Founders panic about closing rates. I almost never think it's a closing problem. It's a discovery problem. Here's the stat that's been sitting with me: in Q4 of last year, only 44% of sales reps hit quota. And everyone's been asking "why can't reps close?" Wrong question. Ask why they can't qualify. Because if you can't identify a real opportunity, you spend your entire pipeline chasing deals that were never real to begin with. Your rep isn't underperforming at the finish line. They're starting the race in the wrong direction. And most of the time? It's not because they're a bad hire. It's because nobody handed them a map. The founder's version of a good discovery call lived entirely in their head. Three years of pattern-matching. Hard-won instincts. Things they "just knew." None of it written down. None of it transferable. So the rep winged it. In their own way. With zero institutional context. And now it looks like a performance problem when it was always a process problem. Before you PIP your rep or post another job listing: Can you describe your single best discovery call in concrete, specific terms? The actual questions you asked. What the prospect said that told you this one was real. If the answer is "...kind of like this?" - that's where to start. Not with a better rep.
Jeb Blount says in Fanatical Prospecting, "The most expensive thing you can do in sales is spending time with the wrong prospect."
Much like with marketing channel attribution, the end of the process (ie the closing) is rarely when the true decision is made; it's usually much earlier where things become solidified. Thanks for naming this directly, as well as some of the challenges with things that live in the founders' heads. There's always so much taken for granted that isn't actually obvious.