Leading Without Panic When Sales Are Down

Steven Werley

When inputs break, leadership gets tested fast.

Not because the fix is complicated, but because pressure makes you want to act before you can see clearly.
I felt that running an account in my sales agency.
We had an SDR manager in place. I was looking at the numbers and saw the show rate had dropped under 40%.
I felt it immediately. My heart rate went up. I got tense. My brain went straight to the worst-case scenario: we’re going to lose this client.
And in that moment, my first instinct wasn’t calm leadership.
It was control.
I wanted to scold the team, tighten the screws, and push harder.
But before I reacted, I stopped and asked a simpler question:
What’s actually true here?

Looking at the inputs instead of dumping pressure

Instead of firing off a message or calling a meeting, I dove into the numbers.
What I found changed the whole story.
Our SDRs had just over a 4% answer rate. Not conversation rate. Answer rate.
To be clear, the answer rate wasn’t the main problem. The problem was conversion to a booked call. It worked out to about one set per 200 dials (roughly a 0.5% set rate).
When you see that, the heaviness makes more sense.
That’s not a motivation problem.
That’s a math problem.
That’s an inputs problem.
The uncomfortable part for me was this: my fear wasn’t really about the team’s effort. It was about me trying to protect the account.
I was afraid of losing a client, and my reflex was to push that fear downhill.
Once I saw the reality, the better move was obvious.
We reworked the script for what SDRs said to people who booked on their own.
The show rate went over 80%.
The bigger point for me wasn’t the script.
It was the moment right before all of that, where I wanted to dump pressure instead of looking at the data.
That’s the tension:
I wanted to scold the team and tell them to do a better job and set more deals… but the better move was to listen to the data and make the appropriate moves calmly.

Key takeaways

  • Fear makes leaders reach for control.
  • Facts beat stories, especially when inputs are broken.
  • Diagnose causes before you pressure people.

 

A Stoic lens on anger at the numbers

The Stoic lens that helped me name what was going on comes from Marcus Aurelius.
The older translation of the line I keep coming back to reads:
“It will but little avail thee, to turn thine anger and indignation upon the things themselves that have fallen across unto thee.”
Meditations 7.25 (George Long, public domain)
The modern rendering I like, that keeps the meaning but reads clean out loud, is:
“It won’t help to aim your anger at what happened. The event can’t feel it. Only you can.”
That hit me, because in that moment my anger wasn’t actually solving anything.
It was just a way to discharge fear.
What I take from that is simple: anger at the situation doesn’t move the situation. It just changes you.
My translation for sales leaders is this:
Getting angry at the numbers doesn’t help. The only useful move is to turn back to what I can actually do right now: inspect causes, decide clearly, and hold standards.
Not “outcomes don’t matter.” They do.
But panic and anger are not leadership tools. They’re emotional reflexes.
What’s in my control in that moment?
My pace. My tone. My clarity. My decision quality.
Whether I look at facts or stories.
Whether I pressure people or diagnose the system.
What’s not in my control?
What already happened.
A prospect’s mood.
Whether a client freaks out.
How someone interprets a number before I even speak.
I’m not trying to be emotionally flat. I’m trying to be accurate.

People don’t see reality cleanly

A second line from Marcus helped me with the part where I wanted to blame people.
In the Hays translation of Meditations he writes:
“Honey tastes bitter to a man with jaundice. People with rabies are terrified of water. And a child’s idea of beauty is a ball. Why does that upset you?”
Meditations 6.57 (Gregory Hays)
My translation is:
People don’t experience reality cleanly. Their habits and distortions change what they see and how they act. As a leader, my job isn’t to rage at the distortion. It’s to understand it and coach the cause.
So yes, reps miss things. Teams miss things. People behave in ways that make no sense.
Most of the time, there’s a cause under it:
  • a blind spot
  • a habit
  • a misunderstanding
  • a broken input
  • a system that rewards the wrong behavior
Or, like in my scene, a math problem that makes success feel impossible.
And this passage forces me to face something else:
Leaders have distortions too.
My distortion under pressure is control.
When I’m afraid, I want to tighten things and push.
Not because it’s wise.
Because it makes me feel like I’m doing something.
This passage reminds me not to be shocked that humans are human, including me.
Coach the cause. Hold the line. Don’t lose your head.

The leader move: facts before stories

Here’s the leader move for this episode:
When performance feels off, the leader’s job is to separate facts from stories before changing anything.
That’s it.
In real life, that usually looks like three simple moves:
You name what’s true without adding heat to it.
You inspect causes before you talk about solutions.
You make one clean decision you can control instead of ten reactive changes that give everyone whiplash.
Leadership here is less about intensity and more about restraint:
  • restraint from blaming
  • restraint from thrashing
  • restraint from sending pressure downhill just because you’re holding it
I’ve definitely done the opposite.
I’ve pushed harder when I should’ve inspected first.
It didn’t make performance better. It just made the team tighter and more anxious.
The moment I started leading from facts, everything got calmer and the fix became obvious.

A small practice before you react

Here’s the practice I’m running, and it’s small on purpose.
Before you react, before you send the message, before you “fix” the team, run this:
3-step check before you react
  • Story: The story I’m telling myself is: ___
  • Facts: The facts I can prove are: ___
  • Control: The one thing I control is: ___
That’s it.
It takes a minute. But it forces you back into reality.

The standard

The standard I’m holding out of this episode is:
“We deal in facts before stories, even when everyone wants answers fast.”
That’s the line I want my team to feel when the numbers look ugly.

What I’d tell a sales leader this week

If you’re staring at a noisy dashboard, don’t start by changing the plan or pushing harder.
Start by separating facts from stories. Look at the inputs first.
Then run the 3-step check and choose one calm, controllable move.

Closing thought

When the system is messy, reality gets fuzzy.
Leaders start guessing. People feel the pressure. Teams thrash.
I’ve lived that.
That’s why I care about clean data, clean follow-up, and coaching that’s grounded in what actually happened, not what someone thinks happened.
This episode is my way of practicing that out loud. If you’re in a week where the inputs are broken, I hope it gives you one calmer way to lead.
Closable.ai is what I’m building. The simple version is: I AI-enable sales teams so leadership gets clearer, not louder.
Stoicism is how I lead myself. AI-enabling the team is how I reduce noise so we can lead from facts.
If you’re a decision maker and you want a steadier revenue operation, you can learn more at closable.ai. If not, no worries.
Share This