The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Built This Way.
Hot Take: Most sales systems aren’t broken, they’re designed to deliver low-margin deals. And they’re working exactly as built.
The Takeaway
Executives often assume the problem is with individual sellers. Quotas, leads, pipeline reviews…it looks like a performance gap. But what Bryan and Dave unpack in Margin Makers Episode 2 is far more alarming:
Your system itself is wired for margin compression.
Sellers are rewarded on revenue, not margin.
Structures are built for product-pushing, not customer outcomes.
Internal bottlenecks (like four-week resource approvals) make agility impossible.
The result? By the time sellers reach the table, 80% of the buying journey is already complete. They’re fighting over scraps at the bottom while competitors who gained early access run away with the margin.
Today’s Video Message:
The Real Lesson: Where Human Sellers Still Win
Fixing this isn’t about tweaking comp plans or adding more tools. It requires a paradigm shift:
Go to Customer, not Go to Market. Orient around buyer outcomes and urgent priorities, not product lines.
Align capabilities, not just accounts. Stop trapping value inside silos. Sellers need integrated playbooks that let them co-create with executives in real time.
Measure margin, not just revenue. If sales is your margin creator, then margin should be the metric that drives design, investment, and leadership focus.
When you redesign your system for adaptability, speed, and altitude, you stop reacting to existing demand and start creating it. Bigger deals, faster cycles, healthier margins, that’s what an aligned revenue function delivers.
Before You Go
Listen: [Margin Makers Episode 2 – The System Isn’t Broken, It’s Built This Way]
Ask: Is your pipeline filled with products to sell, or with urgent threats to solve? Only one protects margin.
Reflect: What’s one internal process today that slows your sellers down instead of helping them win upstream?