You ever look at your team halfway through the year and wonder: “We’ve got solid reps, a working motion, and plenty of accounts. So why are we behind?”
Sometimes it’s easy to point fingers, maybe outbound slowed, maybe your ICP shifted, maybe reps aren’t prospecting hard enough.
But more often than not, the issue isn’t performance. It’s friction. The real killer? Operational drag.
What is operational drag?
It’s the mid-year sludge that slows your team down without setting off alarms.
Think:
- Reps sifting through bloated books, guessing who to call
- Great-fit accounts sitting untouched in someone’s name for months
- “Outreach” that’s just a string of disconnected tasks
- Manual routing queues, CRM gaps, slow handoffs, and confused ICPs
If it feels like your team is working harder but getting less done, you’re probably dragging a lot more than you think.
How drag sneaks into your sales engine
Let’s break it down. In our 2025 mid-year report, we called out four of the biggest culprits behind H2 underperformance. If you're seeing pipeline softness, these might be why:
1. Territory misalignment
You know the drill. Some reps have 2,000 accounts. Others are running out of pipeline by mid-month. On paper, it looks like everyone has coverage. In reality? Some reps are drowning, some are starving, and your pipeline is wildly uneven.
This silent killer doesn’t show up in dashboards, it shows up in missed quotas.
2. ICP drift
As the markets shift, your ICP tightens. If your reps are still chasing the wrong logos, you're burning time on prospects that will never convert. Without a clear, current ICP, your targeting gets fuzzy and your win rates sink.
You don’t just need more accounts. You need the right ones.
3. Bad data and tooling gaps
Here’s a stat that should worry anyone in sales leadership: 70% of revenue leaders don’t trust their own CRM data (Cognism).
When reps have to verify basic info before making a call, you’ve already lost momentum. Incomplete records and duplicate accounts aren’t just annoying, they can cost you up to 12% of revenue.
And if CRM completeness is under 90%, you're flying blind. That’s not a RevOps problem. That’s a GTM problem.
4. Process breakdowns
Clunky routing. Manual approvals. A 42-hour delay between a form fill and a follow-up. These are the small operational cracks that quietly stall deals and kill conversion rates.
If reps are asking “Did we assign this?” or “Who owns this lead?” you’ve got process drag.
The mid-year check: Are you behind or just stuck
Mid-year is when drag really starts to show. You’re too far in to ignore the trends. But you still have enough time to fix them.
Start with this:
- Are high-fit accounts going untouched?
- Are conversion rates dropping even though outreach is up?
- Are you seeing inconsistent attainment across the team?
- Is your CRM still full of “TBD” fields?
If yes, your problem isn’t people. It’s the system around them.
What to do about it
Operational drag isn’t permanent. You just need a few smart fixes that punch above their weight:
Shrink the books
The average commercial rep can only truly work 50–150 accounts. Give them fewer, better targets. This one change improves focus, increases activity quality, and eliminates guesswork.
Refresh your ICP
Update your segmentation. Get specific. If your “ideal customer” definition is still what it was in January, it’s probably wrong. Use actual win data to recalibrate.
Automate what slows you down
Accounts sitting idle? Route them out. Use capacity-aware distribution. Don’t let good prospects go cold because of internal delays.
Audit your CRM
Set a CRM completeness threshold, if you’re below 90%, your data quality is actively hurting you. Fix the gaps. Enrich what’s missing. And no, your reps shouldn’t be the ones doing it manually.
Add visibility to coverage
You can’t improve what you can’t see. Sales managers should know what % of each rep’s book is being actively worked, and where accounts are falling through the cracks.
The fix
None of this requires a full re-org. You don’t need to rip and replace your entire GTM motion. But you do need to clear the drag. That’s where platforms like Gradient Works come in: automating account assignments, refreshing books, and surfacing high-potential accounts so your reps can stay in motion without friction.
It’s not about working harder. It’s about clearing the path so your team can move faster, with more focus, and better outcomes.
