When people ask me how to increase sales, they are usually hoping for a tactic, and I understand why, because a tactic feels like something you could start on Monday.

The honest answer is less exciting and much more useful. In the years I have spent helping build Uniti Med from a startup into one of the largest healthcare staffing companies in the country, revenue on our core brand grew tenfold, and almost none of that came from a clever trick. It came from a handful of unglamorous things done consistently by people who wanted to be there. That growth earned us a #3 ranking on the Inc. Regionals list of the fastest-growing companies in the Midwest, and in the same stretch we were named one of Fortune’s Best Workplaces, which I do not think is a coincidence.

Before healthcare staffing I spent the early part of my career in restaurants and then running sales and marketing for a brewery, carrying cases into stores and asking buyers for shelf space. The products were different, but the lessons were the same in both places. What follows is the playbook I would hand any owner, sales leader or rep who wants more revenue, written the way I would explain it if we were sitting across a table.

What actually increases sales?

If I had to put it in one sentence, sales go up when more of the conversations you are already having turn into yes, and when the people having them stay long enough to get good. That is it. Everything else in this article is a way of doing one of those two things.

Most teams look at a disappointing quarter and reach for the top of the funnel. More calls, more leads, more campaigns, more activity on the dashboard. Sometimes that is the right move, but far more often the leads were fine and the deals died somewhere in the middle, in a follow-up that never happened, an objection nobody handled, or a buyer who was never shown what saying yes would actually look like. Pouring more water into a leaking bucket feels productive, and it is exhausting, and it rarely fixes the bucket.

Why does follow-up matter so much?

Because most deals are not lost to a competitor. They are lost to silence. Someone was interested, a rep sent one email, maybe two, nothing came back, and the opportunity quietly turned into a line on a spreadsheet that nobody looked at again.

The story I tell most often on stage comes from my brewery days. We were in every major store in our market except the biggest retailer in the country. Every store manager I spoke with told me the same thing, that it was not up to them and one buyer made the decision. So I called that buyer, and when he did not answer I called again, and then again, and I will admit I even found out where he worked out in the hope of running into him.

Eventually he picked up. He told me I was persistent, which I chose to take as a compliment, and then he asked whether I knew how many products were in his stores and whether he personally buys the paper clips. What he meant was that my beer was a paper clip to him. One more item in a building full of items.

I told him the truth as I saw it. His stores did not carry us, we were a top seller in our category, every one of his competitors stocked us, and our customers were loyal enough that they would drive to a competitor to buy it, and while they were there they would do the rest of their shopping too. There was a pause, and then he told me to get him our best sellers, in every store, and that he wanted a display.

I share that story because it holds two lessons, not one. The first is persistence. If I had stopped after the third unanswered call, which is about where most people stop, there would have been no conversation at all. The second lesson is the one people miss. Persistence only got me on the phone. What got me the order was showing him what it cost him to keep saying no.

So if you want a first step, look at your open pipeline and count the deals where the last touch came from your side and nothing has happened since. For most teams that number is uncomfortable, and every one of those is revenue sitting on the table waiting for someone to pick it up.

How do you stop losing deals to objections?

By treating an objection as the buyer still talking to you, rather than as a wall you need to knock down. An objection is a sign that the person is still in the conversation. The prospect who goes quiet is the one you should actually worry about, because a concern nobody says out loud turns into a deal that just disappears.

The method I teach for this is called LAARC, and it is five steps: Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond and Confirm. The value of having steps at all is that it stops a rep from jumping straight to the answer they already had loaded. You listen to the whole concern, you let the person feel heard (which is not the same as agreeing with them), you ask one more question to get to the real reason underneath, you respond to what they actually said, and then you confirm the concern is resolved before you move on. The confirm step is the one almost everyone skips, and it is where an awful lot of quiet losses come from.

LeadingAge Illinois published LAARC in its annual conference program, and I have taught it to rooms of salespeople, recruiters and healthcare leaders. If you want the longer version, I wrote about why nobody wants to be overcome, they want to be understood, and there is a practical walkthrough in how to handle objections like a pro.

How do you know where every deal really stands?

Here is a pattern I have seen on almost every sales team I have worked with. A rep comes back from a call and says it went great, and then the deal stalls, and nobody can explain why. So the team does what teams do. They send another case study, they follow up more often, and eventually someone offers a discount. None of it works, because none of it touches the thing that was actually missing.

I think of a closed deal like a combination lock with five tumblers, and that is the idea behind the LOCKS framework. Before someone says yes, five things have to be true in their head. They have to Love the product. They need Own belief, meaning they believe someone like them can actually get the result. They need Confidence in you and the company behind you. They need a Kickoff plan, a clear picture of what happens the moment they say yes. And they need to feel the Stakes, what it costs them to do nothing.

