And while you’re stuck trying to perfect your CRM cleanliness and navigating call recording red tape, your competitors are moving fast. They’re likely leveraging AI-driven tools that have already 10x'd their sales performance. If you don’t act now, you’ll risk falling behind. Why did your competitor win that last deal? They probably had the insights and real-time execution support to close it faster than you.
Many Sales Leaders have stated their intention to be more data-driven in 2025. We all know that companies that are data-driven are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, 6 times more likely to retain customers and 19 times more likely to be profitable (McKinsey).
Even with CRMs and revenue intelligence tools that can provide visibility into pipeline health sales teams are struggling - because they fail to offer actionable next steps.
When sales teams don’t have a clear, real-time plan to act on these insights, they face execution paralysis. This delay leads to missed opportunities, as sales reps struggle to move deals forward without knowing exactly what actions to take.
Sales tech spending is changing and the trends point towards a move from sales enablement towards revenue intelligence. Given the focus on data in 2025, this is hardly surprising - although it is slightly misguided.
Sales enablement tools are essential for ensuring sales reps are equipped with the right content, coaching and training, while revenue intelligence tools routinely pull data for sales teams from the pipeline.
These tools are helpful but when they operate in isolation they risk overwhelming sales teams without providing the clarity needed to drive execution. In short, it’s not a case of one over the other.
For example, Fospha was using revenue intelligence and only saw a 35% increase in sales after adopting a sales performance solution. Simply because their CRO, Tom Sheepshanks, could see on any given day what needed attention, why and what to do about it. While his reps gained clarity on what to do with all the data they had at their fingertips.
They didn’t need more dashboards, they needed to turn their sales from scattered effort to consistent execution.
Buyer control has changed the dynamic
The balance of power in the sales process has shifted dramatically. Today’s buyers have more control than ever, with 70% of their purchasing journey completed before they even engage with a salesperson. Armed with research, reviews, and comparison tools, they are often already familiar with solutions and even have a preferred choice before the first conversation.
This shift means that sales teams can no longer rely solely on pushing products. Instead, they must position themselves as trusted advisors, guiding buyers through their decision-making process.
To succeed in this new environment, sales teams need to anticipate buyer concerns, provide valuable insights, and align their approach with the buyer’s unique needs. The traditional sales tactics simply no longer cut it when the buyer is in control.
This makes it even more crucial for sales teams to act quickly and strategically. Delaying improvements to sales performance tools and processes only deepens the gap between what buyers expect and what sales teams are equipped to deliver.
The cost of waiting to address this shift is not just missed quotas, but the risk of falling behind as buyer expectations continue to evolve.
Predictable forecasts are the antidote to missed opportunity costs
For many businesses, the invisible cost of neglecting sales performance isn’t just about missed opportunities, it’s about the compounding effect of inefficiencies across the entire sales cycle. When sales teams are left to navigate without clear systems or actionable insights, the result is often a lack of alignment, stalled deals, and a growing backlog of unaddressed issues.
This delay in addressing sales performance gaps means that missed opportunities pile up, making it harder to identify and correct the issues in time. As the problem snowballs, it creates a less predictable pipeline, with teams scrambling to hit targets and adjust strategies, often too late to recover. The real cost is not only in lost revenue potential but also in the erosion of confidence in the sales process itself.
Implementing structured sales performance tools that provide real-time insights, clear guidance, and the ability to align teams will make predictable forecasts out of your data and give you the clarity needed to act quickly on emerging issues, ensuring that deals are moved forward without delay.
By streamlining processes, increasing visibility and enhancing decision-making, businesses can turn missed opportunities into predictable, repeatable success, preventing inefficiencies from derailing their pipeline and revenue growth.
The time to act is now
The overall cost lies in missing the chance to create a repeatable, scalable sales process that can weather market pressures and keep teams aligned to support growth.
And at the core of this, organizations must bridge the gap between revenue intelligence and sales performance. The time to act is now because the cost of delaying these improvements is much higher than the cost of taking action today.
With Hive Perform, you don’t have to wait months to see results. From day one, sales teams gain instant visibility into buyer signals and performance gaps, enabling you to act quickly. Your team can start testing, learning and refining your approach immediately, without the long wait for full-scale deployment.