Excerpt from a July 30, 2023 YouTube video by Jason M. Lemkin arguing that fear within a sales team is the primary, destructive cause of sales collapse. He states that loss of confidence—often beginning with the VP of sales—is usually the root cause, may stem from mismatched market fit or playbooks (example: Air Call), and can justify drastic measures (even replacing the sales team) to stop the ‘snowball’ effect of fear.
It's a snowball effect. Right. And then when the sales team loses confidence, it's all over, isn't it? And I would say this is the number one issue. You have to smell it. When your VP of sales loses confidence and it may not be their fault, it may be your fault. It's almost always the root cause. Like, I, yeah, Air Call was hard because it was competitive, but that you join something even harder and they fall apart because they had a playbook at Air Call that even with 10 competitors, it sort of worked. And then they go into this other market where instead of being like, at least having segments of the market where the number one, they're like number four. Right. And they don't know. They don't know the number 4 playbook or they don't know the 10x feature. But whatever it is, when fear sneaks in, you have to. Even if you have to get rid of the entire sales team, it's worth it. That's the biggest cancer, is fear on a sales team. Because those nine nos for every one. Yes.
