The 2025 Market Spotlight Report: The Status Quo Trap gave us a clear message: internal barriers are costing companies millions in lost growth. That was the headline.
But in our recent webinar, James Roth, CRO of ZoomInfo, and Zach Faithful, GTM Planning & Sales Execution Leader at Deloitte, the conversation went further. Leaders spoke candidly about how these breakdowns actually show up in practice and the moves they are making to address them.
What stood out wasn’t just the scale of the problem. It was the acknowledgment that many of the levers leaders trust most — quota, incentives, even “alignment” — aren’t working the way they think.
Here are four fixes our experts recommended to take back and put to work with your team now.
The Growth Multiplier You’re Overlooking: Promotions Over Market Expansion
Ask most executives how they’ll drive growth this year, and you’ll hear familiar answers: launch a product, open a new market, acquire a competitor.
Those moves are visible. They look bold. But James Roth, CRO, ZoomInfo, made a different case. Internal moves matter more.
- Reps with 12 months of tenure are 2.5 times more productive than new hires.
- Internal promotions are 4 times more effective than external hires.
If you're not tracking those multipliers, you're funding the flashy plays while leaking performance inside your own salesforce.
The 2025 Varicent Market Spotlight data backs this up. Out of 1,400 leaders we surveyed, “talent gaps” ranked as the number one threat to growth, ahead of economic headwinds, budget pressure, or competition. Yet only 1 in 5 leaders said they were prioritizing sales effectiveness as a lever for growth.
That gap is where revenue is leaking.
The fix starts with visibility. Tenure curves, attrition, and promotion velocity should sit in the same reporting cadence as revenue and pipeline. Model what happens if you extend average tenure by just 3 months. Size the dollar impact of faster promotions. Make those metrics board-level and hold leaders accountable for moving them.
James Roth on why internal promotions consistently outperform external hires.
Your Comp Plan Speaks Louder Than Your Strategy
Many leadership teams talk about shifting to customer centricity, but compensation plans that reward speed and volume send sellers a different message.
Our research confirms the gap. 82% of sellers said they would be more motivated by incentives tied to outcomes beyond the close (outcomes like adoption, retention, expansion), yet only 31% said their plan is built that way today.
“You can’t preach customer centricity if comp still rewards speed,” Roth said. “Sellers know the system still pays for something else.”
At ZoomInfo, that meant hard adjustments: Customer Success Managers (CSMs) tied to renewal rates, not activity. Account managers measured on overall net retention, not just upsell. New business reps connected financially to the health of their deals after the close.
Zach Faithful, GTM Planning & Sales Execution Leader at Deloitte, reminded leaders that you don't need to wait for annual planning to test changes. Quarterly spiffs act as controlled experiments. Incentivize multi-threaded meetings for a quarter. If win rates improve, scale it. If not, cut it before the field tunes it out.
If you expect sellers to pivot with the business, your incentives need to move first.
James Roth on the “thousand-yard stare” when incentives contradict strategy.
Quota Attainment Isn't the KPI You Think It Is
Quota attainment is still the centerpiece metric in most sales organizations. Roth was clear about its limits:
“Quota attainment doesn’t even make it into our board pack. It tells you how well you set the quota, not how healthy the business is.”
The Status Quo Trap revealed why. Only 16% of sellers believe their quotas are fair compared to peers. Just 20% believe their quota reflects territory potential. And only 13% understand how their quota was even set.
Quota can look fine while pipeline quality weakens or margins collapse. It can look fine while enablement gaps leave new reps underproductive for months.
If quota is your primary KPI, you're not managing risk. You're managing optics.
Instead of relying on quota alone, pair it with indicators that show whether performance is sustainable.
Median attainment can reveal whether a few stars are masking broader team risk.
Pipeline quality scores highlight deal health before revenue slips.
Ramp productivity shows whether new reps are enabled fast enough to contribute.
Quota-to-territory equity ratios help restore trust by showing sellers that their targets reflect the actual potential of their accounts.
James Roth on why quota no longer appears in ZoomInfo’s board reporting.
Alignment Starts with One Source of Truth
1,400 revenue leaders in our study, The 2025 Market Spotlight Report: The Status Quo Trap, estimated misalignment costs as much as 15% of revenue. The instinct is to think alignment requires a reorg. Deloitte’s Zach Faithful argued otherwise:
“Centralize reporting. One KPI set. One operational report. Everyone looking at the same number. That alone changes the conversation.”
Alignment begins with reporting discipline. Create a cross-functional center of excellence for data. Standardize definitions for pipeline stages and targets across Sales, Finance, and RevOps. Mandate a monthly review where executives debate the implications of the number, not which version is correct.
Zach on why alignment begins with reporting discipline, not restructuring
Stop Normalizing the Gaps
The 2025 Market Spotlight Report: The Status Quo Trap quantified the cost. The webinar revealed the lived reality. If you’re leading growth, here's where to start:
- Report tenure and promotions like revenue. Treat them as multipliers, not side metrics.
- Audit incentives quarterly. Use spiffs to test and scale the signals that drive behavior.
- De-risk quota attainment. Surround it with quality metrics that cannot be gamed.
- Centralize your data. Enforce one KPI set as the single operational truth.
These aren't theoretical. They’re practical steps leaders are already executing. The question is whether you'll keep normalizing the leaks or start fixing them.
Watch the webinar replay, Revenue in Plain Sight: What 1,400 Revenue Leaders Say Is Really Hurting Growth, for the full conversation and download the The 2025 Varicent Market Spotlight: The Status Quo Trap to see the data and insights from over 1,400 leaders on where growth is breaking down and how to fix it.
