Dan Burtt

You should highlight the costs of waiting and incentives they might miss, but reassurance is also key. The client has to be ready to give you 3 yes's: Yes to your product, from you, right now. Often, the yes to buying right now is a forgone conclusion if you've done a great job with the other two yes's, so establishing the value of your product and the safety they receive with of your involvement in the sale are huge! When do people want to start receiving great value? Yesterday, right? If your product is amazing and fits their needs, but they want to stall, then it's you they fear and you have to overcome that by reassuring them you're safe. People go from insecure, to confident, along the road of reassurance.

Resilience sounds like a lot of work, but really it's a pretty simple mindset. The sky is blue, the birds are chirping, and problems are inevitable. Water is wet, but it's not something toxic to fear. If you step in a puddle, shake it off and continue. No matter what, always build opportunity so if something goes sideways, the loss is a small percentage of what you have brewing.

The hardest part of collaboration is not sharing what you have learned - it is making people safe to share what they think and feel. Many people hold back, and you never know who has the key to the solution.

Being a great problem solver starts with asking great questions and digging underneath to find real pain. This only works when someone is a great listener, which is by far the most important part of communication. When you listen well, what you say can be very little, because it will be perfectly on point.

Compensation may be the #1 factor in predicting the success of a sales team. Training, systems, ops support, etc. are useless if the sales team isn't engaging the prospects with passion. Mission statements are great, but cash is better! Sales people are competitive and keep score with dollars. Smart leaders WANT their top sales people to earn more than them because this creates loyalty and consistent hunger throughout the team. I suggest a reasonable base salary that covers, 'I gotta' costs, like food and shelter, because it clears stressful thoughts so they can focus on work; plus, align with the goals of the company an aggressive variable comp package that helps them attain their, 'I get to' costs, like vacations to Bali!

It really, really depends on the leadership of the department and company. When a company is hyper focused on the next quarter's numbers, and little else, leaders will double down on outdated tech/processes, push their team very hard, and shame them when they are not successful. This results in continuous turnover that can go on for years. Good leaders brainstorm, listen to all stake holders, and accept good ideas from any and every source. They accept that change may cause a quarter to fall short of target, but endeavor to recover losses in future quarters via the promise of the new tech/process.