The strategic shifts that unlock sustainable sales growth
Most businesses believe the only way to grow sales is to grow the sales team.
In our recent Kiss the Fish webinar, we challenged that assumption.
Inspired by University Challenge, our panel tackled questions submitted by attendees, buzzing in to answer live and sharing practical advice drawn from decades of sales leadership experience.
Rather than discussing theory, the conversation focused on one question:
How do you increase sales performance without increasing headcount?
Here are some of the biggest ideas from the first half of the discussion.
If you could make one bold change to your go-to-market strategy, what would it be?
David Worthington CMI‘s answer was simple:
Look at your website.
For many businesses, their website is their most underused salesperson.
Buyers now research suppliers long before they speak to anyone, yet many companies rarely stop to ask:
- Who is our website really for?
- Does it answer the questions buyers actually have?
- Does it help people take the next step?
If your website isn’t supporting your sales conversations, it could be slowing them down before they’ve even started.
How do you build a stronger value proposition?
Andrew Milbourn argued that businesses often overcomplicate this.
His advice?
Stop guessing what customers value. Ask them.
Instead of writing messaging based on assumptions, speak to customers who chose you and understand why they bought.
Not the obvious answers.
The real reasons.
Was it reliability?
Expertise?
Reduced risk?
Service?
Those insights become the foundations of a value proposition that future customers recognise immediately.
Andrew also suggested asking one question many businesses avoid:
“Would you pay more?”
The answer often reveals how much value customers genuinely see.
What is the biggest lever for growth?
The panel gave different answers, but they all pointed in the same direction.
Chris Silverwood encouraged businesses to optimise what they already have before adding complexity.
David Worthington focused on becoming genuinely customer-curious rather than simply selling products.
Francesco Mercurio reminded everyone that:
Revenue scales through systems, not heroics.
Andrew Milbourn summed it up simply:
Know exactly who should be buying from you and why.
The common thread?
Growth starts with improving the system before expanding the team.
Which stage of the sales funnel should businesses optimise first?
Chris didn’t hesitate.
Qualification.
Many businesses think they need more leads.
In reality, they often need better opportunities.
Too many pipelines are full of prospects who were never likely to buy.
Instead of asking “How do we generate more leads?”
Ask:
- Are we speaking to the right people?
- Can they make a decision?
- Is there genuine urgency?
- Is there a problem we can solve?
Good qualification save enormous amounts of wasted effort later.
What cultural shift creates long-term growth?
Andrew’s answer was:
Curiosity.
Not curiosity as a slogan.
Curiosity as an everyday behaviour.
The best salespeople don’t ask questions to help themselves sell.
They ask questions to help customers make better decisions.
That changes the quality of every conversation.
One message kept coming back throughout the webinar.
Businesses rarely double sales simply by working harder.
They grow because they improve the quality of their thinking, sharpen their understanding of customers, and build systems that enable great sales conversations to happen consistently.
In Part Two, we’ll explore some of the practical ideas the panel shared around pricing, sales velocity, qualification, customer value and creating more revenue from the team you already have.
