Sales Performance Improvement Guide for 2025

Introduction

Sales were flat for the third quarter in a row. The VP of Sales sat silently in the boardroom as the leadership team debated where the disconnect lay. Marketing insisted they were generating enough leads. Sales reps said deals were dying late in the pipeline. And operations pointed fingers at the CRM data that didn’t tell a clear story. Everyone had an opinion, but no one had a plan.

If you've ever found yourself in a similar meeting, frustrated, overwhelmed, and unsure what to fix first, you’re not alone. Improving sales performance isn't just about hiring better reps or sending them to another training. It's about building a system that supports consistent, predictable success.

In this blog, we’ll break down what really drives performance improvement from the key influencing factors to the strategic levers you can pull. Let’s dive in.

How to Improve Sales Performance

Sales performance improvement is the process of optimizing sales results through measurable strategies, tools, and coaching. It focuses on boosting revenue, increasing conversion rates, and enhancing productivity. 

Salespeople use data-driven insights to track KPIs, diagnose performance gaps, and implement targeted improvements. Effective sales plans align performance goals with business outcomes through structured enablement, sales training, and technology. 

Real-time analytics and benchmarks support continuous growth. Performance improvement plans apply at individual and team levels. These efforts ensure scalable, repeatable sales success across roles, regions, and industries.

Key Factors Impacting Sales Performance

Sales performance improvement is rarely about fixing just one broken piece. It's usually the result of diagnosing several interrelated factors that quietly undermine results over time. Some of these issues stem from internal inefficiencies, while others are driven by market dynamics. 

Below, we break down the most common root causes that hinder sales performance and what can be done to address them.

1. Lack of Sales Process Clarity

When there’s no shared understanding of the sales process, performance becomes unpredictable. Without defined stages, entry/exit criteria, and aligned expectations, reps manage deals based on intuition rather than data. This often leads to bloated pipelines, inaccurate forecasts, and missed targets at the end of the quarter.

For example, if one rep defines a deal as “qualified” after a discovery call while another does so only after a proposal has been sent, the forecast will be inherently flawed. A clear, documented sales process ensures consistent execution, better coaching, and improved conversion rates across the funnel.

2. Skill and Knowledge Gaps

Even the best reps struggle when overwhelmed by the skills required for the role. According to Gartner, 72% of sellers report feeling overwhelmed by the demands of their role, with 50% feeling overwhelmed by the technological tools at their disposal. 

These overwhelmed reps are 45% less likely to meet their quota, demonstrating a clear link between sales performance and the skill/technology burden on reps.

Even with the best tools, undertrained reps will underperform. Core skills like discovery, objection handling, and closing deals are not innate. They must be taught, coached, and practiced.

But in many teams, onboarding is rushed, and ongoing skill development is inconsistent or reactive.

Sales performance improvement depends heavily on a rep’s ability to ask the right questions, tailor messaging to buyer pain points, and navigate complex deals with confidence. Without this foundation, even the most promising leads stall or go dark.

3. Misaligned Incentives

Poorly designed compensation plans often drive the wrong behavior. If the incentive structure doesn’t reinforce strategic goals such as multi-product selling, profitability, or long-term accounts, reps will naturally prioritize what pays, even if it conflicts with the company’s growth strategy.

For instance, if reps are only compensated on top-line revenue, they might over-discount or push low-margin deals just to hit quota. Over time, this erodes profitability and conditions the team to chase volume over value.

4. Inconsistent Managerial Coaching

According to a study by Forbes in association with Brainshark, The Power of Enablement: Bridging the Sales Productivity Gap, nearly 74% of companies mention coaching as the most important role of a frontline manager, yet it’s the most neglected part. 

Many sales managers spend more time reporting on performance than improving it. But coaching is what actually drives growth. When coaching is infrequent, generic, or focused only on lagging metrics, reps don’t get the feedback they need to level up and hit their sales targets

High-performing sales organizations make coaching a non-negotiable routine. They tie coaching to specific pipeline stages, call recordings, or behavior-based KPIs. As Gartner reports, sales professionals receiving consistent, high-quality coaching are significantly more likely to exceed their targets.

