Growth Starts Within: A Leader’s Guide to Assessing Your Sales Team Chapter 1 of Crystal Ball Recruiting

This episode aligns directly with Chapter 1 of Crystal Ball Recruiting, where Jason Howes challenges leaders to assess their current sales team capability before making costly hiring decisions.

As businesses head toward the end of April and into EOFY, Jason shares a timely update on current market conditions and the pressure leaders are facing, balancing sales targets, budgeting, forecasting, and strategic planning in a tougher, slower‑moving market.

Drawing on live sales and recruitment activity, Jason explains why access to buyers is more difficult, why decisions are being delayed, and why many organisations are pressing pause until the new financial year.

The episode covers:

• Why hiring another salesperson isn’t always the right move in tough conditions
• The real cost of having people in the wrong role
• How removing poor‑fit or disengaged performers can fund training, systems, and process improvements
• The importance of clarity around who’s on your team, what roles you actually need, and where sales effort should be focused

Jason unpacks common challenges he’s seeing across sales teams right now, including reactive selling, lack of planning, unclear ideal client profiles, outdated incentives, and pipelines filled with activity—but not the right opportunities.

He also explores where leaders should be investing now: better targeting of dream accounts, stronger coaching and sales management, internal and SDR support roles, automation, and AI‑enabled sales processes.

