A lot can change in 90 days
One thing I’ve been reminded of recently is just how much can change in a business in a relatively short period of time.
Often ninety days is enough to completely shift the way sales feels inside a company.
Over the past few months I have worked closely with a business that wanted to take a proper look at how their sales function was operating. It’s a good company with a strong product and a capable team, but like a lot of growing businesses the sales side had evolved fairly organically over time.
Different salespeople had developed their own ways of working. Deals were being won, conversations were happening, but there wasn’t really a clear system sitting underneath it all. The CRM was there, but it wasn’t being used consistently. Follow ups were happening in different ways depending on the person. Opportunities would move forward, stall, or often disappear — and it wasn’t always obvious why.
This is pretty normal. Most businesses I jump into have a great team of people. The issue is the structure and processes.
Everyone is working hard, but there’s no clear rhythm around how opportunities move through the pipeline, how deals are qualified, or how the team regularly looks at what’s really happening inside the sales funnel.
Starting with the basics
The first step was getting clarity around the sales process itself. From the first conversation through to confirming a deal, we worked with the team to define what a good opportunity actually looks like and what information needs to be gathered early on so the team can properly understand what the client is trying to achieve.
That might sound simple, but once salespeople have a clearer framework for those early conversations, everything starts to improve. Proposals become more relevant, the conversations are more focused, and it becomes much easier to move deals forward with confidence.
At the same time we made some changes to how opportunities were being handled inside the CRM so the pipeline actually reflected how deals were progressing. Clear stages were introduced so everyone could see what was sitting in the pipeline, where deals were progressing well, and where things might be getting stuck.
We also introduced a weekly sales meeting focused on connection, ownership of key numbers, blockers, and key action points — all pre-populated before the meeting to create efficiencies.
A shift in how proposals were handled
A key change was encouraging the team to walk through proposals with clients rather than simply emailing them through. When you can explain the thinking behind a campaign, talk through the detail and answer questions in real time, the conversation becomes much stronger than simply sending a document and hoping for the best.
But we didn’t just tell the team this is how to do it. We took the time to help them understand why — they were very much a part of creating the new way of doing things. This was how we got buy-in and full ownership from the team. It takes longer this way, but you will always get better results than just telling people what to do.
What happened when the system was in place
Once the weekly rhythm was in place the level of activity across the team started to increase quickly.
| METRIC | BEFORE | AFTER |
| BD Calls | 19 | 247 |
| Prospect Meetings | 39 | 58 |
| Deals Closed | 17 | 50 |
February became the highest revenue month the company had ever recorded, followed by another strong month in March.
The part that stands out most
When I look back on those ninety days, the thing that stands out most isn’t the numbers themselves. It’s the shift in the environment inside the sales team.
The pipeline started to be way more accurate. People had more clarity around their deals. Follow ups were happening when they should have rather than when someone happened to remember. Conversations became more focused and the team started to understand what a healthy pipeline actually looked like.
Confidence grows pretty quickly when people know where they stand.
And that’s the part a lot of businesses underestimate. They think improving sales means pushing harder, hiring new people, or completely reinventing their strategy.
Most of the time the biggest change comes from putting the right structure around the people who are already there.
Once that system is in place, things start to compound surprisingly quickly.
And sometimes, all it takes to create that change is ninety days.
If you’d like to explore what that could look like for your business, we’re open to a conversation: here