When it comes to experience and skill, you may be exactly what a potential employer is looking for. But, if the person interviewing you senses you lack the passion and roll-your-sleeves-up mentality their team thrives on, you’ll likely not get the job offer. That’s because soft skills like grit, excitement, and respect are what make a stellar employee.

Customer service is the support you provide your customers before and after they purchase your product or service. Offering timely service that consistently meets customer expectations leads to a positive experience of your brand. It helps you build trust and foster long-term relationships with customers to help grow your business.

The past two years haven’t been easy—they’ve shown that true disruption is forced on businesses, not chosen. While every industry, company, and team has been disrupted in some way, no other aspect of the business world has been more affected by disruption than sales teams. Whether it’s growing customer expectations, labor shortages, digital transformations, or market uncertainty, sales professionals are facing more pressure than ever. But there is a solution: creating a connected sales organization.

In sales and business, we call the most effective salespeople a “CLOSER.” Sales can be a position that experiences the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Many people have theories about how the best salesperson outperforms their peers. But I believe that no matter what the salesperson's individual style is, there are attributes all great salespeople share. The good news is that it is possible to develop these characteristics and skills through training, study and hard effort.

For decades, salespeople have been taught that there is only one possible reason for lost sales: that salespeople have failed to defeat the customer’s status quo. Perhaps the customer doesn’t fully appreciate the problem that their solution is designed to solve. Or maybe they don’t yet see enough daylight between their company’s solution and that of the competition. So, salespeople break out their arsenal of tools to prove to the customer the many ways their solutions will help them win. And, when all else fails, they dial up the “FUD” — or, fear, uncertainty, and doubt — to tap into the customer’s fear of missing out.

What makes people feel included in organizations? Feel that they are treated fairly and respectfully, are valued and belong? Many things of course, including an organization’s mission, policies, and practices, as well as co-worker behaviors.

Group meetings can be intimidating. Lots of people, often at different levels of the organization, are sitting in one place throwing out ideas. Meetings are an opportunity to have an impact on ideas in development, but they are also a place where you can display your ignorance in front of a large group.

I know two retail store owners who learned different lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first was caught by surprise. His brick-and-mortar store was already struggling to attract customers, and the quarantine only made things worse. One by one he laid off staff, reduced the hours his store was open, discounted prices, and eventually had to close his doors for good. His lesson? Never open a store again. It’s too hard.

We can all name them: Who in your organization holds your attention when they speak up? Who can you count on to be the most engaging dinner conversationalist? What speaker do you see on a program who pulls you in? The names that come to mind are those who tell stories so well that time seems to stand still.

How can outbound sales reps stand out in a sea of competition? When every salesperson sounds the exact same, it’s time to do things differently. Dale Merrill is a highly sought-after international speaker, sales thought leader, and co-author of Strikingly Different Selling: 6 Vital Skills to Stand Out and Sell More. Dale joined the Predictable Revenue podcast to break down those six skills and how we can use them to drive revenue growth.

This past winter, my daughter learned how to snowboard. So what? Big deal. Kids do that all the time. What made this kid different, though, was how she learned: by watching YouTube videos, talking with friends who snowboard, observing others on the slopes, and then doing it (over and over again).

One negotiating technique you see used all the time is what I like to call the nibble. This occurs after you've shaken hands to close a deal, and just as you're getting ready to sign the papers to make it official, the other side tries to get one last concession on the table.

Fabian was feeling anxious as he left the leadership training course. He knew what he had to do, and yet he didn’t know how to actually do it. Fabian had been promoted up through the ranks of a global construction firm, starting in 1994 out of his university as part of a rotational management program.

The first time I interviewed Adam, he sat across from me in my office adjusting his glasses, and speaking in a low, calm tone. He didn’t radiate charisma, the way you imagine a hot shot leader would appear, with a fancy suit and tie. But I wasn’t looking for some hot shot executive either.

When applying for a job, there are many ways to optimize your resume. You can check the listing to see where the employer’s priorities lie in terms of experience, and make sure to highlight what’s most important to them, for example. You can include any major achievements like exceeding sales goals. And you can include a link to your LinkedIn profile.

Though they’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of over-relying on gut instinct and personal experience, managers keep failing to critically examine—much less challenge—the ideas their decisions are based on. To correct this problem they need to think and act like scientists. That requires doing five things: (1) being a knowledgeable skeptic and relentlessly questioning assumptions; (2) investigating anomalies—things that are unexpected or don’t look right; (3) devising testable hypotheses that can be quantifiably confirmed or disproved; (4) running experiments that produce hard evidence; and (5) probing cause and effect.

When I was a child in the 1950s, my friends and I had two educations. We had school (which was not the big deal it is today), and we also had what I call a hunter-gatherer education. We played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups almost every day after school, often until dark. We played all weekend and all summer long. We had time to explore in all sorts of ways, and also time to become bored and figure out how to overcome boredom

Many years before I fully understood extrovert and neurotypical privileges, I took part in a variety of experiential learning sessions. The ostensible goal of one of the sessions was to solve a problem as a team in a high-stakes simulation. The underlying goal was to do so in a way that made people trust you and want to work with you. The most “trustworthy” people at the end were the “winners.”

The fifth edition of Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report reveals how trust, personalisation, and digital-first experiences are increasingly central to meeting customer needs. Based on a global survey of consumers and business buyers, the report also highlights how customer expectations and behaviours have changed over time.

OK, your sales process isn't working. Now what? Change it. Change anything and everything. There are a billion reasons why you don't sell a product, and when it's a new product, it's a baby-step-and-learn process. There's just no other way.

But there is a list of potential weak points that you, as a leader, can focus on, so you're not wasting time running down dead-ends.