Paul "Bear" Bryant said, "If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That's all it takes to get people to win."

Lou Holtz said, "If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today."

Bobby Knight said, "The key is not the will to win … everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important."

Earl Weaver said, "The key step for an infielder is the first one, but before the ball is hit.

Tommy Lasorda said, "Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure."

So, what do you say to motivate your team? And are you aware of what people receive from working for you? Long gone are the days when it was considered productive to "rough up" and threaten a sales team. One thing is certain in today's market: Most anyone on your team can go online and find another job. The issue is not "we need them" or "they need us," it's "what can we do together?"

Things have changed and so should we. The biggest motivator I have found in the area of creating change and increasing revenue is what I call Vision Building. As managers, we must help the team members set a new vision for where they want to go. Help them see that they can have more, share more, and generally do more in life. And they can use their success on the job as the path.

You should routinely sit with your team and explore what they want out of life – then help them get there. Most leaders have a vision of where we want to go in life and what we want to happen. Surprisingly, many of our sales team members don't. Part of our job is to help them and in doing so we improve our own chances for success. Start with a very basic private meeting with each person on the team. Let them know that you are going to be very open with them and share your vision with them. Next, ask them to be open with you and to share what they would like to have. What you may hear are things like, a new home, a better car, a kid's college education, or even help with a parent. Now, let's take those "needs" and tie them to revenue goals.

From that point forward, each meeting should target the sales rep's vision tied to the revenue goal the company needs. For example, it's not bringing in the Johnson account – it's now the down payment on the rep's dream home. People come to work for very personal reasons, and the more we help them get there, the more revenue they bring in. Let's coach them toward their vision and win our revenue goals in the process.