Here we go – a new calendar for sales ops leaders. What will you do with it? More of the same? More band-aids and short-term solutions? More shelf-ware (products you buy with good intentions that end up living on a shelf instead of getting used)? Or more strategies, tactics, and solutions? Evolution or Revolution? Will you create/foster evolution? Will you incite a revolution? What does your company need most? There is no universal answer for what is the best route to take – when the company and team needs to evolve itself, the processes, and toolkit, and when you need to burn things to the ground and rebuild from the bottom up. Will this be the year you finally put in a CRM that matches your size, scale, and needs as a company? Or will this be the year you put in accountability and expectations to get your team to ACTUALLY use the CRM you already have and pay for? Real Training for Real Results Will this be the year you provide your leadership with leadership training and your salespeople with real sales training? Not the in-house stuff you keep trying to do or the assumption that if you hired the right people they should know what to do (which is not how humans and employees work). Or the ‘free’ online content you share with your team. But real, impactful and actionable training for your leaders and teams, like what I provide for companies. Will this be the year that you build an intentional and effective recruiting process that identifies and moves forward the candidates that will have the best chance of being that successful salesperson that your team needs? Will you build tests and hoops that allow you to identify a candidate’s true nature versus the nice, smooth, successful sales story they tell you in the interviews? Sales Processes: Best Practices or Best Excuses? Will this be the year that you build a sales process based on best practices of the right, successful salespeople on your team and roll it out as a required process, instead of as an option and/or nice to have sales process? Will you actually hold your paid employees to a standard that you know generates consistent, profitable results? Or will you continue to let your salespeople convince you that salespeople don’t need ‘scripts’ and processes (“Just let me do what I do best – show up and talk people into buying things.”)? Will this be the year that you hold you build in automated tech solutions for ensuring that your prospects and leads are moving through the pipeline in a consistent way? Will this be the year you hold your team accountable for making their follow up calls? Will this be the year you drive down your acquisition cost by making the most of the leads that already fill the sales pipeline? Leads and Reps: Not All Are Equal Will this be the year that you realize that not all leads are created equal, and not all salespeople should be treated the same? Where a lead in the hand on one rep could lead to significantly better results for everyone involved (including the potential customer), but in the hands of someone else it will statistically lead to nothing? Will this be the year you stop running the team like a communist-democracy (yes, I made that up), where everyone has a vote and they all feel like things should be fair, despite effort and results? Will this be the year that your team understands that their sales job doesn’t end once the deal is closed, an agreement is signed, partial or full payment is made? That the sale never stops? That your company and the customer only care about long term success, not the short-term benefit of a closed sale? Will this be the year that you help them do more, including after the ‘sale’ is done? Will this be the year that you fully leverage a mission, vision, and core values to ensure the right people are on the team and the wrong people identify themselves for removal? Will you use this to help facilitate change easier by anchoring everyone to both a destination (mission/vision) as well as the road map to get there (values)? The Hope for 2025 I hope for you, your team, your leaders, your company, and most of all – your future customers that you do all of the above (over the next 12 months). I hope you put these things in place, so your team can do less of the things that get in the way and more of the things that AI still can’t replace – helping other scared, confused, worried humans (prospects) who have goals, hopes, dreams, and a place they would rather be make the right, best decision for themselves. Here is your success in 2025!

The new year has rung in and feels like it is coming in at full speed. Here is my list of what your team most likely needs from you in 2025: Wisdom Guidance More Leadership Empathy Motivation Let’s run through each one, so you know what I think the focus should be. Wisdom Your team has information (just like your prospective customers). They have access to all the worlds knowledge – on your product, on sales, about human behavior. Whether they choose to utilize it or they want to just learn enough to be good enough to perform at some level that fits their mode – that is different. They don’t need you for information or facts, features, and data. They should already have that for your company in the forming of training, a knowledge base, your website, the brochure, your slides, etc. They are hoping that you bring the wisdom aspect into your role with them. They want you to help them do the right things with the knowledge and information. They are looking for the practical application of that info, that will help them succeed in their role. Stop giving them more data points, info, and stuff. Guidance Again, just like your prospects, your salespeople think they are the Hero of the story. They don’t need you to be the Hero as well. Stop telling them about how great you were as a sales rep, or all the things you would have done differently in that sale they failed to close. Be a Guide, not a Hero, for them. Guide them in their mission and help them succeed. Make it all about them and show them the path that they could take. But remember – it’s their path. You can’t jump in and close every sale for them. They have to learn – typically the hard way (falling down) – on their own so they can achieve their success. Make their mission and their journey about them and not you. More Leadership Your team wants leadership from you. And then more of it. They want less management. Management is about pushing and manipulation in order to get what you want. Leadership is about a vision and mission – destination – and pulling people on the journey along with you. If you need, study leadership to help you achieve a good balance of leading and managing (some amount of managing is always needed). You can also read all the leadership-related blog articles on here. :) To lead better, you will want to do more of the two following categories. Empathy Empathy is about encountering someone – where they are currently – discovering where they would rather be, and then caring about them enough to find ways to support them on their path. Not your path. Not your destination. But theirs. It’s the best skill you can have as a salesperson, and go figure – it is also vital for leadership (not a surprise…since persuasion is about leadership of the prospect). A lot of leaders I see think they know what each salesperson wants (money) and assume that they know how the salesperson will want to get there. Make sure you help your people get to where THEY want to get to. If you aren’t sure how to do that, see Hero section above – make it all about them, and not you. Motivation Even when they want you to show them the money, it’s not about the money. It’s what the money represents and/or will get them. But it’s never about the actual money part. Get to know what each person wants AND the why behind it. Go as deep as you can. Find out what they get out of bed each day for…and where the role and financial aspects of it fit in with what they want more of in their life. Again…if you haven’t noticed a theme yet - make it all about them! (Not about how much money you wanted to make when you were as salesperson, and what you spent that money on. No one cares about you…they only care about themselves.)  Conclusion When you focus on these five things (which are really subcategories of the same generally thing – Leadership) – you will fill in the gaps your team has, which should propel them to closing more deals and making more money. Which is also your goal for them!