The episode closes with a clear message from Crystal Ball Recruiting:
This market won’t get easier. Growth starts by assessing what, and who, you already have, then leveraging it properly. The businesses that win will be the ones that act now, getting the right people in the right roles, equipped with the right tools, and focused on the activities that truly drive growth.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome to the sales trajectory podcast, where innovation meets execution in sales. I'm Jason Howes, your host, a 35-year sales veteran and lifelong student of the game. This podcast is for leaders and sales professionals with a growth mindset. You'll hear real sales stories about new products, motivating teams to prospect, and boost productivity. We dive deep into sales process, cutting edge tech, and recruiting top sales performers. Let's get started. This one I'm talking about the current market conditions heading towards the end of April. I remember as a leader, there's a lot going on. You're obviously chasing numbers. You're also asking your team to forecast and budget for next financial year. You're looking at strategic planning, and there's a lot happening. It's not easy at the moment. The market dynamic's tough. We sell and recruit every day. We feel everything that you guys are out there feeling. It's becoming more difficult to get in front of buyers. We're finding that decisions are being delayed or not made or being held off until next financial year. So I just wanted to give you a bit of an update on the podcast. Thank you for following the Sales Trajectory Podcast. We're now at 400 downloads, which is a great result. We do have a target for a thousand downloads by the end of the year. So you're going to see some amazing guests as well as we talk about the current challenges and future opportunities in sales, leadership, and recruitment. We're excited to have this discussion today. Crystalbore recruiting, certainly a massive challenge to not only write a book, but also to be able to market and get the time to be able to read Crystalball Recruiting. Exciting news is the audible version is now available by the time you're listening to this podcast. You want to download the audible version or the audio, I'll put the note in the podcast. A way that you could help us is to like or comment on the podcast, to share it with a friend, a colleague, or a leader in your network would be greatly appreciated. We want to add value. We want to be able to provide new ways to be able to scale sales, to be able to build high-performance sales teams. Our objective is to get the best person in the role when we're recruiting for our clients or working with our partners. We are working on some exciting things at the moment as well. We've engaged some additional people in the team to be able to support our next major project. It's top secret. I can't tell you too much right now, but I can promise you that Crystal Ball Recruiting will deliver top sales professionals to your business to be able to attract, recruit, and retain. Our next book, our next big project is about providing the platform to be able to bring those top performers into your business, turnkey solution to be able to kickstart your heart, get your salespeople working on the right activities, providing them leading edge tech powered by AI, powered by our executive sales. We often get contacted by leaders to recruit. Then once we speak to them and find out what's happening, we understand that the problems, if you're having trouble attracting the right person, but you're not sure as well because you're not winning new business. So maybe you've tried to successfully launch new products and failed. It's not uncommon. 95% of new products fail, unfortunately. It's not easy. It's like going into a new market or starting a new business from scratch. It's also a very expensive exercise to add on another salesperson, particularly if you don't need them. And it's about getting a return on investment. And we have spoken to companies in the past that who wanted to replace a non-performer, and sometimes just pausing and reflecting and talking to someone about where you're at at the moment can make a huge difference. You could put the cost of a new salesperson onto your bottom line, or potentially you can reinvest that into systems processes and working with us to help. You want to invest your money wisely. I'll share a quick story with you about a company we worked at many years ago, a sales team of approximately 10 people. The salespeople were typically hired for industry experience. Some had actually worked within the business and had been given an opportunity to go into an external role. Look, it does sound exciting. As you know, I remember going on the road 35 years ago at a very young age, and I'm like, wow, this is cool, man. I'm going to get a car, I'm going to get my fuel paid for, I'm going to get a little bit of status, a bit more money, and a bit of freedom. And there's a lot that goes with it. At least half of the people in this company that when we started working with them, unfortunately should never have been hired. They were like a fish out of water. The tough calls should have been made, but it had all sort of started to close in on them. And we find that quite often. When we're working with our clients, in particular for training new team team members, you're better off finding out right now whether someone is a good fit and or should be put through the training development program. Sometimes you need to draw a line in the sand and have the tough conversations. Do you actually really want to stay in this position? Are you enjoying it? Is it everything you thought it was? Because sometimes you ask the question and the answer could be, no, I actually enjoyed my last job better. Actually, I'm more comfortable in there. I'm feeling the pressure on being on the road. I don't think I'm made out for it. Sometimes those simple discussions can lead to, okay, how can we help you move back into your previous role? Or is there an opportunity for you somewhere in the business? So put it this way: if you remove your worst performers or ones that don't want to be in the job anymore, it typically will fund the investment of sales training, evaluating your team systems and processes. What we find is when we get this right, then train, coach, then recruit if still required. So what you'll find is that you'll be much more razor focused on the gaps you need to fill and the types of salespeople you require. Some quick questions to answer about your current business. Who's on your bus? How many salespeople do you actually need? Not only that, but how many salespeople do you actually need externally on the road? High fuel costs, costs of increase in getting around. It's very expensive. So what we're finding at the moment is a lot of consolidation, a lot of how many people do we actually need in the field and potentially is there an opportunity to bring some of those activities back in-house, back through an automation of sales process, and even utilizing AI to remove daily activities that you can automate. Are they the right people to be on your bus? And are they in the right role? There's some key questions we like to answer because some businesses originally recruited salespeople in an account management position or a customer service role to look after and maintain what they've already got. But potentially the market has changed and the pressure is now mounting. But you need to increase sales. Does that sound familiar? These are the common discussions we're having right now. And this is where it becomes very challenging. If you have the right people and they're in the right role, do they have a clear runway to what they should be doing? Or are they caught up in non-productive or non-sales related activities? This isn't always a salesperson's fault. You know, is someone left, we're not replacing them, could you do this? Or something happened, we need to reduce the cost, could you do that? And yeah, sure, we all want to help. But what happens is we end up taking on non-productive activities, which then can potentially move you into the comfort zone, right? The comfort zone is in the morning, checking emails, being reactive. The issue is if you're not being proactive and not working in the right areas, then well, then a lot of salespeople will tend to just wing it and do more reactive selling instead. So we talk about planning. A huge part of what I expected of my past sales managers was to make sure that their team had scheduled meetings and plans in their calendars, who they needed to be seeing and how often they needed to be seeing these prospects or customers and for the right reasons. Now look, I agree, some of us were lucky and we had great mentors and managers, and we've learned to be able to do this, and we can now share this with the salespeople