Sales leaders spend a lot of time talking about pipeline. The problem is, most pipelines aren’t full or healthy at all. They’re bloated. They’re cluttered. They’re filled with “hope deals” that make spreadsheets look good but don’t move the business forward.
Too many salespeople confuse activity with progress. More calls, proposals, and meetings look like momentum, but if those accounts aren’t real opportunities, you’re not leading a sales team. You’re running a theater production.
It’s time to shift the way we think about account management. There's a good chance that your pipeline should be smaller, cleaner, and brutally honest. That’s the only way to focus your team’s time, money, and energy on the accounts that truly matter.
I am going to be speaking about this topic on the upcoming 2025 Sandler Sales Booster Virtual Summit, but here are top lessons for sales leaders.
Why Segmentation Matters More Than Ever
Chasing everyone often results in winning no one. Without segmentation, your reps spread themselves thin, lose deals, and spend their time in the wrong places.
The Sandler KARE framework is a system for simplicity. It breaks the account plan into four quadrants:
Keep: Protect your best clients.
Attain: Win the right new accounts.
Recapture: Rebuild lost relationships.
Expand: Grow inside existing accounts.
This framework has been very popular for us because it forces focus. If your team can’t quickly name which quadrant an account belongs in, they don’t have a strategy; they have a wish list. As a leader, your role is to make sure every rep has a KARE account plan and that they’re using it as more than just a paper exercise.
Keep = Protect the Base
Most teams underestimate the risk in their current client base. They assume renewals are automatic. They’re not. Competitors are knocking on your client’s door every day.
Protecting the base requires proactive structure. Teach your team to set Up-Front Contracts for quarterly reviews. These aren’t casual check-ins. They’re conversations where you and the client both set expectations about what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next. Without a structure like this, even your best clients are vulnerable.
Attain = Win the Right Kind of New Business
Attainment is not about chasing every new logo. It’s about finding the right opportunities where your team can add value.
Here’s the truth: your reps should be disqualifying faster. If the account isn’t ready, willing, and able to buy, stop chasing. The longer an unqualified deal sits in the pipeline, the more it distorts forecasts and distracts reps from real business. Coach your team to ask: “What evidence do we have that this deal is real?” If they can’t answer, it doesn’t belong in the pipeline.
Recapture = Face the Fear
Recapture is the quadrant most salespeople ignore. They don’t want to revisit lost accounts because it feels like rejection. That’s not reality. That’s head trash.
Tecapture opportunities often close faster than new ones. The client already knows your firm. Timing or value perception may have shifted. But you’ll never know if you don’t go back. As a leader, build the expectation that recapture accounts belong in the plan. Make it clear that avoiding them is not an option.
Expand = Break Old Patterns
Many reps treat expansion as pitching add-ons. That’s lazy and ineffective. Expansion should be treated like a new sale.
Coach your people to break the buyer-seller pattern. Encourage them to ask fresh questions, uncover new pain, and re-qualify accounts as if they were new prospects. Don’t let your team get boxed in as “just a vendor.” Expansion only happens when you’re seen as a partner.
The Power of Brutal Honesty
Most leaders tolerate bloated pipelines because they make the numbers look better in meetings with their bosses, but everyone knows those numbers aren’t real.
Brutal honesty means calling deals for what they are: qualified, stalled, unqualified, or dead. If your team isn’t honest about the real probability, they’re lying to themselves and to you. And you’re wasting time, money, and resources.
A smaller, cleaner pipeline is worth more than a bloated one full of fiction. As a leader, you need to enforce that discipline. Don’t celebrate “big” pipelines. Reward accurate ones.
Demand an Account Plan
Some leaders give their teams crystal-clear account segmentation and set reasonable expectations for performance. Many don’t. If that’s you, and part of the problem is that you are stretched too thin, ask every rep to come with their own KARE map of their accounts. That way, they do the heavy lifting, and you get to move from reviewing pipeline to holding focused conversations about strategy, accountability, and next steps.
The advantage of KARE is its simplicity. You don't have a territory plan if you can’t explain where every account belongs in the KARE segmentation.
Takeaway for Sales Leaders
Your job is not to push for more activity. It’s to empower progress on the right accounts. The Sandler KARE framework gives you a simple, powerful way to focus your team where it matters. Protect the base. Win the right new accounts. Recapture what you lost. Expand where you can grow. And above all, enforce brutal honesty in your pipeline.
That’s how you stop chasing noise and start leading your team to smarter growth.
Ready to put KARE into action with your team? Let’s start a conversation. At Next Level, we help leaders create sales cultures built on focus, accountability, and real progress. Don't forget to register for the upcoming 2025 Sandler Sales Booster Virtual Summit.
