Sales FAQs
Straight answers to the questions we hear most from sales leaders and reps. Some of these answers are textbook. Many are our own point of view, earned from years of building and coaching high-performing sales teams.
Sales Metrics & Performance
Your conversion rate is the percentage of leads that turn into customers. To calculate it, divide closed sales by total leads and multiply by 100. It’s one of the clearest signals of how well your team qualifies prospects, runs conversations, and closes.
It depends on your industry, your price point, and where your leads come from. High-volume online sales often convert in the low single digits. Consultative B2B and high-ticket sales, where a real conversation takes place, should convert far higher.
The bigger mistake is tracking one blended number. Split your conversion rate into at least two buckets: referral leads and non-referral leads. Referrals should convert at your highest rate by a wide margin. If they don’t, that’s a process problem worth fixing right away. Remember too that conversion rate is only one part of the picture. Average sale size, retention, and profit matter just as much.
The core metrics most teams need are:
- Lead volume: how many opportunities are coming in, and from which sources.
- Conversion rate: by lead source and by rep.
- Average sale size: the revenue or gross profit per closed deal.
- Sales cycle length: how long it takes to go from first contact to close.
- Customer retention and referral rate: whether customers stay and send others.
- Revenue and gross profit: the numbers the business actually runs on.
Track them by rep, not just by team. Team averages hide exactly the coaching opportunities a manager needs to see.
Sales Compensation
There’s no single right number. Commission rates vary widely by industry, product price, sales cycle, and whether the role includes a base salary. A fair rate is one that attracts and keeps strong performers while protecting the company’s margins.
Our strongest recommendation is to pay commissions on gross profit, not gross sales. When reps are paid on revenue alone, discounting becomes free money for them and expensive for the business. Paying on gross profit keeps everyone focused on healthy deals.
Enormously. Your comp plan tells reps what you actually value, whatever your meetings say. A good plan is simple enough to explain in one minute, pays for the behaviors and results that matter most, and balances short-term rewards (commission, bonuses) with long-term reasons to stay (advancement, recognition, growing earning potential). If reps can’t easily calculate their own paycheck, the plan is too complicated to motivate anyone.
A salary-only plan pays a fixed amount regardless of sales volume. It can make sense for roles with very long sales cycles or heavy service responsibilities. For most sales roles, though, it weakens the link between effort and reward, so the majority of teams use some mix of base pay plus variable compensation.
Sales Process & Approach
Consultative selling means diagnosing before you prescribe. The rep asks thoughtful questions, listens carefully, and understands the customer’s situation and goals before recommending anything. The customer should feel helped, not sold. It works especially well in high-trust, high-consideration purchases where people need confidence before they commit.
A value proposition is a clear statement of why a customer should choose you: the specific problem you solve, the outcome they get, and what makes you different from the alternatives. A strong one is written in the customer’s language, not internal jargon. Every rep on your team should be able to say it naturally and in their own words.
A sales cadence is the planned sequence and timing of your follow-up touchpoints: calls, texts, emails, and meetings. Without a defined cadence, follow-up depends on each rep’s memory and mood, and opportunities quietly slip away. A consistent cadence keeps deals moving and makes follow-up measurable.
Sales presentations generally fall into three styles. A scripted presentation is memorized and delivered the same way every time. A structured presentation follows a proven framework while leaving room to adapt. A needs-based presentation is built around what the customer shared during discovery. The best teams use a structured framework that’s driven by the customer’s needs, which keeps the message consistent without making it feel canned.
Sales Leadership & Coaching
In a very small company, the manager may have to carry some deals. But wherever possible, our answer is no. A manager who is busy selling isn’t coaching, and a team without coaching plateaus. The manager’s job is to build a high-performance team through training, regular one-on-one coaching, and well-run sales meetings. That multiplies results across every rep instead of adding one more.
A sales coach helps salespeople and sales leaders improve their skills, habits, and results. Good coaching goes beyond pep talks. It means observing real conversations, giving specific feedback, practicing the moments that matter, and holding people accountable to their goals. Coaching can come from an internal manager, an outside coach, or ideally both.
Sales enablement is everything that equips your team to sell well. That includes training, coaching, talk tracks, product knowledge, CRM tools, and the content reps use with customers. Put simply, it removes the obstacles between a capable rep and a closed sale.
Sales burnout is physical and emotional exhaustion caused by long stretches of pressure to hit numbers. It shows up as falling activity, cynicism, and eventually turnover. Prevent it with realistic goals, consistent feedback, recognition for wins along the way, and managers who notice when someone is struggling before that person quits.