Say it straight or don't say it at all.
Adding more leads to a broken follow-up process just means more leads you do not close. Fix the system first. Then scale the input.
Staying busy feels like productivity. But most of the tasks filling your schedule are not moving anything forward. They are keeping you from the work that actually does.
Memory does not scale. When processes live in your head, every growth move is limited by your personal bandwidth and every mistake costs more than it should.
When business slows down, blaming the market is easy. But if your competitors are still booking jobs, the market is not the problem.