The Bhagavad Gita did not teach me sales. It taught me where to look when sales is not working. Two lines have stayed with me for 22 years.
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन — focus on the action, not the result
Almost every founder I work with tracks results: revenue, pipeline, deal size. Almost none track the actions that create them.
What % of your demos are with the right buyer?
An action metric.
What % of your proposals get a response within 7 days?
An action metric.
What is your discovery-to-proposal conversion?
An action metric.
Revenue is the fruit. These are the roots
Across 22 years, 10 companies and 6 industries, the answer has always been in the actions, never in the results. When revenue is flat, do not ask why revenue is not growing. Ask which action metric broke.
योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् — yoga is skill in action (Gita 2.50)
Krishna was not talking about yoga mats. He was talking to Arjuna, paralysed before a battle, and telling him that discipline is not intensity. Discipline is skill, repeated, in action.
Now look at most B2B sales floors: 12-hour days, weekend war rooms, hustle written on the wall. I asked a founder how many of his team's 12 hours actually moved a deal forward. Maybe three. Eleven hours of effort, three hours of skill. That is exhaustion dressed up as commitment.
Cadence, Not Hustle
Daily close-out
The same five minutes, every day.
Weekly pipeline hygiene
The same four questions, every Monday.
Monthly review
The same three numbers, every month.
Boring for six weeks straight. Then the forecast lands, the pipeline holds and the team stops missing. Effort gets you tired. Precision gets you to ₹100 Cr.
What is the one ritual your sales floor has stopped honouring this quarter? Bring it back on Monday. Do not add three new ones
Related: Your Sales Head says ₹4.2 Cr, your CFO says ₹2.1 Cr — the cadence in detail.