The Focus Tax
The highest-performing sales orgs aren't the ones doing more. They're the ones who cut faster.
Every sales org pays a focus tax. Most just don’t know it.
The tax shows up as pipeline that looks real but converts at half the rate. As reps who are busy but not productive. As leadership teams that are aligned on paper but pulling in six directions operationally.
The cause is almost always the same: too many workstreams running at once. Good ones. Ones with real pipeline, real demand, sometimes even executive sponsorship. The problem is not that the work is bad. The problem is that it is dilutive.
The hardest call in running a commercial org is not finding the next opportunity. It is telling smart, motivated people to stop working on something they believe in because the math does not support it at scale.
I have made that call more times than I can count. Kill a workstream with active pipeline. Shut down an initiative a leader built from scratch. Consolidate three motions into one.
Every time it feels wrong in the moment. Every time the numbers prove it right within a quarter.
Focus is not a slide in your QBR. It is the willingness to disappoint people who are doing good work on the wrong thing. That is the tax. And the best operators pay it early.