Wolf&Grayson EditorialSales teams sit at the front line of any business. They hear objections first and feel friction fastest. When performance dips, the response is usually to push harder. That diagnosis misses the point. It treats the symptom rather than the cause. Sales rarely reflects the root problem. More often, it exposes something broken further upstream.
“Sales numbers are a lagging indicator,” says Greg Kish. “They’re telling you something upstream isn’t working.” The breakdown usually traces back to a lack of clarity embedded far earlier in the system, long before the first sales conversation ever happens. As Founder and Managing Partner of Fusion Advisors, Kish has helped organizations navigate defining growth moments, from global stadium developments to early stage companies.
Unclear value propositions, confusing pricing structures, misaligned roles or a story that no longer resonates with the market all surface in the same place: the sales number. “If salespeople are constantly overexplaining, defending price, or having to customize the message just to get traction, something underneath it is off,” Kish says.
That misalignment forces sales to operate reactively instead of strategically. Rather than guiding customers through confident decisions, teams are left fixing upstream issues in real time. Sales reveals where strategy meets reality and where the system begins to strain.
Selling Harder Versus Designing Revenue
The instinct to sell harder is understandable. It feels immediate and controllable, and more activity promises faster results. But Kish draws a clear distinction between effort and intention. Selling harder is reactive. Revenue design is deliberate.
Designing revenue starts far earlier than most leaders expect. It’s shaped by how a product is packaged, how pricing is structured, how the story is told and who the offering is truly built for. “The preparing is the most important part,” Kish says. “That happens long before the first sales conversation.”
Large-scale stadium developments, where Kish has led revenue strategy across some of the industry’s most complex projects, make that distinction tangible. In those environments, revenue is ideally designed into the building itself, the fan experience, the pricing model and the operating process, with a long-term view that spans decades. “If you wait until you’re a year or two out to figure out how revenue is going to work, you’ve already limited your leverage,” Kish says.
The same breakdown appears across other sectors when timing is ignored. Revenue planning often shows up after the product is built, the service is launched and the brand promise is set. At that point, sales becomes a workaround rather than the natural outcome of a coherent system.
“I’ve seen incredible products and services struggle simply because revenue planning was an afterthought,” Kish says. Expectations are high and excitement is real, but sales teams are handed an incomplete system and told to make it work. Once selling begins, leverage shrinks and adjustments become harder and more expensive. “Revenue is easiest to influence at the very beginning,” Kish says.
Alignment Creates Confidence
Revenue systems break down fastest when strategy, structure and storytelling drift out of alignment. In those moments, sales teams are forced into an impossible position, choosing between accuracy and momentum. Without a clear plan, they can’t have both.
“When things aren’t aligned, confidence erodes,” Kish says. Salespeople hesitate or overexplain, and they default to cost efficiency instead of value. Alignment changes that dynamic. When strategy sets a clear direction, structure supports it and storytelling reinforces it, sales teams gain permission to be decisive. “Confident sales teams aren’t louder,” Kish notes. “They’re clear.”
Fix the System First
If leaders want to unlock revenue, Kish believes the first fix has nothing to do with targets. It starts with decision clarity: who owns what, how decisions are made, and where momentum stalls and why.
“Before adjusting numbers, leaders should ask if the system actually supports success,” he says. When ownership is unclear and handoffs are messy, adding more people, more money or lower prices rarely changes the outcome. Fix how decisions flow before trying to fix the forecast.
At the end of the day, revenue velocity is a design challenge to be addressed at the beginning.
For more insights, connect with Greg Kish on LinkedIn.
