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© 2026 Robert Roseberry, Sales Achievements™. The Nine Sales Archetypes, including their names, descriptions and images, are original work. All rights reserved.
You hired them. You manage them. You forecast them.
And right now, at least three of them are costing you a quarter you haven't lost yet.
Good. That means you already know them.
Name the pattern, and you can coach it. Keep calling it "a tough quarter", and nothing changes.
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© 2026 Robert Roseberry, Sales Achievements™. The Nine Sales Archetypes, including their names, descriptions and images, are original work. All rights reserved.
She has a confirmed next step on every deal, every week, without being asked. When she says a deal closes this quarter, it does. She isn't at the top because she works harder. She's there because she works in reality, not hope. Every other person on this page is a step away from Alice.
She stops prospecting the moment she starts closing. So her quarters alternate: great, terrible, great, terrible. She calls each miss an anomaly. It isn't. It's what happens when someone hunts hard and closes hard, but never both at once.
One deal is 60% of his forecast, and he's had a deal like that for three quarters running. When it closes, he's your star. When it slips, the quarter is over. His pipeline looks full. It's one entry, written differently each week.
He doesn't lose deals. He lets them drift. Great first meetings, great demos, but never a specific next step. His pipeline is full of conversations last touched three weeks ago. He calls it nurturing. You call it forecast. It's neither.
He hit his number in September, so he's finished until January. His Q4 pipeline is empty because he built nothing after crossing the line. You saw the October miss coming in August, and said nothing because he'd hit his number. That silence is expensive.
He hits 70 to 80% of quota, year after year. Never bad enough to act on. Never good enough to celebrate. His book is inherited accounts and old relationships. The cost of Carl doesn't show up on a report. It shows up in the growth you never had.
He quotes at every conversation. His pipeline is enormous and almost entirely fictional. Ask one question about the buyer's real problem and it falls apart. He's the most wrong in your forecast, by the widest margin, and honestly confused about why.
When a buyer pushes on price, he discounts. First, not last. His close rate is good. His deal size is 20% below everyone else's. Because he closes, nobody says a thing. He's your most expensive rep, and it never shows up in his salary.
He lowballs every forecast so he can look like a hero when he beats it. His numbers look great. Your finance team still can't plan around a single one of them. The damage builds quietly, in years of decisions made on numbers everyone knew were wrong.
© 2026 Robert Roseberry, Sales Achievements™. The Nine Sales Archetypes, including their names, descriptions and images, are original work. All rights reserved.
None of these people are bad hires. They're responding to the questions they're asked, and the standard they're held to.
Change the questions your managers ask each week, and the patterns start to fade.
Most Carls and Freds have an Alice inside them. Your managers just need the system to find her.
Your managers have habits too. Meet the nine sales manager archetypes →
The Sales Fiction Index™ tells you in one week, with a clear plan your managers can act on before your next forecast call.
I'll reply personally within 24 hours. Not an assistant. Not a bot. Me.