Line up four and the lock stays shut. A deal that is eighty percent cracked is still a locked deal. The brewery story is really a Stakes story, because the buyer already knew the product existed and had no reason to care until he could see what saying no was costing him.

What makes LOCKS useful in a pipeline review is that it turns vague updates into specific next steps. “They need to think about it” stops being a brush-off and becomes information, usually that the Stakes tumbler has not turned yet. “They love it but they are not sure their team could pull it off” is an Own belief problem, and no price cut will fix it. When a manager and a rep can name which of the five is missing, they know exactly what the next conversation needs to do.

How do you motivate a sales team?

Commission matters, and I would never pretend otherwise, but in my experience money is what gets people in the door and something else decides whether they give you their best effort once they are there. Salespeople take more rejection in a week than most people take in a year, and the ones who keep picking up the phone are almost always the ones who feel that someone has their back.

The framework I use for this is SPARK: Support, Purpose, Appreciation, Relationships, and Knowledge and Growth. Each one is something a leader actually controls. Does your top rep believe you will back them when a deal goes sideways? Do they know why the work matters beyond the number? Does anyone notice the reliable performer, or has their consistency quietly become invisible? Are there people on the team worth showing up for? Can they see a version of themselves a year from now that is bigger than today?

Recognition is the cheapest of these and the one most often forgotten. I have watched a few sincere words in front of the team do more for someone’s month than a spiff ever did. If you are planning a year-end awards night or a President’s Club trip, that is not a perk, it is part of how you increase next year’s sales.

Why is keeping your salespeople a revenue strategy?

Every time a good salesperson leaves, they take their relationships, their pipeline and months of hard-won judgement with them, and the person who replaces them starts from zero. Even when you hire well, you are paying for a long stretch of ramp time before that seat produces what it used to. When I think about what protected our growth, keeping strong people was every bit as important as winning new business.

I have written a lot about why people quit people, not companies, and it applies to sales teams more than anywhere else. Reps rarely leave over a comp plan alone. They leave because a manager stopped coaching them, stopped noticing them, or made them feel like a number. If you want a single retention practice, make sure every person on your sales team has a regular conversation with their leader that is about their growth and not about their pipeline.

How do you increase sales without hiring more reps?

This is the question I hear most from owners and sales leaders, and the good news is that most teams have more capacity than they think. Before you add headcount, I would work through these in order.

Close the follow-up gap. Go back through every deal that went quiet in the last ninety days. A respectful, useful follow-up that brings something new to the conversation will revive more of them than you expect.

Raise your conversion rate on the conversations you already have. A team that handles objections well and knows what each deal is missing will close a higher share of the same pipeline, which is the cheapest growth there is.

Sell more to the customers who already trust you. Your current clients have already turned every LOCKS tumbler once. Ask what else they are struggling with, and listen for where you can help.

Keep the reps you have and help them get better. One more year from an experienced rep is worth far more than a new hire’s first year. Coaching, recognition and a clear path forward cost very little compared with turnover.

Give the team one shared language. When everyone uses the same words for where a deal stands and how to handle a concern, managers can coach faster and reps can help each other. That is a large part of why a well-run sales kickoff or a focused sales training workshop pays for itself.

What should you not do when sales are down?

Do not discount first. A price cut is the easiest lever to pull and usually the wrong one. If a buyer does not believe in themselves, does not trust you, or cannot see the plan, a lower price does not change any of that. It just teaches your market to wait for the next discount and shrinks the margin you need to invest in your people.

Do not confuse more activity with better conversations. I have seen teams double their call volume and stay flat, because the calls were the same calls. Ten conversations where the rep really listens and leaves with a clear next step will beat thirty rushed ones every time.

Do not lead with fear. Pressure from the top flows straight into the tone of every sales call, and buyers can feel it. The calm, curious rep is the one people tell the truth to, and the truth is what lets you actually help them.

Do not ignore what your customers are telling you. Some of the most valuable sales information you will ever get comes from clients who already bought. Ask them why they chose you, what nearly stopped them, and what would make them buy more.

Where should you start?

If you only do one thing after reading this, sit down with your team and go through your open deals one at a time, asking which of the five LOCKS tumblers is still missing and when the last real follow-up happened. You will learn more about why your sales are where they are in that one meeting than in a month of dashboards, and you will walk out with a list of specific conversations that can turn into revenue this quarter.

Increasing sales is rarely about finding something new. It is usually about doing the simple things with more care and more consistency than the team down the street, and keeping the people who do them well. That is what worked for us, and I believe it will work for you.