When you coach baseball and manage a sales team for 15 years, you realize the astounding similarities between sports and business. Like sports, sales is a highly-competitive field, and you must have the ability to think on your feet with rock-solid professionalism.

In both, success boils down to having a winning attitude that demands discipline and attention to detail regarding how you prepare and perform.

As an athlete, it’s vital to understand the basic concept of agility – the ability to change your body’s position by having quick feet. As a sales manager or consultant, rather than applying the phrase, “Move Your Feet” to your body, you must apply it to your mindset and tactics.

Think of sales performance as a three-legged stool. When all three legs are strong, there is nothing sturdier. But if one of the legs isn’t holding up its weight, the stool can no longer do its job. Just as you need all three legs on that stool, so too must a sales organization have three solid legs to carry the weight of the expectations placed on it. As we get closer to 2020, ensure your team is strong in all three areas and set your team up for improved sales performance in the new year.

It’s the time of year where competition is in the air. Not only is a little fantasy football floating around the office, but we’re about to tackle the end of another fiscal year. We’re all going for the “Hail Mary” pass with, what feels like, only seconds remaining on the clock.

Similar to having a successful season on your fantasy football league, having a great sales quarter takes strategy, skill and taking advantage of every opportunity that comes your way. It’s nearing the beginning of the fourth quarter, so let’s kick it off with motivation for a strong finish.

At one time or another, we’ve all wished that people came with an instruction manual. A guide that answered questions no one thinks to ask and provides information we often forget to share. Every big-ticket, important, valuable item comes with instructions. Why are people any different?  

The beauty of humanity is that we’re all unique. However, our differences often lead to frustration, miscommunication, lack of productivity, and can even end up threatening our job performance. How can you bypass miscommunication and anxiety? Develop a personal user guide!

Slumps happen to everyone. No matter how good you are or how long you have been in sales, sooner or later you're going to hit a sales slump. And they always seem to come at the very worst times. (Actually, when is it ever good to go into a slump?)

It’s never exactly the same, but it sometimes looks like this: You've put a lot of time and energy into a prospect, and thought for sure he or she would say yes—but the person gives you a NO. A client has been with you every month for the past 6 months, but then calls you up and says they need to take the next couple of months off. The appointment you have been working so hard to set tells you to call back in 6 months. 

Sales managers bemoan slumps just as much as salespeople do. If you're a sales manager, you need your people hitting their numbers so you can in turn hit yours. It’s difficult to watch anyone struggle, particularly people you feel responsibility for. As the manager, you are a developer of people and of talent. You need to grow your people, and you take that job seriously.  

So how do you get out of a slump if you're in one? Here are four steps to help your salespeople break out of a slump.

My favorite book in high school was George Orwell's Animal Farm. If you haven't read it, it is an allegorical novel that tells the story of how Communism took over Russia and ultimately ruined their economy. I loved this book because a) it's brilliant, and b) it's a great defender of capitalism, which I LOVE!

If you are a manager with a struggling seller, this blog post is for you!

Too often, managers place the blame of a struggling seller at the feet of the struggling seller. This is usually a mistake. There is a better way to find out what is causing the seller’s lack of performance, and it involves an analysis of the following five things:

• Talent and Fit
• Relationship
• Expectations
• Feedback
• Compensation

If someone has the “gift of gab” they're often told that they should go into sales. Which often, just gives salespeople a bad name. Think about it. None of us like the salesperson who just keeps talking. The one that knows everything and is willing to tell us every detail. Are you talking about something the other person expressed interest in?

"Silence is golden"—usually this is said right after your children leave the room and you finally have a moment of peace.

Recently, I spoke to a sales management group on four things that they can do to improve sales performance, and this is what I shared with them.

1. Recruitment

Always be recruiting. 24/7. 365. The battle for top sales talent these days has never been harder. You always have to be recruiting. Not just when you have an opening.