Why salespeople fail and why sales leadership is often the real cause

Sales leadership is often presented as coaching, motivation and experience. In reality most performance problems come from the sales culture that leaders create. When you look Mike Weinbergs sixteen not so sweet reasons why salespeople fail, you see that these issues rarely appear because of individual weaknesses. They appear because the system around the team does not support success.

Teams want to perform. But when expectations are unclear, when coaching is inconsistent and when accountability is weak, even strong salespeople struggle. This is where many sales management mistakes begin and where performance slowly declines without anyone noticing.

The hidden link between sales culture and underperformance

Many leaders talk about building high performance sales teams, yet their daily routines show the opposite. If prospecting does not happen, if people chase the wrong targets or if the value story is unclear, these are signals that the sales culture is not working.

These patterns often start long before a decline in revenue. They begin with small habits. A delayed follow up. A weak pipeline discussion. A leader who avoids a direct conversation. Over time these habits turn into a culture. The culture shapes how people behave, how they think and how they sell. This is one of the main reasons why salespeople fail more often than leaders want to admit.

Sales accountability as the foundation of strong performance

Sales accountability is not pressure and not punishment. It is the structure that allows people to win. When leaders create clarity about activity, expectations and quality standards, performance becomes predictable. When they avoid these responsibilities, teams drift into confusion and hope replaces discipline.

Sales performance management works only when leaders review outcomes regularly, coach with intention and remove obstacles that slow the team down. Without this structure even experienced teams fall back into old habits and the patterns described in Weinberg’s list return again and again.

The goal of this series

In this series I will explore the sixteen failure patterns through the lens of leadership. Each post will show where the system breaks, how these issues develop and what leaders, what you, can do to create a stronger environment for their teams. The focus will be on practical moves that improve pipeline quality, daily rhythm, accountability and overall sales culture.

If you lead a sales team, this series will help you understand the hidden causes of underperformance and give you ideas to build an environment where people know what good sales work looks like and feel proud to deliver it.

So the first question is simple. If these patterns exist in your team today, what part of the system created them?