Is Sales a Numbers Game or Skills Game?

Geoff and Sharran Srivatsaa challenge the 'sales is a numbers game' mantra and make the case that skills and conversion efficiency matter more than raw activity volume. A quick but pointed episode for LOs who are grinding on volume without examining their close rate. Best listened to before a sales skills review or coaching session.

Takeaways you can run this week

• Pull your last 30 days of leads and calculate your actual lead-to-application conversion rate. If it's below your target, adding more leads will only multiply your losses — fix skill first.
• Identify the one stage in your sales process where deals most often stall or die (initial call, follow-up, pre-qual to application) and script a specific response or question to address it this week.
• Before spending more on lead generation, calculate your current cost-per-conversation. If it's rising month over month, that is your signal to invest in conversion training before buying more leads.
• Role-play your first 90 seconds of a borrower call with a colleague or coach once per week. Sharran's analogy: an NHL player can't survive on volume alone — efficiency is what keeps you on the team.
• List the two levers Sharran names explicitly — (1) increase qualified conversations, (2) increase conversion percentage — and assign a metric goal to each for Q2 so you know which lever you are actually pulling.

Worth quoting

“The fact that we have been taught that sales is a numbers game is a lie.”

“As consumers have more information, you're going to get less at bats — a higher cost for lead means more cost for conversations.”

Best for

LOs who are buying more leads or making more calls but not seeing proportional income growth and need a framework for diagnosing whether activity or skill is the real bottleneck.