5 Signs Your Sales Process Is Broken
A broken sales process does not always look like a crisis. In many companies, it looks like a busy sales team, frequent meetings, active campaigns, and plenty of activity. The problem is that this activity does not translate into predictable revenue or sustained growth. The company is working, but the engine has leaks that no one has decided to fix yet.
Identifying early that the sales process is not working is the first step toward fixing it. These are the five most common signs, and the ones that appear most frequently among mid-sized companies in Latin America before implementing RevOps.
Key data:
- 68% of B2B companies do not have their sales process documented in a way that all sales representatives follow consistently (Salesforce, State of Sales, 2024).
- Organizations with a structured and documented sales process achieve conversion rates up to 28% higher than those operating without a formal process (HubSpot, State of Marketing, 2024).
- In Latin America, 57% of sales leaders acknowledge that their sales reports do not accurately reflect the actual state of the business (PwC CEO Survey Latin America, 2023).
Sign 1: No one can clearly explain how a sale gets closed
When every salesperson in a company has “their own method,” when the process depends more on the salesperson’s personality than on a system, and when the answer to “how do we sell?” changes depending on whom you ask, the sales process does not really exist: what exists is the individual talent of certain people.
That is fragile by definition. If the star salesperson leaves, the process leaves with them. If the team needs to scale, there is nothing to teach or replicate. If conversion needs to improve, there is nowhere to intervene because there is no process to optimize.
A healthy sales process can be described precisely: it has defined stages, clear criteria for moving from one stage to the next, identified owners at each step, and an average time per stage. If none of that exists, the warning sign is on.
Sign 2: Marketing and sales cannot agree on what qualifies as a lead
This is one of the most costly and common sources of friction in companies of all sizes. Marketing says it delivers quality leads; sales says those leads are useless. The result is that both teams work in isolation, marketing investment does not translate into sales results, and leadership does not have enough data to determine who is right.
The underlying problem is not that marketing or sales is wrong: it is that they never agreed on what a qualified lead actually is. Without a shared definition of when a prospect is ready to be worked by sales, marketing generates volume and sales discards most of it without follow-up.
When 79% of marketing-generated leads are not contacted by sales (HubSpot, 2024), the bottleneck is not demand generation: it is the absence of shared operational criteria between the two teams. That is a broken process.
Sign 3: The sales pipeline is not reliable enough for decision-making
If next month’s sales forecast changes dramatically depending on who presents it, if “ready-to-close” deals remain in that stage for months without moving forward, or if the CRM shows a different reality from what the team reports in meetings, the pipeline is not functioning as a management tool.
A reliable pipeline requires data to be updated consistently, stages to reflect the actual progress of the sales process, and objective criteria to classify the likelihood of closing each deal. When that does not happen, the pipeline becomes a text field where each salesperson records whatever they want, whenever they want, using whatever description they consider appropriate.
Without a reliable pipeline, the company cannot forecast revenue, prioritize its sales efforts, or identify where deals are being lost. Making hiring, investment, or expansion decisions based on that foundation means running the business blind.
Sign 4: Customers are being lost because of poor follow-up
An interested prospect who does not receive a timely response will go to the competition. An existing customer who is not contacted after the sale will not renew or refer others. Both scenarios are symptoms of the same problem: the sales process has no automated mechanisms or clear ownership for follow-up.
When follow-up depends on someone remembering to do it, hot prospects go cold, opportunities fall through for no apparent reason, and the retention rate of existing customers declines without anyone noticing in time. The business loses revenue it had already earned.
This problem is especially acute in post-sale, where most sales processes have their biggest gaps. The sales process gets attention, energy, and follow-up. The post-sale process, in most small and mid-sized businesses, does not truly exist.
Sign 5: Reports do not match, and decisions are being made based on intuition
When the marketing report shows one thing, the sales report shows another, and the financial report does not align with either, the problem is not reporting: it is data. And when the data cannot be trusted, sales decisions are made based on intuition, experience, or internal politics rather than evidence.
Companies with healthy sales processes have a single source of truth for their metrics: every team works with the same data, the same definitions, and the same measurement criteria. When that does not exist, every sales meeting begins with ten minutes of debating which version of the numbers is correct and ends without clear agreements because no one fully trusts the information they have.
If you recognize this dynamic in your company, the sales process has a structural problem that cannot be solved with another report or another tool: it requires redesigning the data and process architecture from the ground up.
Frequently
asked questions
How many signs need to be present for a sales process to be considered broken?
There is no minimum number. A single sign that persists over time is enough to generate significant losses. Most commonly, several of these signs coexist because they share the same root cause: lack of process, disconnected data, or the absence of shared metrics across teams.
Can a company grow even if its sales process is broken?
Yes, but at a high cost. Companies with broken processes grow despite the process, not because of it: they depend on individual talent, operate with high levels of inefficiency, and are vulnerable when key people leave. Sustainable growth requires a process that works regardless of who is on the team.
How do you fix a broken sales process?
The first step is an honest assessment of the current state: document how the process actually works, not the ideal process sitting in a PDF that no one uses. From that assessment, identify the areas with the greatest losses and design a standardized process with defined stages, criteria, and owners. RevOps is the operating framework that systematizes that process and integrates it with data and technology.
How long does it take to fix a sales process?
It depends on the complexity of the business and its starting point. A basic, functional process can be established in 6 to 10 weeks. Results in key metrics —conversion, sales velocity, and pipeline reliability— typically begin to appear within 3 to 6 months.
Can Strattos assess the sales process before proposing a solution?
Yes. At Strattos, the starting point is always the assessment. We evaluate the actual state of the process, available data, technology in use, and current metrics before designing any implementation. This ensures that the solution addresses the real problem rather than an assumption.
Do you recognize any of these signs in your company? Contact us and we will assess the process to identify exactly where the gap is.
- Salesforce. (2024). State of Sales Report, 6th Edition. Salesforce Research. https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-sales
- HubSpot. (2024). State of Marketing 2024. HubSpot Research. https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
- PwC. (2023). CEO Survey Latinoamérica: Desafíos del Crecimiento Comercial. PwC. https://www.pwc.com/latam
- Gartner. (2024). Sales Process Optimization and Pipeline Management. Gartner Research. https://www.gartner.com
- McKinsey & Company. (2024). B2B Sales Productivity: Fixing the Broken Commercial Engine. McKinsey Digital. https://www.mckinsey.com