People in general feel beaten down when they feel out of control. Understand, and this is my perspective, feeling out of control is a result of a decision. That decision being to be ‘out of control'. In other words, if a sales team spends its time and effort talking and worrying about the economy, then that means they spend less time doing what they can be doing to generate revenue. It's a choice. At the annual BISA conference, one of the keynote speakers from the Wharton School of Business made it clear that the marketplace did shrink but it didn't shrink to zero. What does this mean? It simply means that being successful is harder today than it was 18 months ago. Your role as a sales manager or sales person is to:

• Make it clear that failure to execute is not an option.
• Make sure that your people understand that you know it's tough but you didn't hire them to sell just when it was easy.
• Develop different ways to approach the market that is now different.
• Set higher standards, not lower them.
• Be accountable to 100% effort and execution.

Yes, they might get a little PO'd but usually that puts some swagger in the step and gets rid of the stagger. They take on an attitude of "I'll show you". And that is exactly what you are looking for, John.

Source: http://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/