From Missing Quota for 2 Years to Building a Product: A SaaS Sales Failure Story

#aisales #productdevelopment #revenuevelocity #startup

Every morning at 9am, I opened Salesforce. Quota attainment: 67.3%. Three months in a row below target. My manager said "you need more activity," so I spent 30+ hours every week updating CRM. My call volume went up. My revenue didn't. Every night, sipping coffee, I wondered: "Maybe I'm just not cut out for sales."

Confession: The Numbers Don't Lie

When I joined as a SaaS sales rep, I was confident. I had sales experience. I believed "if you work hard, you'll succeed." But after 2 years, here's what the data showed.

My 2-Year Track Record:

Average Quota Attainment: 67.3% (target: 100%)
Longest Consecutive Misses: 5 months
Weekly CRM Hours: 30+ hours
Monthly Meetings: 45 (ranked #3 on team)
Win Rate: 11.2% (team average: 15.8%)

The numbers told a story: I was "trying hard, but not getting results." My manager said: "Do more activity. Use the CRM. Log everything." I complied. Every morning, I spent 90 minutes on CRM entry. After every call, 30 minutes logging details. Every weekend, 3 hours building pipeline reports. But revenue didn't move.

Back then, I believed: "If I work harder, results will come." "If I log data, my manager will help." "If I follow the process, the numbers will follow." Looking back, I was completely wrong about what mattered.

Here's the Thing: Who Are Sales Tools Built For?

In a team meeting, management announced a new AI sales tool. "This will revolutionize our productivity," they said. It was the third tool in 12 months. The previous two? No one used them after 3 months. Sarah, our top rep sitting next to me, muttered: "Another tool we won't touch."

Her quota attainment was consistently above 120%. But her CRM time? Under 5 hours per week. One-sixth of mine. After the meeting, I asked her: "How do you hit quota without using the CRM?"

Sarah laughed. "CRM records outcomes. It doesn't create them. Do you think logging data IS the job?"

For 2 years, I had made "activity" the goal. Logging in CRM. Increasing call volume. Following the process. I thought that WAS "the work." But the real work was solving customer problems. Sarah understood this. That's why she spent time with customers, not with Salesforce.

Until... The Data Showed Me the Truth

That night, I reviewed my entire deal history. 550 meetings over 2 years. 62 closed-won. The wins had one thing in common: the customer could already articulate their problem. Those were the only deals I closed.

In other words, my 30 hours per week in CRM were fundamentally wasted. I should have spent that time understanding customer problems and proposing solutions. But it wasn't just my fault. The system itself was broken.

Sales tools are designed around "logging activity." But sales is fundamentally about "solving customer problems." These are two different things. That's when I started asking: "Why do sales tools go unused?"

So I Switched: From Sales to Product Development

With that question burning in my mind, I quit. My next job wasn't in sales—it was in product development. I didn't become a product manager overnight. For the first 3 months, I worked in customer support, listening to users all day.

What I learned: users don't avoid sales tools because they're "too lazy." They told me: "I don't see how this changes anything." "Logging data doesn't feel like it improves my revenue." "It's just a management tool for my boss, right?" They didn't see value in the tools.

This led to a hypothesis: Sales tools are designed to record "what was done," not to prescribe "what to do next." That's why they're ignored. What if we flipped it? What if a tool told you "what to do next"? Would salespeople use that? This hypothesis became the foundation for a new concept: Revenue Velocity.

Revenue Velocity: Process Is Everything

Revenue Velocity is a simple idea: revenue is the outcome, process is everything. Traditional sales tools focus on recording "outcomes (revenue)." But you can't change the past. You can only change the process.

We defined Revenue Velocity as: Revenue Velocity = (Deal Count × Avg Deal Size × Win Rate) ÷ Avg Sales Cycle. The beauty of this formula? Every variable is controllable through process. Deal count depends on which leads you prioritize (lead scoring). Avg deal size depends on when you propose upsells (playbooks). Win rate depends on how well you understand customer problems (context intelligence). Avg sales cycle depends on where your bottlenecks are (process analysis).

If AI could automatically analyze these and tell you "what to do next," sales would change. Instead of 30 hours/week in CRM, you'd spend 30 hours/week talking to customers.

Sales Is Probability, Not Magic

Through product development, I started viewing sales as probability. Sales isn't pure luck or talent. But it's also not "work hard and you'll always win." Sales is a game of improving probabilities.

Think of basketball. A player with 70% free-throw percentage makes 7 out of 10. But not necessarily the first 7 in a row—they might miss the first 3. What matters is long-term success rate. Sales is the same: one deal has high randomness, but over 100 deals you see patterns, and over 1,000 deals the probabilities stabilize.

So the job of a sales tool isn't to "guarantee this one deal closes." It's to "improve win rate from 70% to 75% across 100 deals." That's the essence of Revenue Velocity.

What About You?

If you're struggling with missed quotas like I was, take a moment to reflect. Are you making "activity" the goal? Does your tool tell you "what to do next"? How much time do you spend improving your process?

I don't regret those 2 years. That failure made me who I am. But if I could tell my past self one thing, it would be: "Revenue is the outcome. You can only change the process. And process can be improved through probability."

Next Steps

If one thing in this article resonated with you, try this one thing this week: Review your last 3 months of deals and ask: "What's the difference between wins and losses?" That answer is your first step toward process improvement.

And if you're curious about Revenue Velocity, try Optifai. We're building a tool that tells you "what to do next." Let's build the future of sales together—coffee in hand.

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