“Nothing on this planet sells itself.” That uncomfortable truth is why sales remains the one skill you cannot build a successful company without—no matter how good your product is.
The Myth That Hurts Businesses
Many entrepreneurs believe that if they build something great, customers will simply appear. As David Maples addresses on The Buck Stops Here podcast, this belief has destroyed more businesses than bad products ever have.
Selling is not sleazy. Selling is not manipulation. Selling is connecting people with solutions to their problems. And without it, your solution never reaches the people who need it.
KPIs: Your Sales Dashboard
Key Performance Indicators work like a car dashboard—they tell you how fast you are going, how much fuel remains, and whether something needs attention.
Without KPIs, you are driving blind. With them, you can measure, adjust, and improve systematically.
Essential sales KPIs include:
- Number of outreach attempts (calls, emails, meetings)
- Conversion rates at each stage of your pipeline
- Average deal size
- Time to close
- Customer acquisition cost
Reverse Engineering Your Goals
Here is a practical approach Maples shares:
Say you want to increase sales by 30%—from $700,000 to $1 million. Work backward:
- How many new customers does that require?
- What is your close rate from proposals?
- How many meetings generate a proposal?
- How many calls generate a meeting?
Suddenly, an abstract revenue goal becomes concrete daily actions: X calls per day, Y meetings per week.
The CRM Truth Nobody Tells You
Customer Relationship Management systems are fundamental to sales success. But here is the uncomfortable reality:
The best CRM is the one you actually use.
— David Maples
Industry data shows a 60% abandonment rate at 90 days across leading CRM platforms. People buy systems they never implement.
Maples shares his own costly lesson: wasting 250 hours implementing a system that ultimately did not fit his needs. The sunk cost fallacy—continuing with something because you have already invested in it—compounds the damage.
Choosing the Right CRM
Before committing to any system:
- Be honest about your actual needs—not the features that sound impressive
- Consider your team’s technical comfort—the most powerful system is useless if nobody uses it
- Start simple—you can always upgrade; recovering from a bad implementation is harder
- Test before committing—most platforms offer trials
Three Actions to Take Today
- Establish clear sales goals and reverse-engineer the KPIs needed to achieve them
- Adopt a CRM you will actually use—simplicity beats features you ignore
- Be brutally honest about system limitations before committing time and money
Sales is not a dirty word. It is the engine that makes everything else in your business possible. Master it or hire someone who has—but do not pretend you can avoid it.
This article is based on Episode 3 of The Buck Stops Here podcast: “Sale Isn’t A 4-Letter Word.”