How to Discover and Fix the Bottleneck in Your Sales System

Published: Thu, 10/16/25

Updated: Thu, 10/16/25

How to Discover and Fix the Bottleneck in Your Sales System

What one thing in your sales efforts that, if changed and improved, would make the quickest and biggest improvement in your sales revenue?

That’s a question I’ve learned to ask whenever I get involved with a client company.

First, a little background. As a 30+ year veteran sales consultant, I’ve personally and contractually worked with over 500 sales organizations as well as interacting with thousands of others through association conferences, seminars and webinars.

Regardless of the size and the business model – everything from solopreneurs to Eight-Billion-dollar international companies – these B2B sellers have all one thing in common:

Regardless of the type of business, the size of the business, the market served, or the business model, almost every B2B seller has at least one place in the sales system where a little bit of time and thought and resources can make a disproportionate impact on the sales performance.

They wanted a quick and measurable return on their investment in me. The consistent pressure to bring quick and dramatic results has honed my approach and fostered the development of principles, processes and tools that brought about those results. I’ve developed this observation – one of the 25 most important lessons I’ve learned. Regardless of the type of business, the size of the business, the market served, or the business model, almost every B2B seller has at least one place in the sales system where a little bit of time, thought and resources can make a disproportionate impact on the sales performance.

Unfortunately, that PSO (Primary Sales Obstacle) is too often hidden from the current management, and it often takes an outsider to identify it.

There are pretty significant reasons why most people can’t see the Primary Sales Obstacle:

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What Hinders Our Ability to Identify the Primary Sales Obstacle

· History — This is the way that they have always done it. Since the process or principle is habitual, no one stops to question if it is the best way to do something. They don’t even notice it. So, it remains outside of their radar screen.

· Ego — The person responsible for sales sees the outside consultant as a threat and shores up his defenses – protecting anything that might be improved as he/she sees that as an insult to them.

· Overwhelmed — They are just too busy working in the business to take the time and objectivity that is warranted for them to work on the business. So, broken processes and faulty policies and proceeds linger on for want of attention.

· Personal agendas — There are often some individuals with the organization who have created comfortable situations for themselves based on the status quo. To threaten the status quo means that their comfortable worlds may be attacked.

· Ignorance — They just don’t know a great deal about sales systems, sales management or producing greater results from the people and system in their organization. They go forward with less than effective systems, and less than effective people, simply because they don’t know any better.

While every company is different, over the years I’ve seen certain patterns develop. Chances are, you may have one or more of these common PSO’s. Here are some typical examples for each of these three business models:

1. A solopreneur

2. A small (2- 5) sales force, with the CEO as sales manager

3. A larger (20 – 250 salespeople) salesforce with multiple levels of management.

Let’s Look at Primary Sales Obstacles for Each of... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

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