Before I share some crucial sales selection tips, I need to begin with some baseball. My apologies to all of my cricket and soccer obsessed readers.

My team, the Boston Red Sox, just lost their seventh consecutive game. They are in last place and heading for their third last place finish in the past four years. The outlier year was 2013, when they won the World Series. I think there was far less talent on that championship team than on this year’s edition, but the 2013 team had a rallying cry (Boston Strong) and everyone overachieved. You can’t count on everyone overachieving each year, so in lieu of that, as Jim Collins would say, you must have the right people in the right seats.