Are You Treating the Symptom or Addressing the Root Cause?

When faced with revenue and EBITDA growth challenges, particularly within the complex, revenue-generating ecosystem of a large global enterprise, it’s crucial to ask: Are you diagnosing and treating only the symptoms of a broader issue, or are you digging deeper to uncover and address the true root cause? This question is more important than ever as businesses face increasing complexity and pressure to deliver immediate results through ‘quick fixes.’ However, these short-term solutions often come at the expense of the more holistic, transformative opportunity to tackle core structural challenges at the operating model level.

The Surface Symptoms

For revenue-generating functions, these surface-level concerns include things like:

• Pipeline Size and Close/Win Rates: These metrics are top of mind for all revenue leaders, with the thinking often being: “If I can boost these, even a little, good things will follow.” However, pipeline size targets of 3X and close/win rates around 30% have remained stagnant for many years. In fact, recent studies indicate that close/win rates are declining for some organizations. Why? Some attribute the decline to the increasing complexity of solution-centric deals, while others offer different theories. But what’s truly driving these declining win rates?
• Prime Selling Time: What exactly is Prime Selling Time? It’s the time sales reps should spend doing what they do best – preparing for, engaging with customers, and progressing deals! So why are so many reps struggling to find enough time for these critical activities? Most will tell you it’s because they’re bogged down by administrative tasks, internal meetings, forecast calls, general training, and other distractions that pull them away from revenue-generating work. Is the solution to simply tell reps to work harder and ‘smarter’? Should you try to automate some aspects of their administrative overhead? Or, is there a better way?
• Average Deal Size: Bigger deals are typically more strategic, retire quota faster, and help establish trusted-advisor relationships. However, they’re also more challenging to close because they require reps to adopt a consultative selling approach. If you ask most reps whether they have the expertise and tools to sell this way, and then test them in a deal strategy session, you’ll likely find that many fall short. But why?
• Sales Execution Performance: Sales teams often display significant variation in quota attainment across individual reps. Managers frequently categorize their team members as A, B, or C players based on quota performance and then spend the bulk of their coaching time on the lowest performers—‘C’ players—in hopes of improving their results. However, this can be an overly simplistic approach, with the risk of neglecting opportunities to help ‘B’ players become ‘A’ players or elevate ‘A’ players to superstar status. The truth is, it’s often difficult to pinpoint why some reps excel while others struggle. Is it their individual skill set? The territory or accounts they’ve been assigned? The accuracy of their quota? Or simply a matter of good or bad luck? Without clear insights, performance management becomes a guessing game—something it doesn’t have to be.

These issues drive higher sales costs, ineffective coaching, and overall performance shortfalls. However, treating these as isolated symptoms without addressing their root causes will only lead to short-term fixes—band-aid solutions that fail to deliver sustainable, long-term results.

The Common Trap: Misdiagnosing the Problem

A significant misstep occurs when leaders address only the visible symptoms, applying point solutions to problems that require deeper investigation. For instance, when a team misses its quotas, the instinct might be to fire those who fall short, hire more sales reps, implement new sales enablement tools, or deliver blanket training sessions—regardless of individual needs. However, if the underlying operating model is the issue, these quick fixes will likely just add complexity and cost without yielding meaningful improvements in revenue growth.

If your team isn’t spending time on the most impactful activities, or if your sales processes are inefficient, simply changing headcount or layering on new technology will do little to resolve the root issues. The real question is: Are your current processes optimized for today’s—and tomorrow’s—sales environment?

The AI Paradigm Shift: Addressing Root Causes

AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to dig deeper, address these root causes, and fundamentally reshape the way you approach sales and revenue performance. Success in the future lies not in small, incremental improvements but in rethinking the entire ecosystem with AI at its core.

• Maximizing Prime Selling Time: Rather than using AI to automate just a few administrative tasks, consider how AI can radically transform how sales reps allocate their time. By abstracting complex processes into a user-friendly, AI-powered interface that provides proactive, prescriptive guidance, salespeople can focus almost entirely on selling while the technology manages data entry, task prioritization, and customer engagement insights.
• Improving Consultative Selling: AI doesn’t just enable more efficient selling—it acts as an active coach for sales reps. Imagine AI offering real-time insights during deal progression and customer interactions, guiding reps to position the right solutions, ask the right questions, and engage the right customers at the optimal time. By embedding AI into the sales process, consultative selling becomes a scalable and repeatable approach.
• Real-Time Insights and Proactive Coaching: Instead of relying on lagging indicators—such as orders, bookings, or win rates—to identify your ‘best sellers,’ AI provides real-time visibility into the sales process and execution activities as they happen. With timely, actionable insights, leaders can identify challenges before they fully emerge, enabling swift course corrections that keep deals on track. This also empowers managers to move beyond overly simplistic talent assessments, like the traditional A, B, and C player approach.

Shifting the Ecosystem: A New AI-Centric Operating Model

In the future state, the interaction between the underlying AI-enabled architecture and its capabilities will be abstracted away from sales reps. Rather than logging into a CRM to track activities, reps will automatically receive what they need—whether it’s data-driven ‘high propensity to buy’ leads, next steps for deal progression, timely customer insights, or engagement improvement suggestions. All of this will be presented through an AI-powered, role-tailored user interface.

This paradigm shift presents a massive opportunity to rethink the entire ecosystem. Sales leaders can move away from symptom-treating approaches and create an architecture that is proactive, intuitive, and tailored to the actual needs of reps. This goes beyond just making sales more efficient—it fundamentally changes how reps engage with their tools, their customers, and the broader business landscape.

Where to Start: Winning Hearts and Minds

A common concern among leaders is how to ensure adoption of these changes. Will sales reps and managers embrace a fundamentally new way of working? My experience tells me they will—if the changes make their jobs easier and more productive. When AI-driven improvements enhance both the experience and execution of reps, they’ll be eager to adopt the new model. After all, most reps are motivated by results, and if you help them sell more, it’s a win for everyone. Everyone except their competitors!

Another beneficiary is, of course, the end customer. If these changes improve their experience—making interactions more personalized, efficient, and insightful—you will create a win-win scenario for both your sales teams and the customers they serve.

Embracing Change: Addressing the Root Cause

As revenue leaders, it’s time to adopt a more holistic AI-first mindset. Moving beyond treating surface-level symptoms with yet another one-off solution, you have an opportunity to dive deep into your operating model, do some clean-sheet thinking, and uncover the core root causes of underperformance. The true value of AI will not come from quick fixes—it will come from embracing the opportunity to fundamentally reimagine how you operate. With AI, you have the tools to reshape the ecosystem, unlock hidden value, and drive sustainable growth for the long term. 

Where are you on your journey toward AI-driven sales excellence?

A great first step in transforming your business is to develop a forward-looking blueprint that aligns AI capabilities with your revenue goals. Need guidance? At Revenue Growth Associates, we’re not just experts in revenue generation—we specialize in leveraging AI to unlock your business’s full potential. Let’s talk. We’d love to help you chart your path toward a more efficient, AI-enabled future and explore how we can support your journey to achieve sustainable growth with AI at the core of your strategy.