we're managing. But if you come across or if you're working for a sales manager who hasn't had strong managerial or mentoring experience, then potentially they could be a disaster at coaching somebody else because we can only coach and train to our own knowledge and experience. That's why it's really important to make sure that the right manager is running your team. Maybe they need some coaching and training to be able to get to that next level. The next one I want to touch on is defining and targeting your dream accounts. Now, if you look at a sales pipeline, if your salespeople have one, which they should, are your salespeople targeting the right types of prospects? Do they understand what a good prospect looks like? We call it an ideal client profile, ICP. Some people call it an avatar, but it's a big game changer because if your salespeople are in the wrong role and they don't know who to target or what a good client looks like, well then they're basically potentially fishing in the wrong water. So what we need to look at is, are your salespeople then comfortable or confident to reach a decision maker? And I'm talking about a CEO or general manager or the owner of the business, potentially, because that's who could be making the decisions on changing where product gets purchased. Are your pipelines full of opportunities you can close? And a lot of pet sa a lot of salespeople can only get so far because that's the level they've been trained to. And you've got to appreciate that everyone's been in business for a lot different period of time. We've worked for different companies. You know, if you work for a major company and the business comes to you, that's a different situation of now working for a company where you're expecting outbound prospecting and new business. Because a lot of salespeople, unfortunately, can only get what we call the low-hanging fruit. For example, you might have a supply issue in your market, which means a lot of people are going to start calling your phone. There's urgency and orders will come in quickly. But to win multiple dream accounts, winning ongoing businesses gold, that repetition after you've won the contract for a segment or a product category and the orders keep rolling in, you don't have to fight for it. Now that's my dream when I was on the road selling or leading a sales team. You want the repetition of business. We tend to find that there could be excuses why salespeople will never win dream accounts. It could be the strength of a competitor. Maybe they've been dealing with them for a long time. Maybe it's been years, and you don't want to rattle the cage because they could come after some of your key accounts. But markets change. Product quality can vary, service can vary. Is your strategy clear and current today? If not, go back and have a look at doors that were that were closed in the past because maybe they're open a little bit and you can jam your foot in there and get the door open a little bit. It's comfy to be able to see the clients you like. And on reflection, most will avoid the ones that are tougher to win. I remember this well. But they are the key areas we need to look at when we're talking about your team's current capabilities. For example, are incentives driving new business for you or do they hinder it? Incentive programs are out of date and sometimes there's no incentive program at all. Start identifying your dream accounts that you really want and who on your team is going to be able to deliver them for you and what will it take to happen? In addition, if your team has been neglected, if it's had no investment in training and development, if you haven't invested in technology, then you could be only running on a few cylinders. Want to make a return on investment, then the party must be over. We need to look under the hood of the truck, right? What's running your team? What's your battery like? Is it fully charged? Are you running on all cylinders? Are your salespeople stuck in second gear? They're moving but they're not accelerating. Are your tires worn? They're running on old habits and not strategy. Potentially you're carrying too much weight in customer service mode. If growth is your priority and you've only got order takers or account managers who are more service-oriented and reactive, then they won't take you to the next level to win your dream accounts. With some clients, we've helped to build a career trajectory from internal to account management, potentially then into business development. Then finally, based on success, we move professionals through to sales management where they can become a strong leader. But you've got to earn your stripes right, and you have to be able to move into leadership roles with the right approach. The quicker you get the right people in the right role, then the sooner you can get your business out of second gear. Here's another question. Are your high performers typically undervalued? Most of us focus on underperformance, but how can we get more from your best people? They deserve the investment. Some companies are like a revolving door and frequently turn the bottom end of their sales team. Is there a pattern there? Are certain people getting all the good customers and the new people are just expected to turn up and create a miracle? We see that quite often. They're given lists of non-active potential prospects that haven't been visited in a long time, and basically they're starting all over again. Onboarding is so critical, but right now, reducing costs of business isn't easy. So if your sales are down and your margins are down, instead of rushing to advertise for a new person, what is your niche? What do you do well with and why? If you're talking about ideal client profiles, who else looks like your top clients? Because in a lot of situations, salespeople are comfortable to drive hundreds of kilometers without an appointment just to walk in and tell somebody how they are going. Are you okay? Yes. Thank you. Need anything at the moment? No. See you next month. Right. Now I'm talking about a regional call here, but I remember doing the same thing. I remember driving a long way without an effective strategy or plan to see somebody who might need something. Now, this is where I think things have to change. Not all companies service the whole of Australia. This is where we're doing some work at the moment to develop SDRs, sales development rep roles, where you can have this person supporting your external sales team. They can service remote accounts, they can be more proactive instead of reactive on the phone. There's a great opportunity at the moment. If you're assessing your current sales team at the moment, where are you best investing your money? One area you want to avoid when hiring new salespeople is only focusing on hiring someone who has worked at a major leading company or recruit for simply product experience only. It's much easier to teach someone a product than it is to beget someone who is a top selling sales professional. So if you're looking for a person to come in and win new business, that's a whole new level. We want the salespeople who are asked the hard questions. We want the salespeople who are invested in using the technology, logging calls, planning, targeting. What we don't want are the salespeople who are not interested in winning new business. They're comfortable in what they're doing. Sales is like a sport. You need to build muscle and you need to keep learning and pushing the boundaries. You need to train every day, every week, every month, every year. It's a very fast-moving environment at the moment. You need to try new set plays via processes you can build. Otherwise, you're going to get left behind because your competitors are doing. If we talk about set plays and you look at sport, the teams are always practicing new set plays. So on the big days, they're able to try new things to be able to create new business opportunities. So you must have your best team on the ground. And if you don't, well then you've got a problem. Now I'd like to finish up with this episode by just reconfirming what's happening right now. It isn't easy out there. It's not going to get any easier. Buyers have become very well disciplined in reducing stock or companies to come in and talk about their new offers. And there's a, you know, there's higher freezes, stock reductions. So we're looking at that right now. I would rather be working on something now, getting your team the best tools, getting the best people in the right role, and getting them doing the right activities away from being comfortable. We do greatly appreciate you listening to our podcast. Please like, comment, or share with someone in your industry who you feel may get value from this episode. Got a product that's struggling or launching something new? Reach out. We're inviting guests who want to make a real impact.