Tripods are considered to be the most stable devices. A three-legged stool, a tripod, will support a person regardless of the surface under it. Remove any of the legs and the stable device becomes treacherously unstable.

The three legs of sales success are:

LEADERSHIP 

"If I always do what I've always done, I will have less than I've ever had before. My customers and competitors are moving on."

COMPENSATION

"Tie your compensation to your expectations. This is the cardinal rule of sales compensation, one every company violates."

1. In what ways is your compensation program encouraging the activities you want your salespeople engaged in? In what ways is it discouraging those activities?
2. What are the short-term incentive elements of your compensation programs? Are they supporting the long term elements you will be introducing later?
3. How does your current comp program contribute to the bottom line? Does it include rewards for sales cost controls?

 TRAINING

"Your salespeople are having their axes dulled more frequently than ever. They are facing new objections from buyers who are better at buying than most salespeople are at selling." 

1. In-house, DIY (do it yourself) sales training needs to be conducted weekly.
2. Divide your training between 1) Product, 2) Soft Skills and 3) Administrative. A good mix is usually 40%, 40%, 20% respectively.
3. Product training should stress 1) Qualified and quantified feature-benefit analysis and 2) Applications/Solutions, especially as they apply to new or different customer problems. 
4. Soft skills training can be taught by your worst performer. For instance, if you want training on time management, look at your team. Whoever is currently the worst at time management will be your trainer. They will have to learn the subject well enough to teach it and, as a result, will become one of your better performers.
5. Having trouble getting call reports? Some expense reports looking shabby? in internal communication breaking down? Use the weekly training session to reinstruct, instigate conversation and find better ways of administering the sales process.