Latest / Sales Leadership with Fexingo: Quota Carriers, Sales Managers, and Revenue Teams / Why Sales Reps Should Stop Chasing Every Lead
Transcript
- Lucas: I want to talk about something that sounds almost like career sabotage but is actually the opposite: the art of killing your own deals. Luna: Killing deals intentionally? That feels like heresy for most reps I know. Lucas: It does. And that's the problem. Most reps are wired to keep every opportunity alive. They'll tell themselves 'it's still warm,' or 'the decision maker just needs one more call.' Meanwhile, that deal is sitting in their pipeline at a 5% probability for six months, distorting their forecast and eating their mental energy. Luna: Right, the classic 'zombie deal.' It's not dead, but it's not alive either. It just shambles along. Lucas: Exactly. And the research backs this up. I was looking at data from a mid-market SaaS company — about 150 sales reps — that ran an experiment last year. They gave a group of reps permission to aggressively prune their pipelines. Any deal that hadn't advanced in 30 days, or where they couldn't get a next step scheduled, got moved to 'closed lost.' Luna: What happened? Lucas: The group that pruned actually saw a 25% increase in quota attainment over the next quarter. And here's the kicker: their total pipeline value dropped by about 40%. But the deals that survived were real. They closed at twice the rate. Luna: So less pipeline, but more closed revenue. That's the counterintuitive part. But I imagine the psychological barrier is huge. Managers hate seeing a shrinking pipeline. Lucas: Oh, absolutely. And that's the core tension. Managers are often evaluated on pipeline coverage ratios — 'you need 3x your target in the pipeline.' That incentivizes keeping everything. But the best reps I've ever watched operate with a different philosophy. They use what I call 'The Five Gates.' Luna: Five Gates — I've heard that term before. Is that the framework where every deal has to pass through five specific checkpoints before it stays? Lucas: That's it. Gate one: is there a confirmed budget? Not 'they might have it,' but you've seen a line item. Gate two: is there a defined timeline? Not 'sometime this year.' Gate three: is there a clear decision process — who signs, who influences, who blocks? Gate four: have you spoken to the economic buyer directly? And gate five: does the deal solve a priority pain for them, not just a nice to have? Luna: That's a high bar. Most reps would lose half their pipeline on gate one alone. Lucas: And that's the point. If you apply those gates honestly, you end up with a pipeline that's maybe 60% smaller, but your conversion rate goes way up. I've seen reps who use this religiously close 30 to 40 percent of their pipeline in a given quarter. That's unheard of in most B2B environments. Luna: It also changes how you spend your time. Instead of chasing 50 deals you might win, you're focused on the 12 you probably will win. Lucas: That's the efficiency unlock. And I think this is one of those areas where a small shift in mindset pays huge dividends. But it's hard because the organizational culture often punishes you for it. Your manager looks at your pipeline and says, 'You only have 10 deals? That's not enough.' Luna: So what do you say back to that manager? How do you defend a thin pipe? Lucas: You show your conversion history. You say, 'Look, last quarter I had 40 deals and closed four. This quarter I have 12 deals, and based on my gate scores, I expect to close five or six. Which pipe would you rather have?' And you need the data to back that up. That's why tracking gate compliance is so important. Luna: Makes sense. And speaking of what works — before we go deeper on the Five Gates, I want to acknowledge something. A handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's what makes this show possible, keeps it ad-free, and allows us to dig into frameworks like this without any commercial agenda. So if you've gotten value from these conversations, that's a direct way to keep them coming. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small group, but it genuinely funds everything. We're not backed by a big media company. So thank you to those who do. Now, back to the gates — the one I see most reps fail on is gate three: the decision process. They sell to a champion who loves the product but can't get internal consensus. Luna: That's the classic 'champion trap.' You think you have a friend inside, but they have no organizational power. What's the fix? Lucas: You need to explicitly ask: 'Who else needs to sign off? Can we get a meeting with them together?' If the champion hesitates or makes excuses, that's a red flag. I've seen deals that were supposedly at 80% probability collapse because the real decision maker was never in the room. Luna: It's like building a house on a foundation you've never inspected. At some point, it's going to crack. Lucas: Exactly. And the cost isn't just the lost deal — it's the time you could have spent on a deal that actually had the right stakeholders engaged. That's the opportunity cost that never shows up in your CRM. Luna: So practically, how often should a rep do a pipeline prune? Weekly? Monthly? Lucas: I'd say a light review every week — just glance at your top 10 deals and see if they've advanced. But a full, ruthless prune should happen every two weeks. Go through every deal with a gate score. If a deal hasn't passed a new gate in two weeks, it goes to 'closed lost' or 'nurture' at best. And 'nurture' means you stop active work on it. Luna: That takes discipline. Especially when you're behind quota and every deal looks like a lifeline. Lucas: It does. But the reps who do it consistently are the ones who hit quota more often. There's a compounding effect: every hour you spend on a zombie deal is an hour you don't spend prospecting or advancing a real opportunity. Over a quarter, that adds up to dozens of hours wasted. Luna: There's also a psychological cost. Zombie deals create false hope. You feel like you're making progress, but you're not. It's like checking your email every five minutes — it feels productive, but it's not. Lucas: And that false hope bleeds into your forecast. Managers make bad decisions based on inflated pipelines. They allocate resources, adjust hiring, set targets — all based on deals that should have been dead months ago. It's not just a rep problem; it's an organizational problem. Luna: So if you're a manager listening, what's your first step? How do you start changing the culture? Lucas: Start by modeling it. In your next one-on-one, ask your rep to show you their three lowest-probability deals and have them explain why those deals are still in the pipe. If the answer is weak — 'they seemed interested' or 'they asked for a proposal' — push back. Say, 'Let's move this to closed lost and free up your time.' Then celebrate that decision. Make killing deals a sign of discipline, not failure. Luna: That's a big cultural shift. Most organizations reward activity — calls made, demos done — not the quality of the pipeline. Lucas: Right. And until you change that incentive, reps will keep filling the pipe with junk. But the reps who figure this out on their own — they're the ones who consistently outperform. They're the ones who say 'no' more often than 'yes.' And that's what we should be teaching. Luna: Alright, so to wrap: kill your darlings — at least the ones that aren't moving. And if you want a practical framework, use the Five Gates. I know I'll be looking at my own pipeline differently after this. Lucas: Me too. And if you try this, let us know how it goes. We'd love to hear — but for now, thanks for listening.