The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods are all known for their exceptional talent and success in their respective sports. However, they also have something else in common: they all had coaches who played a significant role in their careers.

Some might argue that it was their coaches — Bill Belichick, Phil Jackson, and Earl Woods —  who helped turn their natural talent into the greatest athletes of their sports. It's clear that even the best of the best need and value the guidance of a coach.

Trust is fundamental in any highly engaged, high-performing team. Without trust and integrity, people question why they want to work for a company or manager who doesn’t have convictions. When asked, highly engaged employees describe their companies and leaders as “authentic” or “genuine.”

Building trust takes time. Whether in person or virtually, it can take months or years to build a solid base of trust, but it takes just minutes to lose it. Trust is ever-evolving and something you need to be mindful of every day.

When you’re doing it right, recruiting the best candidates for your open salesperson positions can take weeks or even months. That’s not even factoring in the costs of not having someone close new business while the position is vacant, the money lost during onboarding, and the risk of losing the new hire if they or your team determine they’re not the best fit for the job. 

That’s why it’s critical to both know your Employment Value Proposition (EVP) and make sure it’s clear to your candidates right from the outset, even if they’re not looking for a new job. 

In the past year, recruitment has been an issue that has been part of every client call I have. It seems the biggest challenge is where to find the best people and how to attract them to leave their current position and join your team.

Here are some recruiting challenges I consistently face and some tips to overcome them.

At our company, our employees crave growth and development. One way we add to this focus is through our quarterly book club. Our business book club is different from most, as we all read a book we are interested in, not one we all read together.

Having a book club where we all read different business books exposes us to a huge library to explore that we may not have thought of before. It also allows us to grow in areas that appeal to us.

Reading is one of the major habits successful people have in common. For instance, Bill Gates reads 50 books per year, Warrant Buffett reads 500 pages every day, and Mark Cuban reads 3+ hours a day.

As a sales leader, it’s your job to analyze the market and make decisions based on the data available. You must then pass your wisdom and experience to your sales team to develop their skills and motivate them toward success. 

Sales leaders must understand product fit, as well as the company vision, mission, and culture, to lead their teams to success. 

Here are nine tips to help lead your sales team to success in the coming year.

It’s hard to recruit the right employees or find great people willing to invest time in their careers.

We’re facing a talent shortage, but it isn’t like employers are doing themselves any favors. A bad candidate experience mixed with a lack of feedback once hired leaves employees unmotivated and disconnected. Improving sales motivation is hard-earned but definitely worth it in the end.

A 2021 Gallup report found that over half of US employees were actively searching for a new job because they were disengaged. A revolving door of employees severely affects your ROI.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

You’ve probably heard that wise Chinese proverb before. In the business world, the best time to start recruiting was before you had a job opening, but the second-best time is now.   

If you're a hiring manager, recruiter, or HR professional tasked with recruitment and selection for a sales team, your number one priority involves making sure you have the most talented people in the right places on your team. There is no doubt that matching talent to a task in this way will determine the success, or failure, of your sales organization.

During the first 90 days at a new job, the relationship between a new hire and their employer is as vulnerable as it gets: 20% of all employee turnover happens during those crucial three months.

Leaving a job before things really get going is becoming increasingly normal, especially for younger workers: Jobvite’s oft-cited annual “Job Seeker Nation” survey reports that 34% of them have, at some point in their young careers, left a job in the first 90 days.

Stressed? Anxious? Unmotivated?

Everyone requires motivation. And, your sales team is no exception as they strive to keep up performance, reach goals, and deliver results. The constant pressure (combined with adversity and uncertainty) is physically and mentally draining.

Motivation is crucial for performance. The real purpose of a motivational speech is to get the recipient, to do something differently, because the speaker has got you to think differently. Browse through our list of 20 motivational videos, watch a few, and share the list with your team.