5. Weak Sales Culture and Morale

Sales environments where reps feel unsupported, underappreciated, or siloed tend to see higher attrition, lower engagement, and fewer discretionary efforts.

On the flip side, when reps feel psychologically safe, recognized for their wins, and connected to a larger purpose, they’re more likely to invest in their craft and support peers. This positive feedback loop creates resilient, high-performing teams, even in tough quarters.

Key Strategies for Sales Performance Improvement

Improving sales performance isn’t about one-time fixes or generic motivation tactics. It requires structured interventions across your processes, tools, coaching, and incentives. Here are five proven strategies that companies use to drive sustained sales performance improvement.

Sales Process Optimization & Engineering

An inefficient sales process is one of the most common and overlooked barriers to performance. To optimize it, start by mapping your ideal customer journey from lead to closed-won. Every stage in the pipeline should have defined entry and exit criteria, not just vague labels.

For example, to move an opportunity from “qualified” to “proposal,” reps should confirm that the buyer has a clear budget, timeline, and decision-making authority. Without these checks, opportunities clog your pipeline, skew forecasting, and waste selling time.

Leading sales organizations implement stage-gating mechanisms to ensure only high-quality deals move forward. Stage-gating means setting mandatory checkpoints at each pipeline stage that an opportunity must meet before advancing. These checkpoints create consistency, reduce subjectivity, and improve forecast accuracy.

Also consider how leads are handed off from marketing to sales. Poor lead qualification or unclear handoff processes often result in wasted effort and missed opportunities. Use funnel analysis to identify where deals stall and re-engineer your process accordingly.

Data-Driven Coaching & Sales Metrics

Many sales teams still coach reactively, focusing only on who missed quota. But performance improvement requires proactive, data-informed coaching at the behavior level.

Instead of just reviewing results, analyze leading indicators like:

• Call-to-meeting conversion rate: The percentage of initial outreach calls that successfully result in scheduled meetings.
• Email response rates: The share of sales emails that receive replies, showing how effective messaging is at engaging prospects.
• Pipeline coverage ratio: The ratio of open opportunities in the pipeline compared to quota targets, used to assess whether enough deals are in progress to hit goals.
• Sales cycle length: The average time it takes to move a deal from first contact to closed-won, reflecting efficiency in the sales process.

For example, if a rep has strong closing skills but a consistently thin pipeline, the coaching focus should be on top-of-funnel activities like prospecting or lead follow-up, not on closing techniques.

Use shared dashboards so both managers and reps have visibility into these performance metrics. High-performing teams embed analytics into weekly 1:1s and pipeline reviews to spot trends early and adjust tactics in real-time.

Coaching should also be individualized. A rep struggling with discovery questions needs a different intervention than one losing deals in negotiation. Segmenting coaching efforts by skill gaps leads to faster performance gains.

Training, Enablement & Skill Development

Initial onboarding is not enough to sustain high performance. The best sales teams prioritize ongoing skill development through a mix of microlearning, live role-plays, and field-based learning.

Effective enablement includes:

• Regular refreshers on discovery, objection handling, and negotiation
• Peer-led sessions for shadowing top performing team members
• Updated battle cards based on real market objections
• On-demand resources tied to buyer journey stages

Most importantly, make training part of the workflow, not an isolated event. Embedding short learning modules in your CRM or using coaching tools with video feedback can make skill development continuous rather than disruptive.

Incentives, Compensation & Motivation

Compensation plans that only reward closed revenue can limit performance by ignoring the full scope of high-value selling behaviors. Instead, design incentives to drive strategic behaviors that lead to better outcomes over time.

This includes rewarding:

• Expansion deals or account growth
• Cross-sell and upsell motions
• Referrals and partner-driven sales
• Retention and renewal success

Performance isn’t just about how much a rep closes. It’s also about how they align with business goals.

Incentive mix matters, too. Use a combination of:

• Monetary rewards: commissions, bonuses, SPIFs
• Non-monetary rewards: recognition, career advancement, flexibility

Designing compensation plans that truly motivate reps requires a deep understanding of the business goals and desired behaviors. When properly structured, they can drive sustainable growth and performance, improving the overall customer experience. 

