As a CRO, you’re expected to drive predictable revenue and align your customer-facing teams. But if your sales methodology isn’t delivering, you’ll quickly find yourself dealing with stalled deals, frustrated teams, and unhappy customers. How do you know when your approach is failing? Here are five key signs to watch for.
1. Inconsistent Customer Data
Salesforce should be the single source of truth for customer interactions. But if sales, marketing, and customer success teams are logging disjointed or incomplete data, collaboration suffers. Inconsistent customer records lead to misaligned messaging, missed opportunities, and a fragmented customer experience.
The Fix: Implement a structured methodology like SPICED to standardize how customer data is captured and used across all teams.
2. Inefficient Opportunity Management
Are deals stalling without a clear reason? Is your team struggling to identify, prioritize, and advance opportunities? Without a structured framework, reps waste time on low-value prospects while high-potential deals slip through the cracks.
The Fix: Apply SPICED to define clear qualification and progression criteria, ensuring reps focus on opportunities that are most likely to close.
3. Poor Handoffs Between Teams
When leads transition from marketing to sales or from sales to customer success, critical information often gets lost. If customers have to repeat their pain points at every stage, it damages trust and slows down the buying process.
The Fix: Use SPICED to document the Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, and Decision for each customer, ensuring seamless transitions between teams.
4. Unclear Metrics for Success
If you can’t measure the impact of your sales efforts, you can’t improve them. Many organizations struggle with vague or misaligned success metrics, making it difficult to assess what’s working and what’s not.
The Fix: Establish clear, SPICED-driven KPIs to track deal progression, customer impact, and overall sales effectiveness.
5. Lack of Alignment Across Teams
When different teams operate with their own definitions of success, customer engagement suffers. A disjointed approach makes it harder to build trust and close deals efficiently.
The Fix: Adopt SPICED to ensure sales, marketing, and customer success teams work from the same playbook, delivering a unified and professional experience.
Conclusion
If your sales methodology is failing, your revenue and customer relationships are at risk. The good news? By adopting SPICED, you can bring structure, clarity, and consistency to your sales process. Fixing these key issues will lead to better collaboration, more efficient deal management, and stronger customer relationships.
Ready to turn things around? Learn how SaaSTrack can get you up and running with SPICED in just days.
