A shortage of suitable enquiries, customers lost during negotiations and payment delays explain why sales are low, but call for different solutions. In an existing sales team, start with what happened to buyers who have already come to you: who declined, who confirmed a postponement and whom the salespeople simply know nothing about. This information shows where more demand is needed, where a deal needs help and where there is still no basis for expecting payment.
I consider it dangerous to pay to attract new customers when the only explanation for what happened to previous ones is that they are “thinking it over”. This group includes a buyer who has agreed a date for a decision, someone whose quote the company itself is late in preparing, and someone who stopped responding long ago. They have different reasons for waiting. An across-the-board discount will reduce the order value for a buyer who is ready, but will not resolve our delay in preparing the quote.
The habit of carrying these deals over from month to month is particularly costly. First, their total value is used to justify future sales. Then the shortfall is blamed on a difficult market. In the next forecast, the same buyers appear again as expected payments. The business owner makes spending decisions based on intentions that no one has reconfirmed.
Why have sales stalled?
Sales stall when a buyer does not take the next necessary step: they are waiting for your company to act, postponing a decision or ending contact. The customer’s latest confirmation and the event after which the purchase should proceed help distinguish these reasons.
A deal has two different dates: when the salesperson last did something and when the buyer last communicated their decision. An unanswered call updates the first. It does not change the second. If a report shows only the salesperson’s recent activity, an old expectation can easily be mistaken for active interest.
The following breakdown of stalled purchases is useful for a business owner. The head of sales puts it together; the owner only needs to see the grounds for each expectation and choose an action where their decision is required.
| What is holding up the purchase | What confirms it | What to do about the expected payment |
|---|---|---|
| The buyer is waiting for us | There is a request from them and a promise we have not kept: a quote, a document or a delivery date | First keep the promise, then check the buyer’s decision |
| The buyer has confirmed a pause | An event, a date and an agreement to continue have been specified | Take account of the agreed timing and the risk of it not being met |
| The buyer has declined | They have replied to cancel or say they have chosen another proposal | Remove the expected payment; keep the reason for declining |
| The outcome is unknown | The agreed deadline has passed and there is no up-to-date response | Show the amount separately; assign someone to re-establish contact |
The last row is uncomfortable. It prevents the team from treating the same silence as a loss to explain last month and as a future purchase for next month. An unknown outcome does not mean the customer is lost forever: the salesperson keeps working, and the business owner sees the level of uncertainty.
A deal like this needs a short note that can be copied into a report:
Buyer and what they are buying: … Latest customer confirmation: … Date: … What needs to happen next: … Whose action is needed: … Agreed deadline: … Who is checking the situation: … By what date: …
The deadline here applies to the team’s work. A salesperson must not promise to get the buyer’s answer by a set time. They are responsible for attempts to make contact through the agreed channels and for an honest result: a response was received, the reason was established or contact could not be restored.
Add up the value of deals without up-to-date confirmation that are included in expectations for the chosen period. Divide it by the total expected amount and multiply by 100%. This gives the share of expectations the team currently cannot justify: … ₽ ÷ … ₽ × 100% = …%. If the total amount is zero, no percentage is needed. This measures forecast quality, not the probability of losing money.
What should you do if there are no sales?
If there are no sales, find the first step that suitable buyers have stopped reaching: enquiry, conversation, proposal, decision or payment. Choose the fix based on where buyers are being lost; the absence of money alone does not explain whether you need advertising, a different way of working or a change to the proposal.
First agree on what you call a sale. A signed order, dispatch and receipt of payment happen on different days. If contracts are being signed and the agreed payment deadline has not yet arrived, it is too early to change how negotiations are handled because the incoming payments line is empty. If there are no orders at all, checking the bank status of payments will not bring you closer to the cause.
Then the team selects one group of buyers: one product, a similar way of buying and the same time to reach a decision. New enquiries must not be mixed with repeat orders. A returning customer knows the supplier; a new one still has to decide whether they are ready to trust them. A combined figure hides exactly where the company stopped making sales.
Next, the following decision guide will help. The business owner can use it to assess whether the head of sales’ proposal to spend money is justified.
| Where buyer numbers have fallen | What fact the team needs to provide | What decision to discuss |
|---|---|---|
| At the point of entry | The number of enquiries with a suitable need from each source | Restore efforts to attract these particular buyers |
| Between enquiry and conversation | How many suitable enquiries received no meaningful response | Change how enquiries are handled, allocated and picked up |
| Between conversation and proposal | What prevented a proposal from being prepared in each stalled case | Resolve delays in preparing quotes, missing information or lack of stock |
| Between proposal and decision | Which terms the buyer objected to and what was missing for them | Change the specific term or the way it is explained |
| Between decision and payment | Whether payment is due, documents are ready and both sides have kept their promises | Remove the obstacle to payment or clarify its date |
The order of the rows guards against the wrong conclusion. If there are fewer conversations, there will also be fewer proposals. Demanding that the team close deals better will not bring back the people it did not answer. The head of sales must show which transition changed first before explaining the failure at the final one.