With Everstage, you can build commission plans that align perfectly with your sales strategy whether that’s driving long-term growth, multi-product selling, or account retention. The platform’s advanced gamification features and visibility into earnings help keep sales plans streamlined, sales reps motivated and focused on the right targets. 

Technology, Tools & Sales Operations

Technology can accelerate or hinder sales performance depending on how it’s implemented. The key is to simplify the rep experience, not add friction.

Start by auditing your tech stack. Are reps spending more time updating fields than actually selling? Are tools integrated or siloed?

Modern sales teams prioritize tools that automate routine tasks and surface actionable insights. For example:

• CRM platforms that auto-log activities and sync with calendars
• Call intelligence tools that flag deal risks and coach in real-time
• Pipeline management tools that visualize deal health without manual reporting

Importantly, sales operations must work closely with frontline managers to ensure tools support workflows rather than dictate them. Technology should reduce admin load, improve data quality, and unlock coaching opportunities, not just track rep activity.

Building a Sales Performance Improvement Plan (PIP or Action Plan)

A Sales Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is a structured roadmap to help underperforming sales reps get back on track. The goal is to diagnose the underlying performance gaps, clarify expectations, and equip reps with the tools and support they need to succeed.

When & Why to Use a PIP

A PIP should be introduced only after 3–6 months of structured coaching, enablement, and informal feedback have failed to close the gap. Common triggers include missed quotas over multiple quarters, low pipeline generation, or consistently poor activity metrics.

But before creating a plan, sales managers must investigate root causes like:

• Is the rep struggling with product knowledge, pipeline management, or closing techniques? 
• Is the issue skill-based, motivation-related, or process-driven?

Without understanding these factors, the plan risks becoming punitive instead of developmental.

Tailor each PIP to the individual's specific performance barriers. For example, if a rep has strong outreach volume but low conversion, the focus might be on qualification techniques and demo delivery. A generic plan will only frustrate both parties and yield poor outcomes.

SMART Goal-Setting & KPIs

Every effective PIP starts with specific, measurable goals tied to the rep’s role and current challenges. Vague goals like "sell more" or "improve performance" create ambiguity. Instead, use SMART sales goals to give the rep a clear target and a fair path to success.

For example:

• “Book 5 net-new discovery calls per week for the next 6 weeks.”
• “Increase opportunity-to-close ratio from 15% to 25% within the quarter, supported by deal coaching, improved qualification, and product training”

Tie these goals to relevant KPIs such as:

• Number of qualified leads added to the pipeline
• Email response or call-back rates
• Movement of deals through specific sales pipeline stages
• Win rate improvement by product or segment

Set thresholds that are achievable but challenging, and validate them against team averages to ensure fairness.

Timeline, Documentation & Accountability

A well-structured PIP typically runs between 30 and 90 days, depending on the severity of the performance gap. The timeline should include:

• Weekly or bi-weekly check-ins to evaluate progress
• Milestones for each stage (e.g., by week 2, achieve 70% of outreach goal)
• Mid-plan adjustments if new blockers are identified

All action steps, meetings, and feedback should be clearly documented, ideally in a shared digital workspace accessible to both the rep and manager. This reinforces transparency and creates a record that protects both sides if the rep fails to meet expectations.

At the end of the plan, outcomes should be clearly communicated. Options include:

• Graduating the rep from the plan and re-integrating into standard performance cycles
• Extending the PIP with revised goals if there's clear progress but not complete turnaround
• Exiting the rep if performance remains below expectations despite support

Sales performance improvement depends as much on the fairness and clarity of the process as on the metrics themselves. A well-run PIP builds trust, reinforces accountability, and gives reps a genuine opportunity to succeed rather than just signaling a pending dismissal.

Measurement, Review & Continuous Improvement

Improving sales performance isn’t a one-time initiative. It's a continuous cycle of measurement, analysis, and adaptation. Without consistent review and actionable metrics, even the best-laid plans stagnate. 

