Creating A Proactive Sales Culture

Transforming A Reactive Sales Culture into A Purposeful, High-Performing Sales Engine

For many owner-managed SMEs, sales performance is the engine that powers growth, stability and long-term value. Yet, across Secantor’s work with UK businesses, a pattern emerges: many SMEs do not have a truly proactive, structured or accountable sales function.

This Case Study explores how one specialist lighting hire company transformed its reactive sales habits into a deliberate, purposeful commercial system — and how Secantor’s broader insights help illustrate why this challenge is so familiar to many growing businesses.

Understanding The Root Causes: Why Reactive Selling Takes Hold

The directors’ professional background played a major role. Both had worked in large corporate organisations known for rigid sales targets, aggressive KPIs and high-pressure performance management. When they joined this SME, they wanted the opposite environment — a softer, more trusting culture where individuals would take personal ownership without the need for targets.

But as Secantor frequently sees, removing targets altogether rarely produces motivated, self-driven teams. In fact, our research indicates that when SMEs avoid target-setting, sales activity typically becomes inconsistent and motivation declines. People do not feel liberated — they feel directionless.

This business demonstrated exactly that:

• Sales executives became comfortable rather than driven
• Relationships were maintained only superficially
• No-one was actively shaping demand
• The business was growing, but not at the rate it should have been
• Opportunities were being missed

The directors’ intentions were positive, but without structure, accountability and a shared sense of purpose, the team simply didn’t have the framework required to perform at a high level.

1. Introduce Clear, Realistic Sales Targets

Rather than imposing top-down quotas, we facilitated a collaborative process where sales executives helped shape their own targets. This created:

• ownership
• engagement
• clarity
• accountability

Secantor clients that have introduced structured, co-created sales targets regularly see meaningful and measurable improvements in both sales performance and team engagement. This business quickly began to experience the same shift in energy and focus.

3. Introduce Proactive Customer Relationship Management

Instead of waiting for existing clients to ask for quotes, we introduced:

• planned contact cycles
• clear visit and call rhythms
• systematic intelligence gathering
• documented needs and opportunities
• structured account development plans

This approach is highly effective because Secantor’s experience of working with clients shows that consistent engagement with customers strengthens sales performance, yet it is often the least structured part of customer management.

5. Strengthen Sales Leadership

Instead of being the top salespeople, the directors needed to become leaders of the sales function. Secantor coached them to introduce the following with their sales team:

• regular 1:1 reviews
• pipeline management
• activity coaching
• constructive challenge of under-performance
• celebration of individual and team success
• upskilling through sales training and development programs

Our broader experiences show that sales uplift often occurs only after owner-managers transition from “doing the selling” to “leading the sales team.” Not only does this increase sales, but it also releases directors to operate more strategically, de-risks the business by removing over-dependence on few individuals and creates a succession plan for the future.

This client saw exactly that shift.

The Outcome: A High-Performing, Proactive Sales Engine

Within 12 months, the transformation was evident:

• Sales were above target, not just meeting expectations
• The sales team felt far more motivated and aligned
• Directors were leading, not firefighting
• Customer relationships were deeper and more consistent
• New opportunities were being proactively developed
• The commercial risk of over-reliance on two directors significantly reduced

These outcomes reflect a pattern Secantor sees frequently:
When SMEs adopt purposeful sales structures, performance almost always improves — often dramatically.