Notes for owners · Sales management
Why salespeople ignore the sales process, and the field-by-field cut that brings them back
Salespeople skip the process when it is extra typing with nothing in return. Check each field, cut what nobody uses, give something back to the person who fills it, and review live deals.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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Salespeople ignore a sales process because it takes typing and gives nothing back. Four common causes are: too many fields, fields nobody reads, a record slower than a WhatsApp message, and an owner who never looks at what was entered. All four can be changed. Cut every field that no decision uses, show each person what they get in return, and review live deals from the record and not from memory.
How do you check the fields?
Print the form your people fill in, or open the sheet. For each field, answer three questions beside it: who reads it, what decision it feeds, and whether to keep, cut or merge it.
| Field | Who reads it | Decision it informs | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source of enquiry | Owner | Where to spend money | Keep |
| Buyer's company size | Nobody | None | Cut |
| Product asked about | Whoever makes the quote | What to quote | Keep |
| Second phone number | Nobody | None | Merge into notes |
| Next follow-up date | Salesperson and reviewer | Who calls today | Keep, make it mandatory |
| Reason lost | Owner | What to fix | Keep, short pick-list |
The test is blunt. If nobody reads a field and no decision depends on it, the field is a tax. Cut it and say so to the team. The cut costs nothing, and people notice it.
What do salespeople get back?
Typing is bearable when it returns something. Ask what the record could give each person that they do not already have.
- A list each morning of whom to call, sorted by the follow-up date they typed.
- A quote that fills itself in.
- A record of what they promised, so they are not blamed for what somebody else said.
- Credit: their name on every won deal, where the owner can see it.
If the process returns none of these, it is a reporting system for the owner, and people will treat it as one.
Why do they type into WhatsApp and not the record?
Because the buyer is already there. A salesperson who finishes a call and finds a message waiting answers the message. Accept WhatsApp as a working channel, and make recording one step and not a second job: a single line copied into the record after the chat, with the next date. If the record asks for five fields after a thirty-second chat, the chat usually wins.
For example: a coir-products maker in Alappuzha
Imagine a maker of coir mats and mattresses in Alappuzha who sells to dealers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu through three salespeople. After a fortnight the enquiry form was empty. The owner found fourteen fields, three of them about the dealer's turnover and staff, which no one had ever used.
The form was not the only cause. At the first review the owner had read down the "last contact" column and asked one man in front of the others why a Thrissur dealer had waited nine days for a quote (the order, ₹1.4 lakh in invented figures, went elsewhere). After that, entries became shorter and the dates went missing, because a missing date cannot be questioned. People were protecting themselves.
The owner did two things. The form was cut to six fields: name and number, source, what was asked, quote date, next call date and result. The question at the review changed too. Instead of "why was this late", the owner asked "this quote is nine days old; who calls, and what do they say?"
The record was also opened on a screen, so each salesperson saw their own morning note come back as a question in the afternoon. The next-call dates returned, because the date had become something that helped them and not something used against them. One salesperson still skipped it, and that became a separate conversation.
How do you review live deals without blame?
Use the record in front of everyone and ask about the next step, not the past failure. "Who calls and what do they say?" is a question. "Why didn't you follow up?" is an accusation, and it teaches people to hide dates.
Praise the useful behaviour in public: a complete entry, a lost deal with a clear reason, a follow-up made on the due day. Keep correction for private talks. After a few reviews, those who resisted either adopt the habit or tell you honestly what is in the way, and you can fix that.
When is it not the process's fault?
Sometimes it is the person. If one salesperson has never filled in a field while the others do, no cutting will help. That is a management conversation about expectations and, if necessary, consequences.
Pay can matter too. If incentives depend only on orders closed and the record stands outside the reward, you may need to link them modestly, for example by counting only recorded deals. Decide carefully, because this changes behaviour fast and can reward made-up entries: a salesperson may log an enquiry that never existed, just so it counts. Spot-check a few recorded deals against the buyer's own messages.
The last case is a process written for a business you do not run. If your buyers order in one phone call, a ten-stage pipeline is theatre. The wider list of reasons is in why employees do not use the CRM, and the sales process pages have stage lists you can trim.
Taking the form to your two best people
Print the form today and run the three-question check with your two best salespeople beside you. Cut what nobody reads, write down what each person gets back, and fix a date for the first review that asks only about next steps. If you would like someone to go through the form with you, CRM adoption and training is that work, and you can tell us what you need.
