Why salespeople do not follow the process, and what to do about it

When salespeople do not follow the process, the cause is not always laziness. It is often one of three things. Each shows up in a sentence you hear if you ask the right question: "I did not have time", "I did not know what to put", or "nobody looks at it anyway". The fixes differ, and guessing wrong makes things worse.

"I did not have time"

A process designed in a quiet meeting asks for fourteen fields after every call. A salesperson who has made thirty calls, with twenty more to go, fills two fields, the easy ones, and leaves the rest.

Test it: ask to see the last five entries. If the first three fields are full and the rest blank, in the same pattern every time, the process is too long. People keep what they judge useful and nothing more.

Cut it to what you will actually read. Four things go a long way for a small team: who the buyer is, what they want, what happens next, and when. Anything else moves to a second step used only on deals that reach quotation. If you cannot say what you do with a field, remove it.

"I did not know what to put"

The process says "qualify the lead", and each person qualifies differently. One asks about budget, one about the date, one about nothing and goes by feel.

Test it: hand the process to a new joiner and ask what to do after a first call. If the answer is a guess, or three people give three answers, the process is unclear.

Turn each stage into a plain instruction with a finish line. Not "qualify" but "ask quantity, date and who decides; the stage ends when all three are noted". Add one filled example per stage, from a real deal with the name removed, so a joiner can copy it.

"Nobody looks at it anyway"

If a manager never opens the record, the record is for no one, and people stop writing it. This is easy to fall into in owner-run teams, because the owner is busy and the sheet looks like admin.

Test it: when did you last open the pipeline sheet before talking to a salesperson? "Not in a while" settles it.

Fix it with a fixed hour once a week, ten minutes each, with the open deals as the agenda. Ask about the stuck ones. The first time a deal is missing from the sheet, say nothing harsh: "I cannot see this, so I cannot help with it." After a few sessions the habit may start to change.

Which one is yours?

Look at five recent deals. Early fields full and later fields blank means too long. Fields filled in different ways by each person means unclear. Fields filled well in the first week and thinning afterwards means unchecked. Fields that appear just before you ask mean the record is written to please, not to use, and a call recording will show the difference.

Often two causes appear together. Fix them in this order: shorten, clarify, then check. Checking a long, unclear process only makes people resentful.

Ask also about your best seller. If one person already follows a version of the steps, look at their own sheet or notebook. It will be shorter than yours and clearer than yours, and it proves the process fits the time a real day allows. Borrow its shape. A process that came from a colleague tends to be accepted faster than one that came from the owner's desk.

If nobody follows any version, ask why in a one-to-one, not in a meeting. People say in private what they will not say in front of the group.

A dealer in Ranchi with a nine-stage sheet

Imagine a Ranchi dealer in spares for mining and earth-moving equipment, with five salespeople and a nine-stage process in a spreadsheet. This case is invented to show the pattern. Nobody uses stages three to six. The owner's first reaction is a stern message to the group, demanding that every field be filled.

Two people respond by writing "ok" and "done" in every box. For a month the record looks complete and means nothing.

The owner then cuts nine stages to five and writes a one-line finish rule for each. On Saturdays the owner sits with each person for ten minutes and they read the open deals together. A deal with "ok" in the notes gets a question. A missed month had cost two follow-ups that went cold, perhaps ₹2 lakh of quotes in this invented case. Real notes return from four of the five within a few sessions; the fifth, the longest-serving salesperson, keeps filling the sheet on Friday evening from memory, and the owner lets that stand for now.

The five stages were plain: enquiry logged, need confirmed (machine model, part number, urgency), quote sent, follow-up date set, order or reason for loss. Each had one line saying what must be true to move on. "Need confirmed" meant model and part number were written down, not remembered. A newcomer could read the five lines in a minute, and the owner could read the sheet in ten.

When the process itself is wrong

Sometimes the team is right. A process copied from a large company can be mostly noise for a sale that is a single visit and a quote. If buyers decide in one call, a six-step journey is absurd, and salespeople are rational to skip it.

Look at where your deals actually move and design around that.

Ask one question this week

Take five recent deals, listen for which sentence you would hear, and change only that. Look again after a month. If you want the steps redrawn around how your deals already move, sales process design and implementation is where we start, within how you sell; tell us what you need to begin.