The Ritual of Investigation

The fluorescent light hums at exactly 62 hertz, a frequency that makes the back of my skull vibrate while I stare at these quarterly projections. I’ve just finished testing every single pen in my desk drawer-82 of them, to be precise-and only 12 actually work without scratching the paper like a desperate cat. It’s a ritual, I suppose. Before I dive into the autopsy of a failing department, I need to know my tools won’t fail me, even if the systems I’m investigating have already collapsed. I’m Nora A.-M., and usually, I spend my days looking for the subtle scent of insurance fraud, the kind that hides in the margins of a fire claim or the too-perfect timing of a car wreck. But lately, I’ve been asked to look at corporate structures, and what I see in sales departments is remarkably similar to a staged accident: a lot of noise, a lot of debris, and a desperate attempt to collect a payout that the reality of the situation simply doesn’t support.

The Graveyard of Good Intentions

I watched a sales manager named Ben last week. He was vibrating with a nervous energy that I usually only see in claimants who know their ‘stolen’ jewelry is actually in a safety deposit box in Jersey. Ben had just onboarded 2 new reps, bringing his team total to 32. He showed me his CRM, which was a graveyard of half-baked notes and ‘follow-up’ tasks that were 52 days overdue. He was convinced that the problem was ‘hustle.’ If the current 32 weren’t closing, he’d just hire more until the volume cleared the pipes. I hate spreadsheets. They are the most dishonest storytellers in the world because they strip away the friction of reality. Yet, here I am, spending 42 minutes staring at Ben’s conversion rates, which have dropped by 12 percent since he doubled his team size. He thinks he’s scaling. He’s actually just suffocating.

Leaky Bucket Syndrome

There’s a specific kind of madness that happens when a company scales its headcount before its process. I call it the ‘Leaky Bucket Syndrome,’ though in insurance, we’d just call it negligence. Imagine a bucket with 22 holes in the bottom. You’re pouring water in, but it’s draining out just as fast. Your solution isn’t to plug the holes; it’s to hire 2 more people to pour water faster. It’s exhausted. It’s expensive. And eventually, the people pouring the water realize the bucket is never going to fill, so they stop caring about the water and start caring about how fast they can look like they’re pouring.

“

When you give a salesperson a broken process and a high quota, you aren’t hiring a closer; you’re hiring a creative writer who will spend their day making the CRM look busy while the revenue stays stagnant.

That’s when the ‘fraud’-not the criminal kind, but the structural kind-starts. Reps start logging ‘ghost calls.’ They mark leads as ‘unqualified’ simply because they don’t have the 12 minutes required to actually nurture a conversation. They trip over each other in the database, calling the same prospect 2 times in 2 minutes because no one knows who owns the territory. This isn’t a lack of effort. It’s a survival response to a system that provides no leverage.

Leverage Over Activity

I remember a case back in 2022-no, it must have been earlier, the date on the file was smudged-where a firm thought they could automate their way out of a bad culture. They bought the most expensive software, the kind that costs $1002 per seat, and then they didn’t train anyone to use it. They just added 12 more reps to ‘feed the machine.’ It was like buying a Ferrari and hiring 12 people to push it down the street because no one knew how to find the ignition. The friction was the point. The friction was where the money was disappearing.

True growth-the kind that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out or test 82 pens just to feel a sense of control-comes from leverage. Leverage is the ability to do more with the same, or the same with less. It’s about creating a system where a single rep can manage 222 leads with the same precision that they used to manage 22. This is where most leadership teams fail. They confuse activity with progress. They think 42 calls a day is better than 12 high-intent conversations. They think the solution is more people, when the solution is actually better architecture. If your sales process is a labyrinth where leads go to die, adding more explorers just means you’ll have more skeletons in the maze eventually.

When you fix the process, you find that you often don’t need the extra headcount. Or, if you do hire, those new people become productive in 12 days instead of 92. They aren’t guessing what to say or who to call. They are selling. Efficiency isn’t just a buzzword for the board meeting; it’s the difference between a business that breathes and one that suffocates under its own weight. When I look at tools like Rakan Sales, I don’t see another line item on the budget. I see a way to stop the bleeding of human potential. I see a way to give those 2 new reps-or 22-a fighting chance to actually do the job you hired them for instead of acting as data-entry clerks for a broken dream.

The Excitement of the Unseen Work

I’m thinking about the ink on my fingers now. It’s blue, a smudge across my knuckle that looks like a bruise. My grandmother always said black ink was for the truth and blue was for the imagination, which is probably why all insurance forms are printed in black. Or maybe I’m just stalling. The point is, we avoid the hard work of process-building because it’s boring. It’s much more exciting to announce a ‘massive hiring spree’ in a press release than it is to sit down and map out the 12 touchpoints of a successful lead journey. Hiring feels like growth. Process feels like homework. But in the long run, the homework is what prevents the bankruptcy.

The irony of my job is that I’m paid to find what’s missing. In a fraud case, it’s usually the truth. In a failing sales department, it’s usually the infrastructure. You can’t build a skyscraper on a foundation of sand, and you can’t build a 52-million-dollar company on a sales process that relies on ‘heroics’ from individual reps. Heroics aren’t scalable. Systems are. You need a system that is so robust that an average rep can produce extraordinary results. If you need a team of 22 superstars just to hit your baseline, your business model is actually a disaster waiting for a catalyst. Superstars are rare; a good process is something you can build, piece by piece, until it’s a fortress.

Stop, Look, and Fix the Signal

I’m closing the folder on Ben’s department now. I’ve marked it in red-one of the 2 red pens that actually worked. My recommendation won’t be to hire more. It will be to stop. Stop the hiring, stop the noise, and look at the 12 steps that happen between a person seeing an ad and a person signing a contract. Somewhere in those 12 steps, the signal is getting lost. Somewhere, the energy is leaking out. If he fixes that, he won’t need 32 reps. He’ll do more revenue with 12 than he ever did with 42. And the best part? No one will have to lie to the CRM anymore. They won’t have to pretend that they’re busy because they will actually be productive.

It’s a strange thing, wanting to do less. In a world obsessed with ‘more,’ the most radical thing you can do is seek ‘better.’ Better leads, better scripts, better follow-ups, better data. It’s not as loud as a hiring spree, and it doesn’t look as good on a LinkedIn update, but it’s the only way to build something that lasts past the next 2 quarters. I think I’ll go buy some more pens now. Real ones. The kind that don’t leak when the pressure changes. Because at the end of the day, whether you’re investigating a crime or building a sales empire, the quality of your output is always limited by the integrity of your tools. Are you giving your team a pen that works, or are you just giving them more paper to ruin?

The Foundational Truth

In a failing sales department, you are usually missing the infrastructure, not the talent.