For business owners
Sales are stuck. Find the cause before you spend more.
More ads, another salesperson, a new offer. Each one costs money and assumes you already know why sales stopped. These five steps help you find out first.
Find where sales stop
Sales stop at one of three points. Each needs a different fix, so name yours before you spend.
Stop point 1
People never hear of you
Few enquiries come in at all.
What helps
More reach
Stop point 2
They hear of you, but the offer is unclear
Enquiries come in. The same questions keep repeating.
What helps
A clearer offer
Stop point 3
They understand it and still say no
Conversations reach the price and stall.
What helps
Fixing their reason for saying no
Write the friction, with evidence
“We need more sales” names a goal. A strategy starts from the friction behind it, the thing that keeps happening and blocks the sale.
Collect five recent cases with dates. Five dated cases tell you more than a month of opinions.
Choose one direction and name what you give up
List two or three ways to address the friction. Then choose one, and write the strongest case for the option you rejected.
| Option | What it costs | What it rules out | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Send a clear, itemised quotation | Two days to rewrite the quotation | Vague bundled prices | Do |
| Hire a second salesperson | A monthly salary before the cause is known | Spending that money elsewhere | Delay |
| Double the ad budget | More spend, more of the same questions | Fixing the offer first | Delete |
An example.
Test the assumption that could break the plan
Every direction rests on one belief that might be wrong. Here, the belief is that a clearer quotation turns more enquiries into orders. Test it small.
The test
Speak to ten recent enquirers by Friday. Then send an itemised quotation to the next ten.
Proceed if
Unclear inclusions come up again and again, and more of the next ten order.
Rethink if
Enquirers name a different reason, or orders stay flat.
Run it as a 90-day plan you review every week
Every action gets an owner, a finish date and a measure you recorded at the start.
Day 0
Record the starting measure.
Build and fix
Put in place what must exist first. Fix the one thing the test pointed to.
Every week
A 10-minute review: what moved, what slipped, one adjustment.
Day 90
Continue, change direction or stop, based on the evidence.
What leaders say about working this way
Clarity before action.
“It acts as a guide, asking questions that we wouldn’t otherwise ask ourselves, separating wishes from facts and illusions from reality.”
“The app didn’t let me proceed until I got the clarity. Bluffing, guessing, circumventing, nothing will work.”
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BSI Sankalpa
Do all five steps inside one app
Sankalpa takes one business challenge through seven BSI stages. You do the work, AI drafts a 90-day plan from your own answers, and I review your work personally twice.
Start by finding your friction
The Friction Diagnostic takes about 5 minutes. You get a report written from your own answers. It’s free.
Venkat Murthy is a National Award-winning author, TEDx speaker and the creator of Bharateeya Strategic Intelligence (BSI). He is based in Hyderabad.