Every business function—be it sales, service, marketing, or operations—faces a common truth: internal challenges are everywhere, and many are beyond the team’s direct control. These aren’t just theoretical obstacles—they’re real, recurring roadblocks that professionals encounter every day in corporate life.
The Ground Reality in Sales & Service
In sales, the story is familiar. A salesperson closes in on a high-potential deal, only to hit a wall because pricing approval is stuck in a multi-layered process. Or perhaps, they’ve got a client ready to sign, but the legal or finance teams are delayed, creating friction and risking the entire opportunity.
In service, it’s no different. A customer issue may require coordination between product, tech support, and operations, but siloed communication and unclear ownership lead to delayed resolutions and an unhappy customer. The service team gets the brunt of the blame, even though the root cause lies elsewhere.
These are not rare cases. They’re everyday challenges:
- Rigid discounting policies that don’t reflect market realities.
- Delayed product roadmap visibility leaves sales teams unable to answer basic customer queries.
- Unrealistic KPIs or SLAs that don’t account for on-ground complexities.
- Overlapping roles and poor process alignment across departments.
- Lack of real-time data access leads to reactive instead of proactive decision-making.
The Mismatch: Responsibility Without Authority
Despite these constraints, sales and service professionals are still expected to deliver results, quarter after quarter. They carry massive responsibility but often lack the authority to act decisively. And when outcomes aren’t favourable, the first question that echoes across boardrooms and corridors is: “What’s the sales team doing about it?”
The irony is stark: everyone wants results, but not everyone enables the ones accountable to achieve them.
The Leadership Factor
This is where leadership becomes critical.
When leaders at the top come from customer-facing roles—sales, marketing, service—they don’t just operate from strategy decks. They bring real empathy and a deep understanding of field dynamics. They know that a delayed pricing decision can cost a million-dollar deal. Unresolved backend issues can ruin a long-standing client relationship. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story—context does.
Grounded leaders do three things differently:
- They listen. Not just to reports, but to people on the ground.
- They enable. By streamlining approval processes, removing unnecessary red tape, and giving teams the autonomy they need.
- They protect. They stand by their teams when things go wrong and ensure the learnings turn into improvements, not blame games.
Why This Matters
Because no system is perfect. No process is immune to friction. And no function can perform in isolation.
But when leadership is rooted in reality and backed by a genuine will to support, not just supervise, teams don’t just survive challenges, they rise above them.
So, to every hard-working sales and service professional out there—juggling targets, calming customers, and navigating the chaos: you’re not alone. And if you’ve got the right leaders behind you, the road ahead, no matter how tough, is always worth it.
Here’s to the fighters. The fixers. The go-getters.
And here’s to the leaders who back them.