Doing everything but your sales process still isn't converting in the way you want?

Every August, Jess hears the same story on repeat: decision makers are on holiday, budgets are frozen, nobody's picking up the phone, so why bother? In this episode, Jess pushes back on that, hard. More decision makers and stakeholders are booking sales calls this August than she's seen in the last two years, and her own clients, working across leadership, performance, executive coaching, and fractional HR, are signing forty thousand pound retainers and hitting their entire annual revenue targets in six or seven months. It's not quiet out there - not even close!

Jess is clear that when a sales process stalls, or a sales pipeline stops converting, it's rarely the market's fault, and it usually comes down to one of three things. 

First, contagious negativity: doom and gloom talk spreads through business communities faster than success stories do, the same way an unhappy customer tells far more people about a bad experience than a happy one tells about a good one. If everyone around you is agreeing that nothing's working, it's easy to absorb that as fact instead of checking it against your own numbers.

Second, strategy hopping: jumping from cold email outreach, to LinkedIn outreach, to networking, to trade shows, without ever giving a single method the time, volume, or clearly defined success markers it needs to prove itself. Most coaches and consultants haven't been taught what a lead generation channel is actually supposed to produce. 

Its job is to book qualified sales calls, not close deals on its own, so judging an outreach campaign by how many sales it generated directly, rather than how many qualified conversations it opened, is an unfair test from the start. When that test fails, the channel gets written off and the search for a new one begins again, wiping out whatever progress had already been made.

Third, and often the reason the other two happen at all, is not having a proven, best practice sales process to troubleshoot against in the first place. Without one, there's no baseline to compare results to, no way to tell whether a tactic is underperforming or simply hasn't had enough time, and no way to tell a genuine problem apart from ordinary variation. 

This is made worse by a gap that rarely gets talked about: most coaches and consultants have invested heavily in qualifications for their specialism, whether that's leadership, HR, nutrition, or executive coaching, but very few of those qualifications include any formal sales training. Learning to sell on top of learning to deliver is a genuinely big undertaking, and struggling with it in year one is normal, not a personal failing.

The real cost of strategy hopping isn't the time spent on any single failed attempt. It's staying stuck in the hardest, least comfortable phase of selling to corporate clients for far longer than necessary, because every reset means relearning lessons that a fully implemented, properly measured process would only have taught once. Coaches and consultants who commit to a single proven process, follow it as designed, and give it defined time and volume before judging it, tend to move through that difficult first phase once and into a far more sustainable place: referrals, inbound leads, and account maximisation with existing clients.

So if you're heading into the final stretch of summer wondering whether to pause lead generation until September, the evidence points the other way. Corporate decision makers are still active, still booking calls, and still signing contracts. The businesses seeing the strongest results right now aren't the ones with an easier market. They're the ones executing, and honestly troubleshooting, a sales process they actually trust.

Key Quotes

“The purpose of lead generation is to book qualified sales calls.”

“That attitude is contagious. Happy customers will talk about their experience with a company to one or two people. Unhappy customers tell on average ten people how unhappy they are about something.”

“The hardest bit of selling to companies is the first year doing it, because in the first year selling to companies, you are learning and implementing all new skills.”

 

Key Takeaways

1. The Market Isn't the Problem. The Story About the Market Is. A slow market isn't universal, it's what happens when a proven process isn't being run.

2. Negativity Is Contagious, and It Spreads Faster Than Success Does. One unhappy voice in your peer group can talk ten more people into believing the market's dead.

3. There's a Real Difference Between Positive Critique and Defeatist Thinking. Diagnosing a specific gap fixes your process; writing off a whole channel after one bad week doesn't.

4. There's a Clear Divide Between People Who Fully Implement a Strategy and People Who Hop Between Them. Chasing a quick win means never finishing anything long enough to know if it actually works.

5. Customising a Proven Template Often Breaks It. Tweak a proven template and you lose the ability to tell whether the strategy failed or your edit did.

6. Very Few People Selling to Companies Have Ever Been Taught to Sell. Nobody trains coaches and consultants to sell, so struggling with it in year one is normal, not a failure.

7. Every Sales Activity Is an Experiment, and Experiments Need Defined Success Markers. Without defined success markers upfront, you can't tell if a tactic is failing or just unfinished.

8. Strategy Hopping Keeps You Stuck in the Hardest Part of Selling to Corporates, on Repeat. Every reset sends you back to the hardest, least profitable stage of selling to corporates.

9. August Is a Genuine Opportunity, Not a Dead Zone. Waiting for September to restart outreach guarantees a slow start to Q4.

 

If you've enjoyed listening to Doing everything but your sales process still isn't converting in the way you want? Check out these episodes.

• STC146 – Surprising Ways Your 30 Day Sales Mindset Is Impacting Your Revenue https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/surprising-ways-your-30-day-sales-mindset-is-impacting/id1469526548?i=1000698230229

• STC147 – 90 Day Sales Reset: Quickly Analyse Your Sales Process to Create Powerful Results https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/90-day-sales-reset-quickly-analyse-your-sales-process/id1469526548?i=1000700230322

• STC176 – The Most Important Skill Professional Salespeople Have (And How You Can Use It!) https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-most-important-skill-professional-salespeople/id1469526548?i=1000770129000

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Content Disclaimer

The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.