Increasingly, you hear the argument being made that CEOs need to allow their employees to do more — that is to say, to take part in the leadership process. The upshot? As the senior leader, it’s no longer about asking your team to blindly execute a job description or tasks you feed to them and judge them by, then wonder why they seem less than engaged.

About half of all sales reps don’t achieve their yearly quotas. Reasons for not hitting quota vary from not having enough opportunities in the sales pipeline to not following a sales process. Additionally, sales quotas have risen, yet the percentage of reps making their quota has fallen. If your salespeople aren’t hitting quota, here are a few questions to ask yourself.

Every week, you communicate a variety of messages to your bosses, employees and customers. Many of your ideas are aimed at creating a better future — that’s what leaders do! But will your ideas work? Will they be understood and acted on? You’ve likely witnessed or lived through change initiatives that don’t achieve the desired results. Why is that? In some cases, the leader’s ideas weren’t fully vetted. In other situations, the poor results were due to ineffective communications.

There is a never-ending search for the “magic bullet” in sales: something sales organizations and salespeople can buy, practice, or even say to bypass all the hard work of earning their client’s business. The market continually dangles shiny objects in front of us, all 110% guaranteed to answer the challenges of acquiring clients and growing revenue. But history shows us that there is no magic bullet, and no substitute for hard work and good strategy.

As you read this, many of the people on your team may be plotting their escape. A recent Gallup poll found that 54 percent of workers are “psychologically unattached to their work and company” — and that makes them very hard to rally to your cause. Across the American economy, those disengaged employees translate into billions of dollars of losses.

What takes a long time to build and a short time to destroy? Trust. One of the greatest attributes a leader can acquire is the ability to build trust. Even though competency is part of the trust formula, trust isn’t gained by being the hardest worker, having the most seniority or being the most skilled at a particular job.

Imagine you are tapped on the shoulder to lead an upcoming training program for a cohort of soon-to-be first-time managers in your organization. You’re probably flattered, excited and just a bit nervous. While you’ve been successful as a manager, it’s daunting to think about how you will translate your experiences into lessons these new managers can learn from and apply.

Lead Change is a leadership media destination with a unique editorial focus on driving change within organizations, teams, and individuals. Lead Change, a division of Weaving Influence, publishes twice monthly with SmartBrief. Today’s post is by Michelle Ray. Six days before the world shockingly and unexpectedly shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was enjoying a lovely breakfast with a young woman named Chelsea.

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with an executive. It was a large organization. By most measures, it was extremely successful. Year after year of good (perhaps not great) revenue growth, good profitability. They checked all the boxes the financial markets tend to care about and it was reflected in their stock price. But the executive was uncomfortable. As we peeled back his concerns and started looking at the data, we discovered some interesting things:

Building trust virtually, finding qualified leads, getting in front of the decision-makers — these are all challenges that salespeople face. And as a sales manager, you’re finding innovative ways to address these issues. However, to become more effective in your role and provide a better overall direction for the entire team, it’s important to know the current challenges that sales managers face as well.

Could you be solving the wrong sales problem? In other words, is the culprit behind a lack of sales the real issue or an easy “scapegoat,” which is masking the real problem? If this is occurring in your business, or any business for the matter, it could spell trouble. Trying to “fix” something that isn’t broken only to have the real problem go unaddressed is a recipe for disaster.

It’s become high fashion to declare the future of selling is “virtual.” While F2F, telephone, text, and other approaches will continue to exist, everything is moving to virtual. Usually, there’s a whole bunch of data to support why this is important. For example, sales people can make back to back sales calls through the whole day.

Mindfulness, a key component of Buddhist philosophy, has become quite in vogue today. Get on the right path by asking yourself one question. As a leader, it is critical to be mindful and present in interactions with your many stakeholders throughout the day. While this is very easy to understand in theory, it is incredibly difficult to do in practice.

The best sales teams get into an aligned operating rhythm and execute using agreed-upon best practices. So many sales organizations operate with frontline sales managers “doing their own thing.” It reminds me of the times I spent watching my step-daughter’s Pee Wee/youth soccer games when she was growing up. She played in an all-girl league, and wherever the ball rolled, the ponytails followed.

Even when this CEO didn’t hit all of his objectives, keeping a “go big” mentality helped him get closer to where he wanted to be. It might sound elementary, but our anecdotal evidence shows that companies actively setting big goals typically leads to business growth and sustainability.