Are your reps selling with a “Ready – Fire – Aim” philosophy? Artwork

Sales Leadership with Jim Pancero

Jim Pancero has been influencing, guiding, and inspiring sales professionals in more than 80 different industries to increase sales, market share and profitability. Jim's combination of humor, larger-than-life personality, outstanding research and real-world examples that hit home, provide even experienced sales pros who think they've heard it all, with strategies and concepts that work! Your sales team will be charged up and ready to go...and your company and customers will reap the rewards. Time with Jim is time well spent. Watch your productivity and profitability soar! https://pancero.com

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Sales Leadership with Jim Pancero

Are your reps selling with a “Ready – Fire – Aim” philosophy?

October 16, 2026 • Jim Pancero • Season 5 • Episode 66

0:00 | 1:33

One of the ways, as a sales leader, that we can increase the effectiveness of our sales team is to make sure they have the best habits of selling, that they’re selling more as a process instead of events.

The reality is most sales reps are just too intuitive giving them a tendency to want to immediately decide or take action…a philosophy of ready, fire, aim.

You go up to them and you give them a sales lead. What’s the first thing they’ll do? Most will just pick up the phone and call the customer. Because they have a new lead.

They won’t do any research online to see anything about the company. They won’t do research on LinkedIn to see what they can learn about the individual’s name they have.

And they won’t even look at their past records to see if this person has ever been a client of your company before taking action and calling. Ready, fire, aim.

What we need to do as sales leaders to help increase the effectiveness of our sales team is to make sure that they’re more process complete focused in what they do.

That we break this habit of ready, fire, aim, this immediacy that you get a sales lead, the first thing you do is pick up the phone and call them. That we do some research. We understand more about the clients.

When we do call them, we’re more effective. We’re more persuasive. And we impress the customer or prospect that we understand their business because we did our homework.

What could you do to make sure your team is not following this old philosophy of ready, fire, aim?

What are the important jobs of a sales manager and leader of a sales team is to make sure that we change habits. Hi, I'm Jim Pancero, helping you and your team be more effective in selling your day. And one of the ways, as a sales leader, that we can increase the effectiveness of our sales team is to make sure they have the best habits of selling that they're selling more as process instead of events.

The reality is, most sales reps are just way too intuitive. So they have this immediacy of decision making where they have a philosophy of ready fire, and you go up to them and you give them a sales lead, what's the first thing they'll do? Most will just pick up the phone and call the customer because they have a new lead.

They won't do any research online to see anything about the company. They won't do research on LinkedIn to see what they could learn about the individual's name they have, and they won't even look at their past records to see if this person has ever been a client of your company. Ready. Fire! Aim! What we need to do is sales leaders to help increase the effectiveness of our sales team, is to make sure that they're more process complete, focused in what they do.

That we break this habit of ready, fire, aim, this immediacy, that you get a sales lead, the first thing you do is pick up the phone and call them that. We do some research. We understand more about the client. So when we do call them, we're more effective, we're more persuasive, and we impress the customer across picked that we understand their business because we did her homework.

What could you do to make sure your team is not following this old philosophy of ready, fire, aim.