Contests and competition. Clear and actionable goals. Pride.

When it comes to your sales team, motivation can take on myriad forms. But nothing works as well as sales training that combines solid business principles with tangible tips designed to improve performance.

"Always be closing."

These are the "wise" words spoken by Alex Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross, the movie about what happens when a sales training professional is sent to motivate four real estate professionals.

The line has become ubiquitous in business, revered by young sales people and frequently repeated by people who don't really understand how to sell.

In reality, however, the phrase should probably go the way of the rotary telephone, smoking cigarettes on international flights and fighting in hockey. It's just not appropriate anymore.

The best and brightest. The most motivated. The people with the people skills.

These are things you look for when hiring a sales team. If you're lucky, you'll land a lot of people who possess these attributes. But even then, how do you make sure they're humming along like a finely tuned Indy car?

You know how it goes. Everyone on your senior leadership team gets along when the money is flowing, and everything falls apart when it's not.

When times get tight, the CFO wants to blame the COO and the director of marketing just wants to remind everyone that they have an MBA.

It gets ugly – and it's not good for business.

schism
/'s(k)izem/
noun
a split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief.

If you have a schism on your sales team, it's time to start asking yourself a few simple questions:

• Do you dread coming to work?
• Are you tired of the bickering and back-biting between colleagues?
• Is your company's bottom line suffering because of all the bad blood that exists among members of your sales team?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it's time to huddle up, call a couple of trick plays, and get your team members together on the same page of the playbook.

Has a member of your sales team ever returned from a customer call frustrated that they didn't "click?" While you may chalk it up to a difference in personalities, your salesperson isn't far off the mark. It's the failure of two brains to "click" that causes the disconnect in communication.

You've just finished your team's big sales training. You brought all the bells and the whistles. You handed out shiny folders of full-color pages of information and utilized a flashy presentation.

Now you're waiting to see the "aha" moment make its appearance – when everything that you have so painstakingly presented comes together and launches your sales team towards the biggest goal of the year.

Whole Brain Thinking involves the understanding of how the brain takes in, processes and communicates information. Implementing the whole brain thinking process can be an incredibly effective way to increase your sales' team cohesiveness and can result in:

• Better internal team communication
• Shorter and more effective meetings
• Improved customer service

...just to name a few of the benefits.

You peruse the reports. You lean back in your chair, kick your legs out in front of you, scratch your head and rub your chin. Then you throw your hands in the air and ask an age-old question:

"Why aren't we getting solid sales outcomes?"

Too often this becomes a rhetorical question. Some members of your team stare at the ground. Others stare into the distance as if they're pondering something to say, a solution. Others just shake their heads.

Starting the new year requires reflecting on the past year: where we succeeded and where we failed. The new year is a blessing because, psychologically, it allows us to start over.

"OK, I did not do what I should have done last year, but I can start over this year."

But many people have trouble starting over because they are caught in the grief or rut of their mistakes. Grieving over your mistakes is good if it leads to repentance and change of behavior. Grieving over your mistakes is a waste of time if it is full of self-pity and does not lead to change. Most grieve over their mistakes in how it affected themselves, not how it affected others. When you grieve over how it affects others, that can lead to change.