How do I know whether the salesperson or the market is the problem?

This is the question underneath most difficult conversations about sales performance, and it is asked far less often than it should be, because 'the salesperson isn't good enough' is a simpler story than 'our territory has less potential than we assumed' or 'our price has drifted out of line with the market'. Simpler is not the same as accurate.

The honest answer is almost never purely one or the other. It is a mix, in proportions that differ from business to business. This article sets out how to separate the two properly, deal by deal and indicator by indicator, before you spend money on a new hire, a new campaign, or outside help that addresses the wrong half of the problem.

Why this question gets answered wrong so often

Blaming the salesperson feels like a solvable problem — replace them, and it goes away. Blaming the market feels uncomfortable, because it implies something about the business's own offer, pricing or positioning. That asymmetry is exactly why the diagnosis is so often wrong: one answer is more emotionally convenient than the other, regardless of which one the evidence actually supports.

Start with activity, not results

Before looking at what closed, look at what was attempted. How many new conversations did this salesperson start last month, compared with a reasonable expectation for the role? Low activity, with no credible explanation for it, points toward the individual — you cannot win business you never attempted. Strong activity with weak conversion points elsewhere: at the offer, the targeting, or the process.

Are meetings actually happening?

A salesperson generating plenty of outreach but very few meetings may have a messaging or targeting problem rather than a closing problem — worth checking before assuming they simply aren't trying. If meetings are happening at a reasonable rate but deals then stall, the issue has moved further down the funnel, toward qualification, proposal quality, or the offer itself.

What does the pipeline actually look like, deal by deal?

Pull up five live opportunities and ask about each one specifically: who the decision-maker is, what problem it solves, why it has or hasn't moved. A pipeline full of vague, poorly qualified deals suggests the salesperson is not asking the right questions early enough. A pipeline of well-qualified, clearly understood deals that still aren't converting suggests something happening at proposal or negotiation stage that is outside their control — commonly price, competitor positioning, or a mismatch between the offer and what the market now expects.

Where exactly is the funnel leaking?

Break conversion down stage by stage: enquiry to meeting, meeting to qualified opportunity, opportunity to proposal, proposal to close. A consistent, sharp drop-off at one specific stage across multiple deals is a strong clue. A drop-off right at proposal or negotiation, in particular, points more often toward pricing, competitor activity or the strength of the value case than toward the salesperson's general effort or attitude.

How do other salespeople perform in similar conditions?

This is the single most useful comparison available to you. If several people selling the same proposition into similar territories are all struggling with the same pattern — the same objections, the same competitor wins, the same stalling point — the common factor is the market, the offer, or the process, not any one individual. If one person is clearly behind colleagues working under genuinely comparable conditions, that starts to look like an individual performance issue.

What is genuinely happening in the market?

Check whether the sector is growing, flat or shrinking, whether new competitors have entered, and whether buyer behaviour has shifted — longer decision cycles, more people involved in sign-off, more price sensitivity. None of that shows up cleanly in a CRM report, but it changes what a fair sales result looks like right now, independent of who is doing the selling.

Is the territory itself viable?

A territory can be structurally thin — too few addressable prospects, too much of it already locked into long contracts with competitors, or geographically unrealistic to cover properly. If nobody has ever assessed the actual potential of the territory, you are judging the salesperson against an assumption rather than a number.

Is the lead quality good enough to work with?

If most inbound leads are unqualified — wrong company size, no budget, no real intent — a salesperson can look unproductive while actually just being handed the wrong raw material. Check what proportion of leads passed to sales genuinely match your ideal customer profile before concluding conversion is a skill problem.

Is sales management actually giving this person a fair chance?

A salesperson with no regular pipeline review, no coaching on live deals and no clear expectations set is operating without a genuine management system around them. Poor results in that environment tell you as much about the management as about the individual.

What to do depending on where the evidence points

If the evidence points clearly at the individual — low activity with no external constraint, weaker results than comparable colleagues, and a fair amount of coaching already given — that becomes a performance management conversation, covered in the related article on when to replace a salesperson.

If it points at the market or offer — weak conversion across the whole team, consistent price resistance, a shrinking or more competitive sector — that is a commercial strategy question, and it is worth reviewing pricing, proposition and positioning before any recruitment decision at all. Replacing the salesperson in that situation simply repeats the same result with someone new and more expensive.

If it points at the system — poor lead quality, no sales management, an unrealistic territory — the fix is operational, not personnel: better lead qualification upstream, a proper pipeline review cadence, or a territory redesign. None of that requires a new hire either.

When the honest answer is that no external help is needed yet

If this is the first time anyone has looked properly at activity, funnel conversion and comparative performance, do that work internally before spending money on anything — a recruiter, a consultant, or new marketing spend. Often the diagnostic exercise itself, done properly with the numbers above, tells you exactly what to fix and who should fix it, at no cost beyond the time it takes.

Where the pattern is genuinely unclear, spans several possible causes, or the business has never done this kind of diagnostic work before, that is exactly the situation a Commercial Growth Sprint is built for — a fixed-fee, structured look at where growth is actually being lost before any decision is made about people, pricing or process.

If you are not yet sure which of these problems you actually have, the Sales Help for Founders & Business Owners hub sets out the related questions worth working through alongside this one.