How do I recognise that my sales system no longer works?

A sales system announces its failure before the numbers turn. The signals are individually harmless to explain — together they form a pattern: a system that only reacts instead of shaping outcomes. Whoever reads the pattern early can intervene before revenue forces the issue.

I see six signals in almost every case I investigate.

The forecast gets corrected repeatedly — each time with a new, plausible justification. Individually, each justification is true. Together, they mean: nobody knows what's really in the pipeline.

In the CRM the customer showed green, and they cancelled anyway. That's not a data error. It's a system in which status colours serve expectations rather than reflecting reality.

A third of the pipeline has shown no activity for months. These deals aren't slow. They're dead and being dragged along out of politeness — and they distort every metric built on them.

Sales costs are growing faster than revenue. The system compensates for declining effectiveness with more effort. That works for a while. Then it doesn't.

The deal falls apart the moment the CEO goes on holiday. If closings hinge on one person, there is no sales process. There's a hero with an assistant.

Strategic questions get operational answers. Ask your leaders why customers buy — and listen for whether the answer is an analysis or an activity report.

What matters is looking at the cause. These signals are symptoms, and symptoms rarely point to where the problem actually sits. A bad forecast doesn't have to be a forecasting problem. An empty CRM doesn't have to be a software problem. Sales emerges from the interplay of customers, strategy, leadership, people, processes, data and technology. The question isn't: how do we fix the symptom? It's: what's actually happening in the system?