There’s a whole lot more to recruiting the right person for your team than just matching resumes to job descriptions. It’s about cultivating experiences and creating an impression that goes beyond a mere transaction. In today’s candidate-led job market, your company’s reputation matters—a lot. Many of the people who have the power to influence your reputation are those you’re recruiting. It’s not just about the role you’re filling anymore; it’s also about building relationships.

Sales teams are vital to business growth, yet they often face high turnover and low morale. Effective sales training programs not only enhance performance but also play a crucial role in boosting employee morale and retention. Investing in sales training provides salespeople with the skills and confidence they need, reducing stress and increasing job satisfaction. Research indicates that companies with robust sales training programs experience significantly lower turnover rates, with improved employee income and retention.

The Olympic motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter,” roughly translated to “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together,” reads like a motivational quote for sales teams and their leaders. But that’s not the only inspiration that can be taken from the Olympics and the many ways that athletes prepare themselves for the rigor of the Games.

Motivation is a big factor in sales, and it should be simple. But is it? If you’re in sales and honest with yourself, you know that self-excuses are everywhere. All sellers have rationalizations that follow them around like a bad cold if they allow it. This isn’t a good time to approach XYZ client. They won’t want to buy this. This costs too much.

Traditional leadership approaches are destroying innovation potential at an alarming rate, with 76% of employees reporting their best ideas die in bureaucratic approval processes. In my two decades coaching Fortune 500 executives, I’ve witnessed how outdated leadership practices consistently undermine creative potential and organizational growth.

The greatest threat to your organization’s success isn’t your competition—it’s your leadership style driving top talent out the door. In my work coaching senior executives, I’ve documented a concerning pattern: leaders often remain blind to the behaviors that prompt their most valuable employees to quietly plan their exits.

Scratching my head at these and similar statements, I wonder, “If you are doing everything right, then it should be working! That’s how designing and executing your GTM/selling strategies work! If it isn’t producing the desired outcome, then there is something flawed in the design or in what you are doing!”

Historically, the interaction between the credit collections department and the sales team has been an adversarial relationship. The credit collections team believes that salespeople have no concern for collections and just want to sell to anyone to make commissions and meet quotas. The sales team sees the credit collections department as an obstacle to opening new accounts and closing deals.

I’ve seen a series of posts offering tricks and techniques to eliminating objections. Every day, we see experts commenting on objections, “how to overcome them, how to handle them, how to eliminate them.” Objections are often positioned as a battle between sellers and the customer, with our objective to prevail, defeating the customers’ objections

These are examples of objections we often hear in the middle to the end of the sales cycle. One thing that hasn’t changed in the wake of COVID-19 is the necessity of sales professionals to respond effectively to buyer objections. Objections are explicit communications from a prospect that they are resisting or not planning to move forward with a purchase, which become a barrier to advancing and closing the sale.

Some of the best sales organizations use role-play to sharpen their skills. Role-play is a powerful tool because it allows sales teams to practice the language they need to use. Sales is a conversation. Sales managers who emphasize role-play provide their teams a safe place to find the right words—or borrow them from other sales reps who have mastered their talk tracks.

Sales professionals in the media industry face unique challenges. With a constantly evolving landscape of digital platforms, content marketing strategies, and client needs, mastering the art of the sale requires more than just product knowledge and industry insight. To stand out, media sales professionals must hone their communication, negotiation, and problem-solving skills. One of the most effective ways to do this? Role-playing.

Creating realistic and engaging role-play scenarios is crucial for sales training as it helps participants develop and refine their skills in a controlled, practice-based environment. Below, I provide two detailed examples of role-play scenarios that can be used in sales training workshops, each aimed at enhancing different aspects of the sales process.

“If you can’t do it yourself, you probably shouldn’t be using AI!” This was a brilliant observation by James Pursey in an outstanding seminar on AI in sales. The only modification I would make would be to say, “If you can’t do it excellently yourself, you probably shouldn’t be using AI!”

Sitting there, sipping on your fourth coffee, staring at your CRM like it’s about to magically sprout leads. Hitting refresh on your inbox like the sales gods are about to drop a golden opportunity straight into your lap. Your pipeline? Drier than a gas station turkey sandwich. Your sales team? One bad month away from collective burnout. Your boss? Asking why leads aren’t flowing in like the Nile while you try not to throw your laptop out the window.