From mastering coaching to embracing simplicity, this year’s standout voices in sales and leadership shared strategies for growth, integrity, and human connection in a rapidly changing world.
By Pete Mercer
It’s hard to believe that another year is coming to an end! For Repertoire Magazine, 2025 has been a powerful year of new insights and best practices for sales and leadership. As we bring 2025 to a close, we wanted to take this opportunity to revisit some of the highlights in our conversations with the thought leaders and experts who were generous enough to share their experiences with us. As always, thank you for reading and we hope you have a great holiday season.
Using coaching to change the tone of the room
There are so many ways to lead a team, but one of the most effective approaches is to incorporate coaching into your leadership method. Coaching is one of those topics that we cover a good bit, but it’s always fascinating to hear everyone’s different perspectives on how coaching works and what it looks like to incorporate into a leadership process. Aaron Keyes, an executive coach at Novus Global, discussed how an effective coach can begin to set the tone of the room and influence their surroundings.
“Authority is not a prerequisite for leadership, but a byproduct of leadership,” Keyes said. “Even someone who’s just a volunteer on their team that is actively showing integrity, making big commitments, keeping their word, and demonstrating character and competency, will begin to influence their surroundings.”
A challenging aspect of the coaching dynamic is working through feedback. While it’s rarely pleasant to get feedback, an effective coach will shape the feedback that they give you to make it fit into your next steps – you just have to be willing to hear what they are saying.
“Hypersensitivity to criticism is only going to hinder you – it’s not going to help you at all. We’ll walk with people through these discoveries, and they choose if they want to change. You can be hyper-defensive and easily offended if you want, but is that going to get you where you want to go?”
The importance of integrity
What kinds of qualities should leaders possess? Certainly, qualities like strong decision-making skills, organization, drive, and vision are things that every leader should want to possess, but one of the most important, and often forgotten, qualities is integrity. Mike Studeman, author and retired commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, defined integrity for us, saying, “Integrity has a lot of different meanings – one of them is to be honest, one is to have a moral underpinning. You operate from a moral base. Another definition, which is critical, is that integrity is about uniting, not dividing.”
In his book, Might of the Chain: Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity, he breaks down almost four dozen leadership traits and why they are essential qualities for great leaders. His perspective on integrity and leadership is shaped by his military experience. For Studeman, integrity is the difference between a good leader and a greater leader.
“I think it can be born and bred,” Studeman argued. “Everyone can have high integrity. It’s both something you might have in your genetic makeup and your upbringing, but it’s also something where you can hone it in a way that makes it better every day.”
Navigating hazardous attitudes
Author Ricky Brown shared insights from his book, The Five Hazardous Attitudes: Ways to Win the War Within, where he discusses the five hazardous attitudes taught by the Federal Aviation Administration to improve the decision-making process for pilots. According to Brown, around 80% of airplane accidents have involved one or more of the hazardous attitudes. It turns out, the same attitudes that can wreck a plane can also wreck your business, your relationships, and your marriage.
Part of the battle is identifying these hazardous attitudes.
Here are the five hazardous attitudes, broken down with their respective antidotes:
1. Anti-authority: This is the hazardous attitude of people who say, “You can’t tell me what to do.” Brown said, “The antidote for anti-authority is to user your words and say out loud, ‘Follow the rules, they’re usually right.’”
2. Invulnerability: The person with this hazardous attitude knows that consequences can happen, but they don’t believe that the consequences will affect them. The antidote for invulnerability is to say out loud, “It could happen to me.”
3. Macho: With this attitude, the person has an overinflated sense of self-ability, prompting people to take unnecessary risks. Brown’s antidote for the macho attitude is to say out loud, “Taking unnecessary risks is foolish.”
4. Impulsivity: People with impulsivity tend to act before they think. Brown said that the antidote for impulsivity is to say out loud, “Not so fast. Think first.”
