Notes for owners · Sales management
How do I know if my sales team or my marketing is the problem
A short test using three records you already have: enquiries by source, reply time and quote conversion. It tells you whether to look at marketing, at sales, or at the handover between them.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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Sales are down, your marketing person says the leads are poor, and your sales head says nobody gave them anything worth closing. Count three things before you blame anyone: enquiries by source, how long each took to get a first reply, and how many quotes became orders. If enquiries are low or come from one weak source, look at marketing. If they are healthy but replies are slow or quotes rarely close, look at sales. If both look fair and sales are still down, look at the handover between them, or at price. You can run the whole test from your phone, your quote book and an afternoon.
What you need in front of you
Pick the last ninety days and an earlier period of the same length. For every enquiry in both, write one row:
| Date | Source | Replied at | Qualified? | Quote sent? | Order? |
|---|
Take the source from the buyer's own words where you have them. Take "replied at" from the phone log or the WhatsApp timestamp, not from memory. Mark "qualified" by your own definition, set before you count: a buyer in your area, for a product you sell, who could pay your price. If nobody kept a record, rebuild it from the phone, the mailbox and the quote file. It is slow work. Nothing else settles an argument that would otherwise run for months.
Count one: enquiries by source
Count how many qualified enquiries came from each source in each period. A source is a channel you can name: Google search, a dealer, a marketplace, referrals, walk-ins, a fair.
- Total fell, mostly from one source. That is a marketing question, or a change in that channel. Go and look at the channel.
- Total steady, but a good source has been replaced by a weak one. Marketing again. The count hides a drop in quality.
- Total steady or up. Marketing may be doing its job. Go on to the next count.
A rise that includes price-checkers, job seekers or the wrong product is not a good result. That is why "qualified" comes first.
Count two: reply time
For each enquiry, how long between arrival and the first real reply from a person? A call, a message that answers the question, or a quote counts. An automatic acknowledgement does not.
Split the enquiries into those answered within your working hours and those answered after. If most of the slow ones arrived after hours or on one day, the fault is in the process, not the advertising. Then check whether the quickly answered enquiries closed better than the slow ones.
Count three: quote to order
Of the qualified enquiries that got a quote, how many ended in an order? Compare the periods, then compare sources and people.
- Fell across the board. Look at price, competitors and the quote itself.
- Fell for one salesperson. Look at that person's territory and their calls before anything else.
- Fell for one source only. That source may be sending buyers who cannot pay your price, which takes you back to marketing.
Reading the three together
| What the sheet shows | Where to look first |
|---|---|
| Few qualified enquiries, replies fast, conversion fine | Marketing: reach, offer, channel |
| Healthy enquiries, replies slow or missed | Sales process: who answers, when, with what |
| Healthy enquiries, fast replies, few quotes sent | Qualification: what happens between the call and the quote |
| Quotes sent, conversion low from every source | Price, product fit or the quote itself |
| Conversion low from one source only | Marketing, aimed at the wrong buyer |
| All three look fair and sales are still down | Repeat orders from existing customers, or the market itself |
For example: a banquet hall in Bhopal
Wedding-season bookings are down on last year. The owner blames the Instagram agency, and the manager blames the leads. They count ninety days against the same ninety last year. This is an invented case with illustrative figures.
Qualified enquiries: 118 this year against 124 last year. Instagram fell by 14 and Justdial and referrals rose by 8, so the total barely moved. Marketing is not the story. Reply times are. Of the 118, 71 arrived after seven in the evening, when families sit down to look at venues, and most waited until the next afternoon. Among the 47 answered the same evening, 19 booked a visit. Among the 71 answered next day, 12 did.
Their mistake was to argue before counting. The first fix is on the sales side: the manager takes the evening phone for the season, with a saved first WhatsApp message and a note of which hall dates are still open. That costs the manager their evenings, and the next count may show the visit rate rising while bookings from those visits lag, because families still compare three halls. The agency's fee is left alone until then. Swapping agencies would have paid for a fresh setup and left the unanswered evenings where they were.
When this test fails
It needs a few dozen enquiries per period. If you get a handful a month, the numbers are too thin, and calls to buyers you lost will teach you more. It also misses problems outside the three counts, such as a new competitor or a product buyers no longer want.
For the longer list of places an enquiry dies, see why your marketing generates enquiries but few sales.
Count before the next meeting
Before your next review meeting, rebuild the sheet for the last ninety days, even if it takes the afternoon, and bring the three counts instead of opinions. If the sheet shows a gap between the two teams, sales and marketing alignment is the service nearest to that gap, and our FAQ has the questions owners ask us. When you want a second pair of eyes on the numbers, tell us what you need.
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