what keeps the lights on. Lucas: All right. So back to the idea of discipline. I think the real takeaway from today is that the best sales reps aren't the ones who close the most deals. They're the ones who say no to the most wrong deals. That's the skill that separates top performers from everyone else. Luna: And it's a skill that can be learned. Even if it feels uncomfortable at first. Lucas: Exactly. Alright, that's it for episode 50. Next time, we're going to talk about something that I think every sales leader struggles with — how to give feedback that actually changes behavior. Not the 'you need to listen more' kind of feedback, but the kind that sticks. Until then.