Sales High Performance: Sustain, Start and Stop
As we push forward into 2025, now is the perfect time to assess sales performance and refocus on what truly drives your best sales results. A simple but effective way to do this is by asking three key questions:
● Sustain: What’s working well that we should double down on?
● Start: What new habits, strategies, or conversations could create fresh sales opportunities?
● Stop: What’s holding us back or no longer serving our performance?
Taking time to reflect on these three areas helps create clarity, decisiveness and focus – accelerating sales results. Arrowbow breaks down each of these areas with practical examples.
Sustain: Double Down on What Works
Sales teams often chase new ideas and initiatives, but the biggest wins often come from refining and reinforcing what’s already working. Sustaining and scaling proven strategies can drive far greater efficiency than constantly reinventing the approach.
What should be sustained?
● Prioritising our top 20% customers: Most businesses generate the majority of their revenue from a small percentage of customers. The most effective sales teams double down on their top 20%, deepening relationships and uncovering additional opportunities rather than getting distracted by low-value accounts.
● Maintaining structured follow-ups: Regular, well-timed follow-ups continue to be one of the highest-impact sales activities. Teams that sustain a disciplined follow-up process close more deals without having to chase additional leads.
● Reinforcing sales rituals: High-performing teams build consistency through structured sales meetings, deal (opportunity) reviews, and pipeline health (fitness) checks. If these practices are leading to better forecasting and execution, they should be protected and refined rather than deprioritised.
Many teams move on too quickly from strategies that work, looking for the next new thing instead of refining and maximising their strengths. The focus should be on sustaining what is already delivering results and looking for ways to optimise and scale these efforts.
Start: Build New Habits for Better Sales Results
While sustaining success is critical, real growth also comes from introducing (in managed way) new behaviors and approaches that drive improvement. Adapting and evolving the sales approach ensures continued progress.
What could be started?
● Applying a standardised sales process: Many sales teams struggle with inconsistency, where each salesperson approaches deals differently. Establishing (and coaching) a clear, structured sales process ensures predictability, improves conversion rates and creates a scalable approach that delivers repeatable sales success.
● Sharpening discovery conversations: Too many sales teams focus on pitching instead of truly understanding customer pain points. A shift toward deeper discovery conversations, where the focus is on business challenges rather than product features, leads to higher-value engagements and stronger deal qualification.
● Focusing on quality over quantity: A common challenge is the tendency to chase every lead rather than prioritising the best opportunities. Sales teams that start focusing on higher-quality leads, rigorously qualifying opportunities, and engaging in more meaningful conversations see stronger results with less wasted effort.
Introducing new habits requires discipline, but even small adjustments in approach can create meaningful improvements in sales performance over time. The key is to start with one or two strategic changes and integrate them consistently.
Stop: Eliminate What’s Holding You Back
Just as important as sustaining and starting the right habits is identifying and stopping the behaviors that hinder or slow down sales success. Certain patterns can drain energy and resources (impacting team moral) without delivering real value.
What could be stopped?
● Being a “magpie” and chasing “shiny object” opportunities: Many sales teams fall into the trap of pursuing new deals that seem exciting but ultimately pull focus away from core opportunities. Instead of constantly looking for new leads, the priority should be ensuring that existing high-potential deals (those you have qualified effectively) progress efficiently through the pipeline.
● Overcomplicating the sales process: Deals often stall due to unnecessary complexity in the buying journey. Sales teams should stop adding friction with lengthy approvals, unnecessary presentations or over-engineered solutions that slow decision-making rather than facilitating it.
● Spending time on low-value prospects: Not every lead is worth the effort. Sales teams that fail to recognise poor-fit prospects (bad or non-existence of a qualification step) early in the sales process waste valuable time and resources. Stopping the pursuit of unqualified opportunities allows for greater focus on the right deals.
By eliminating ineffective habits and distractions, sales professionals free up time and energy to focus on high-impact activities that truly move the “sales needle”.
Final Thought: Creating a Clearer Path to Sales Success
Sales success is not about doing more – it is about focusing on the right activities and executing them consistently. By sustaining proven strategies, starting new high-impact habits, and stopping activities that drain performance (moral), sales teams can drive meaningful improvements in their results.
Now is a great time to assess what is working, what needs to change, and what should be left behind. Taking the time to reflect and act on these insights can create the momentum needed for long-term sales growth and success.
If you would like to uncover what you should be focusing on from a sustain, start and stop perspective feel free to contact Arrowbow by Booking a Discovery Call with Arrowbow