Hope is not a strategy.

Hope without meaningful action is insanity.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein.

You know what most CEOs, VPs of Sales and HR does when an under-performing salesperson or Sales Wolf (or one in-between) leaves?

They do little or nothing more than look for a replacement. And that is a waste.

Choosing to not study what went well and what did not is recipe for repeating sins of the past. 

That is insanity.

Never miss the powerful lessons only an autopsy feedback loop will provide.

Long story short.

A strong economic storm is brewing. 

The second longest economic expansion in US history is about to end. 

Are you and your sales team positioned to capitalize on the next recession or become a victim like so many?

Dear Ship Captain...

As CEO or VP of Sales of your company, who possibly could have more influence than you in shaping the future of your company?

One or more of these folks:

• HR.
• Recruiters.
• Hiring Sales Managers.

And chances are the influence is not positive despite their best intentions.  

That is unless you are truly maximizing shareholder value by ensuring that every single salesperson is unquestionably a Sales Wolf - a future top 20 percentile performer.

There is only one way to know.  Read on. 

The role of the CEO or VP of Sales.

Let's get this out of the way.  

Your role as the CEO or VP of Sales is to maximize shareholder value.

Are you?

Are you doing whatever it takes to maximize shareholder value?

Interested people do what is convenient. Committed people do whatever it takes.

What gets in our way.

It is no wonder we struggle. We get in our own way.

Our mindsets, our mental models, our past experiences, our habits, our perspective, our biases and our own arrogance get in our own way. Each contribute to slowing us down from getting what we really want.

Human beings are comfort-seeking creatures. 

Once a way of doing something is identified that brings the desired results we often shut our minds off from other possibilities - to other ways. In our personal lives and especially in business, moats are often built to protect the way something is done.

Management systemizes ways of doing something into processes and punishes those who dare to think outside-the-box.

Meanwhile, a competitor who neither cares about comfort, nor relationships, nor history nor moats identifies a better way that is more efficient, less costly and creates more value.

History if full of competitors who burned their own boats.

Long story short.

It's not right to pay someone else to develop content and then represent it as original.

Longer story.

I have often marveled at how some consultants seem to be busy as hell yet seemingly possess a superhuman discipline and creativity to pound out decent content.

For some their "secret" is ghostwriters.

A ghostwriter is paid to develop content that is credited to another person. Many blogs and books are written by ghostwriters in a manner to appear as if another actually wrote them. 

This is a common practice.

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing." - Vince T. Lombardi

Coach Vincent T. Lombardi's words are burned into my soul. 

If you truly intend to achieve peak performance mindset in sales...

Then do the following without compromise:

• Hire only those salespeople who possess a winning mindset for a particular sales role.
• Coach, encourage, inspire, motivate and honor the greatness in your salespeople to help them maximize their potential.

Merriam Webster formally added "dumpster fire" to their online dictionary this week.  

Full disclosure.

I am an Appleholic. I love, love, LOVE EVERYTHING Apple.

Apple's products and ecosystem are simple, elegant, intuitive and productivity magnifiers. And in case you are unaware, Apple makes products their Customers should want.

Ten years ago we went from recycling tired laptops / PCs every two years to buying and keeping Apple's MacBooks and iMacs.

You are a working sales manager. Your salespeople see you in the trenches right by their side. You hustle and grind with them. You are flexible and perhaps even benevolent.

You have their backs perhaps even to the point where you let it slide when they don't use that expensive CRM software very much (or at all) or make the calls they should be making to deliver the quarter.

You remember that one time they slayed it and they remember how much you care.

But that is not what I mean by "sense care".

What I mean is, do your salespeople sense that you actually have meaningful standards that are non-negotiable? 

Or are you so nice that everything is negotiable?

The 2018 sales sprint begins!

Is your mindset ready? How about the mindset of your sales team?

Are you and your sales team taking the necessary actions that will crush 2018?

Are you and your sales team using proper form?