Are You Actually Ready to Scale?
Three tests that reveal whether your sales engine is built to handle growth
Not all growth is progress.
You can expand headcount, widen the funnel, and push into new segments, yet still see less revenue per rep, more stalled deals, and a team working harder than ever with little to show for it.
More people and more effort won’t fix what a shaky scaling foundation can’t support.
In growth-stage vendors, I often see scaling efforts built on shaky foundations, such as unclear targeting, messaging that doesn’t align with buyer urgency, and sales processes that assume too much context. On paper, the sales motion looks built. However, under pressure, the cracks begin to show.
Before you pour fuel on the fire, make sure the engine underneath is actually built to run.
Here are three tests to run before you try to scale.
Test #1 – Do New Reps Walk Into a Working Sales System?
When experienced reps fall short, the instinct is often to blame soft skills like urgency, relationship depth, or grit. But more often, struggling salespeople highlight deeper gaps in your go-to-market plan, rather than their own talents.
Strong sellers don’t need hand-holding. But they do need clarity:
Who are we targeting?
What problems are we solving?
What’s the pitch that lands?
What makes a deal qualified?
If those aren’t nailed, even great reps will waste cycles chasing the wrong accounts, overcustomizing, or trying to create a one-off strategy themselves.
Example: A pharmacy adherence vendor hired two proven sellers with payor experience. Neither made progress. Why? There was no account strategy, no link between the pitch and Stars/HEDIS metrics, and no standardized method for qualifying deals. Leadership expected the reps to fill in those gaps themselves, which guaranteed inconsistent execution and a low-quality pipeline.
Hiring doesn’t fix that. Architecture does.
Test #2: Are Buyers Pushing Back for the Right Reasons?
Interest is rather easy to get. A health plan leader might take a meeting, ask a few surface-level questions, and say the idea sounds good. None of that means they intend to move forward. Why’s that?
Honestly, genuine buying intent often creates friction.
When buyers are serious, they push back. They ask how your product fits into their workflow. They press on implementation timelines, data dependencies, and outcomes. They raise concerns tied to their KPIs, not your roadmap.
This isn’t resistance, it’s qualifying. It means you’ve hit a nerve and they’re assessing if you're the company that can help them solve it. If you're not hearing these questions, you may be selling to someone who likes your idea but isn’t responsible for solving the problem.
Example: A risk adjustment vendor ran a campaign targeting plan CFOs around RADV exposure. Most ignored it. The few who replied didn’t ask for a demo. Instead, they asked, “What’s your error rate by HCC category?” That’s not disinterest. That’s a genuine buyer with accountability, doing their due diligence. That’s exactly what you want.
If your prospects aren’t pushing you, they’re probably not planning to buy.
Test #3 – Is Your Growth Plan Built on Repeatable Wins?
Sales activity feels good: higher outbound volume, more meetings, more prospects in the pipeline. But mistaking activity for traction is a dangerous trap.
The real test is whether your team can consistently move a specific buyer persona, in a defined scenario, toward a decision. That is what makes a motion scalable. High-performing pipelines aren’t built on volume; they’re built on repeatable wins.
What matters isn’t how much you’re doing, it’s whether you can consistently move a defined buyer through a known journey to a closed deal. That’s repeatability. That’s what scales.
The more precise your go-to-market motion is, the clearer the buyer, the cleaner the trigger, the sharper the close. And, the easier it is to replicate. Without that clarity, you'll still be spinning your wheels, regardless of how many more sales reps, outreach campaigns, or one-and-done meetings you schedule.
Example: A data connectivity vendor was chasing every plan conversation it could find. Then it narrowed its focus to plans already working toward FHIR compliance. Deal cycles shortened by 25%, and win rates jumped. Why? Because now every motion was anchored in a real use case with real urgency. That’s what scalable looks like.
If you can’t define exactly what type of deal you win and why, address that before scaling.
Final Thought
Scaling amplifies whatever is already in place, both the good and the bad.
If your system is solid, growth accelerates what works. However, if the foundations are shaky, you’ll simply move faster toward missed goals, a wasted budget, and frustrated teams.
These three tests provide a way to pressure-check your growth motion before you invest more in it, ensuring your resources go toward what’s working, not toward propping up what isn’t.
Get the motion tight and then scale it with purpose.
Not sure what to read next?
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Whether you’re refining your positioning, running better sales meetings, or scaling a repeatable growth motion, you’ll find focused recommendations by topic.
→ Explore the Upward Growth Starter Guide
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