There are dozens of reasons why salespeople fail. In one company that I owned, I even went so far as to develop an "excuse board" when I inherited a team of salespeople who were notorious for their laziness and keen ability to waste time. I thought it would be a great way to sift through their excuses quickly and build some accountability within a culture where it was desperately lacking -- in a fun and light way, of course.

This sales team spent more time coming up with creative reasons as to why they weren't selling or why they couldn't go out on an appointment than they did in taking the actions that would generate immediate income for them.

Here's how the excuse board worked: Every time a salesperson came up with a new excuse, I wrote it on the board. Once the excuse was written on the board and visible for everyone to see, no one could use that particular excuse again. Now that we were tracking their excuses, another useful field in our CRM or sales reports, salespeople were prevented from using an excuse more than once. It also prevented them from coming up with excuses that someone else used.