““Having spent the past decade leading and consulting sales teams, I’ve come to the painful conclusion that salespeople are ill-equipped to successfully attack the marketplace for new business. That’s a big statement, but here’s why I believe it is true for the vast majority of the current generation of sales professionals: Most people employed in sales positions today have never truly had to “hunt” for new accounts or new business. Why? Because big chunks of their sales careers to date have been during long seasons of economic prosperity. Most of the 1990s and the period from 2002 through 2007 were boom times. There was incredible demand for what many of us were selling. Salespeople could get away with being passive or reactive and still deliver the numbers.””