Marketers over-index on crafting the perfect positioning framework. The real work is in collaborating with sales and demand gen to ensure the messaging is understood, tested, and consistently used across the company.

Don't passively wait for marketing to create materials. To increase your win rate, you must be a primary source of intelligence for the marketing team. Actively supply them with the specific challenges and problems you hear from customers, enabling them to create highly relevant and effective content.

Leaders often expect reps to drive one-on-ones, but the best leaders prepare beforehand with a clear point of view and desired outcomes, treating their reps like internal customers who deserve preparation.

A sales leader's job isn't to ask their team how to sell more; it's to find the answers themselves by joining sales calls. Leaders must directly hear customer objections and see reps' mistakes to understand what's really happening. The burden of finding the solution is on the leader.

The best salespeople succeed because they rely on their natural, authentic style rather than rigid scripts from sales books. Jen Abel estimates 90% of salespeople fail by trying to adopt someone else's playbook, which feels artificial to buyers and commoditizes their approach.

Don't force a new rep to build relationships by playing golf just because a veteran does. Instead, codify the process goal (e.g., build rapport for deeper conversations) and empower reps to find their own authentic methods (the art) to achieve it.

Don't dictate messaging from an ivory tower or leave reps to figure it out from scratch. Leaders should provide the core framework and initial examples (the first 80%). Reps, who get real-time market feedback, should then be responsible for the final 20% of tweaking.

Reps are overwhelmed with different messaging frameworks for calls, emails, and social media. Simplify enablement and boost consistency with one universal model: Trigger (why now?), Tension (the problem/why change?), and Trust (social proof/why you?). This structure works across all outbound channels.

True sales leadership advantage comes from the ability to operate on two levels simultaneously: thinking strategically about growth while also providing tactical, immediately applicable skills to the team. This dual focus ensures that broad company goals are translated into concrete actions that reps can use to win deals.