One of the most common frustrations I hear from CEOs is, “My salespeople keep bringing me the wrong prospects.”
The scenario is almost always the same: a salesperson is excited about a new prospect because they believe they’ve found a great opportunity. Within minutes, the CEO begins explaining why it isn’t a good fit.
“They’re too small.”
“They’ll never pay our price.”
“We’ve struggled with companies like this before.”
“This isn’t the type of customer we’re trying to build the business around.”
The meeting ends with both sides frustrated. The salesperson is upset the boss doesn’t share their excitement, and the boss can’t understand why the salesperson keeps bringing prospects that were never likely to become good customers.
Over the years, I have come to understand that neither person is usually the problem. More often than not, the sales strategy already exists, but it exists only in the CEO’s head.
The Start of the Strategy
Prospecting is one of the top four salesperson responsibilities:
- Prospecting
- Building relationships
- Creating opportunities
- Closing business
But those activities only produce consistent results when they’re guided by a clear direction.
Leadership defines the sales strategy. Salespeople execute it.
Define Your Ideal Customer
After working with founder-led companies for more than 10 years, I’ve learned that salespeople rarely pursue the wrong prospects intentionally. Why would they? Their compensation usually depends on closing business. Every day, they look for companies they genuinely believe can become customers.
One of the first things I do when I begin working with a new client is ask each salesperson the same three questions:
- Who is your ideal customer, and why?
- What makes customers choose your company over a competitor?
- How many of your current customers actually match what you’re looking for?
I expect different answers every time.
Not because the salespeople aren’t capable, or because they aren’t trying. But each salesperson naturally defines a good prospect based on the customers they’ve been most successful selling to in the past. They’re doing exactly what experienced salespeople do: repeating what has worked before.
But the CEO almost never struggles with those same questions.
They already know which customers create the most value, which opportunities rarely work out, and where the company has a genuine competitive advantage. Years of winning and losing business have given them reliable instincts.
Making CEO Expertise Repeatable
The challenge isn’t creating the strategy. It’s transferring that knowledge from the CEO’s experience into a strategy the rest of the organization can consistently execute.
When that doesn’t happen, every salesperson develops a slightly different definition of a good prospect.
Marketing begins attracting one audience while sales pursues another.
The CEO ends up reviewing opportunities one at a time because they’re the only person who can see whether a prospect truly fits the business.
I’ve seen this pattern enough times to know that it’s rarely a prospecting problem. It’s a leadership communication problem.
Solving the Real Problem
The good news is that solving it doesn’t require replacing the sales team or finding superstar salespeople. It requires leadership to clearly define who the business is built to serve, why those customers buy, and what a qualified opportunity actually looks like.
Once those decisions are made and consistently reinforced, salespeople become far more effective because everyone is working from the same playbook.
Don’t blame good salespeople for failing to execute a strategy that only exists in the CEO’s head.
This is just one of the sales leadership gaps I commonly find when I begin working with a new client.
These insights come from a national group of Fractional Revenue Leaders who are actively building and managing revenue engines inside growing businesses.