Focus on Leading and Lagging Sales Metrics

To drive meaningful sales performance improvement, it's essential to track both leading indicators (which predict future outcomes) and lagging indicators (which reflect past performance). These metrics give you a balanced view of productivity and results:

• Revenue per rep shows overall output but doesn’t explain what’s causing underperformance.
• Win-rate by pipeline stage highlights where deals are dropping off, which is critical for diagnosing pitch or qualification issues.
• Sales cycle length reveals inefficiencies in the process, often tied to lack of urgency or poor qualification.
• Deal velocity (time from first contact to close) helps gauge how fast deals move through the funnel and where friction exists.

The standard formula for Deal Velocity is:

Deal Velocity= (Number of opportunities x average deal value x win rate)/length of sales cycle

Where:

• Number of Opportunities = count of active deals in a given period
• Average Deal Value = typical revenue per deal
• Win Rate = % of opportunities that convert into closed-won deals
• Length of Sales Cycle = average time (days or months) to close a deal

In simple terms, Deal Velocity measures how quickly and effectively your pipeline turns into revenue, helping managers forecast growth and identify bottlenecks.

Regular tracking of these metrics allows sales leaders to identify early signs of trouble whether it’s a rep struggling with late-stage closing or a team-wide drop in outbound effectiveness.

Benchmarking for Context and Clarity

Numbers alone don’t provide direction unless you know what “good” looks like. Benchmarking places performance in context:

• External benchmarking compares your team’s results with industry standards (such as average close rates or sales cycle lengths within your vertical). This helps set realistic targets.
• Internal benchmarking can be even more powerful. Compare new reps to top performers with similar tenure. If one rep books 5 demos a week and another books 12 with the same lead list, the gap signals a coaching opportunity or workflow issue.

Don’t just benchmark outcomes. Consider benchmarking process compliance. For instance:

• Are reps consistently logging opportunities and updating deal stages?
• Are they using the CRM as intended, or are critical notes missing?
• Are prescribed talk tracks or sequences being used as designed?

Non-compliance often signals a deeper problem: either the process isn’t intuitive, or the rep doesn’t believe it works. In both cases, it’s a leadership issue to address through enablement or system redesign.

Review Cadence and Coaching Follow-Ups

Consistent review is the cornerstone of sales performance improvement. Yet many teams fail by relying solely on quarterly performance reviews, which are too infrequent to drive change. Instead, adopt a layered cadence:

• Weekly one-on-ones to review activities, surface blockers, and reinforce habits.
• Biweekly pipeline reviews to diagnose deal health and identify risks.
• Monthly performance reviews to evaluate metrics against goals and adjust strategies as needed.

Use these touchpoints not just to evaluate progress but to reinforce a feedback loop. If a rep is improving on calls but struggling to book meetings, focus your coaching on objection handling during cold outreach. If the team isn’t adopting a new playbook, investigate whether it's too complex or misaligned with the buyer’s journey.

Make Improvement Plans Dynamic

A common pitfall in sales performance management is treating performance plans as static documents. Instead, think of each action plan as a living document that evolves with the rep’s progress.

Revisit and revise goals every 30 to 60 days:

• Are KPIs still relevant to the rep’s current bottlenecks?
• Has progress plateaued or accelerated?
• Do coaching strategies need to change?

Continuous improvement requires agility. Leaders must be willing to iterate on their own systems just as they expect reps to adjust their tactics and eliminate roadblocks. This mindset, combined with disciplined measurement and thoughtful coaching, is what separates good sales teams from high-performing ones.

Conclusion

There’s no silver bullet to improving sales performance. But there is a system. Start by identifying the bottlenecks. Then build a repeatable framework that includes process clarity, strategic coaching, aligned incentives, and the right tools.

Whether you’re coaching one underperforming rep or leading a 50-person team, the principles are the same: Diagnose, Plan, Coach, Measure, Repeat.

The real question is: Where will you start?

• Will you audit your pipeline stages? 
• Rebuild your coaching cadence? Or 
• Finally create that sales performance improvement plan?

Wherever you begin, remember: progress happens through consistency not perfection.

Need help creating a scalable sales performance plan?
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