There is a separate situation: there were no sales before either. A new line of business has no previously successful model to restore. What is needed first is potential buyers’ responses to a specific proposal: whom it suits, what people are willing to pay for and what stops them buying. A large sales team and an expensive head of sales do not create demand by themselves.
When the obstacle lies in the product, delivery or the company’s terms, it is pointless to demand that salespeople overcome it through endless persistence. More on this in “Sales Have Dropped. Could the Head of Sales Have Fixed It at All?”.
Why have sales fallen?
Sales fall when fewer customers buy, order values decrease or money comes in later. Look for the cause by comparing equivalent periods and groups of buyers, treating new and repeat purchases separately.
For the first calculation, take the number of orders in the previous comparable period as A and in the current period as B. If A is greater than zero, the decline is (A − B) ÷ A × 100%. A line for your own figures: previously … orders, now …; (… − …) ÷ … × 100% = …%. A negative value means growth. If the starting number is zero, calculate the difference in orders.
Put the average order value alongside it. For the same group, total sales equal the number of orders multiplied by the average order value. If the number of orders is unchanged but the total value is lower, the team must explain the mix of purchases, discounts or reduced volumes from existing customers. Increasing the advertising budget solely because of this decline is a decision made without finding the cause.
Compare a full period with a full period. For enquiries, also take account of their age: yesterday’s enquiries cannot have had as long to turn into purchases as last month’s enquiries. If seasonality is pronounced, add the equivalent period from last year and separately note changes in prices and product range. Otherwise, calendar differences can easily be mistaken for changes in people’s work.
Where the money you were already expecting has gone
Analyse a drop in incoming payments using a saved list of expected payments. You need a version of the list drawn up before the due date: a forecast rewritten after the event will not show the original expectations.
- Take all the amounts on the list that were expected by the chosen date. This is the original expected amount — E.
- Subtract the part of those specific payments actually received — R. Count advance payments at the amount received; match each payment to its line.
- Divide the remainder into cancelled amounts, payments with a confirmed new date and overdue expectations with no new confirmed date.
A ready-made line for checking the totals:
Expected … ₽ − received from this list … ₽ = cancelled … ₽ + postponed … ₽ + no new confirmed date … ₽.
The three amounts on the right must add up to the full unpaid balance. Show unplanned incoming payments separately: they improved the cash position, but did not explain what happened to the promised payments. An expectation on the list does not in itself prove that the buyer has an obligation either: what exactly they agreed must be visible alongside it.
Now the shortfall has consequences. For cancellations, examine the reasons for declining. For postponements, change the expected dates. For unconfirmed balances, find out what happened to the purchase. An across-the-board discount for all customers solves neither document delays nor a lack of response.
A sales plan that was missed after its target was raised is a separate issue. If there are as many orders and as much money as before, sales have not fallen. The gap to the target has changed. The team then needs to explain what extra demand or change in its work was meant to make it grow. Punishing the previous way of selling for a new figure in the sales plan is a poor substitute for that explanation.
Why are sales not working?
Fixes to sales do not work if they change an action unrelated to where buyers are being lost, or if the change is not put into practice. For example, reminders to a buyer are useless while they are waiting for a quote the company promised: first you need to resolve your own delay.
A fix should have two observable results. First, the company has done its part: quotes go out by the promised deadline. Second, after receiving the quotes, buyers continue the discussion and make a decision. You can see whether the work has been done at the next promised deadlines. Assess buyers’ responses after the usual period for deals of this kind, comparing them with previous enquiries of the same type.
If quotes are already going out on time but buyers still decline, repeating the demand to work faster will add nothing. You need the reasons for declining: terms, the content of the proposal and how well it meets the need. If quotes are still delayed, the head of sales must ensure the agreed decision is carried out. These are different grounds for the next action.
Unknown outcomes have their own trap: you can demand fewer of them and end up with deal records being closed in bulk. So a line disappearing from a report does not count as success. Every purchase must have a basis for its new status: a reply, an agreement or a recorded end to attempts to make contact. The last of these must not be presented as a confirmed rejection.
I support the head of sales’ right to show an uncomfortable figure. But it must come with a clear account of the unfinished work, who is responsible and the deadline. An open-ended “we’re looking into it” obstructs decisions just as much as certainty without information.
When the team cannot explain the shortfall
If information about orders, payments and customer responses does not match, the first step is to bring it together into one picture. For this task, there is Sales Audit 360°: a RENTROP expert examines six areas — sales, customers, deals, traffic, competitors and the team — and draws up an action plan with prioritised steps.
If the point of loss is already clear, the next step is daily work on that area. The choice between handling enquiries, bringing customers back and repeat orders is discussed in “Increasing Sales: Which Lever to Use Within the Sales Team”.
For this task, RENTROP offers “turnkey sales management”: increasing company sales through faster enquiry handling, following up to close deals, bringing customers back and repeat sales.
The first honest review sometimes reduces the total value of expected sales. Purchases with no updates in a long time are removed from the total. I need a head of sales who will point out this gap before the company starts spending in anticipation of promised payments: then the business owner still has a choice.