5. Resignation: Resignation is the hazardous attitude that causes people to prematurely end what might have otherwise been successful. Brown’s antidote to resignation is to say out loud, “You can make a difference.”
Once you’ve identified the hazardous attitudes, you can then take steps to eradicate these attitudes and their influence within your life. He said, “It’s really an issue of self-awareness. When a person has a hazardous attitude, they are often the last person to realize it – everyone around them already knows. What I have found through coaching, training, or facilitating workshops is that identifying the hazardous attitude is the big thing.”
In his research for the book, Brown found that most of these hazardous attitudes were doing the most damage within members of leadership, which then trickles down to infect the rest of the culture at the company.
“The bridle is placed in the horse’s mouth for a reason. Wherever the head goes, so does the body. Leaders have the biggest impact – a leader’s job is to make sure they are healthy. When the leader gets better, everybody wins,” he said.
Investing in human connection
Over the course of this year, we’ve seen a rise in the utility and strength of artificial intelligence, which in and of itself is not a bad thing – what matters is how it’s used. AI can be used to simplify processes and reduce workloads, but it cannot and should not be used to replace people or human connections. In fact, human connections are more important now than ever before.
Smiley Poswolsky, keynote speaker and author of Friendship in the Age of Loneliness: An Optimist’s Guide to Connection, believes that the future of work is human connection. He said, “Many leaders still think of human connection as a soft skill, but in today’s disconnected world, human connection is not just a nice-to-have. Especially in sales, where relationships fuel success, human connection is an essential business skill that impacts the bottom line.”
Ryan Estis, keynote speaker and author of Prepare for Impact: Driving Growth and Serving Others Through the Principles of Human-Centered Leadership, believes in the power of human-centered leadership.
“I think fundamentally, people want to be seen, heard, understood and valued,” Estis said. “Leaders need to invest the time to build those high-trust relationships to nurture, care and develop people and put them in a position to be successful. That’s our responsibility, but it takes time and competency to do it.”
Building a people-centered culture that focuses on human connection requires balance between the results and the culture – you need both to successfully run a company. “If you’re going to be a leader and earn fellowship, you have to take care of people, love people, value people, and invest in people. One of the most loving, kind things you can do for people is to hold them accountable to very high standards of excellence,” Estis said.
Embracing simplicity
Of all the ways to lead a company and drive change, embracing simplicity might be one of the most overlooked methods. Lisa Bodell, founder and CEO of FutureThink, wants to help people look towards the future by embracing and encouraging simplicity.
She said, “The first thing to know about simplicity is that it isn’t only meant to drive productivity and efficiency. That will happen, but the bigger thing about simplicity is it’s a strategic advantage because it means that people can move faster, they can focus, and they have time to think.”
Too many leaders fall into the trap of trying to pursue innovation for their organization. Bodell argues that simplicity is innovative in and of itself, allowing you and your team to scale back to the essentials and focus on what works. She says that your team needs the space to shed meaningless tasks and focus on more meaningful work that will have greater impacts on things like revenue, productivity, and the bottom line.
Navigating gatekeepers
Mark Copeland, the Value Analysis Whisperer, has been in medical sales for 28 years and has been selling medical devices in hospitals and ASCs for 20 years. The moniker ‘The Value Analysis Whisperer’ stuck because of his success rate for getting products through the value analysis committee.
One of the ways he approaches coaching sessions with sales reps is to help them understand the role of the clinician by likening them to a three-star chef at a Michelin restaurant. The reality is that while their names might be on the restaurant banner, that doesn’t mean they know how to run the business.
He said, “They might know what the best ingredients are, but about three quarters of them put the restaurant out of business in a year because they don’t have business sense. That’s who you’re calling on – you’re calling on the chef, while value analysis is running the business side of the restaurant.”
Getting past the gatekeepers is one of the biggest obstacles medical sales reps face on a daily basis, making it harder to set up meetings and close deals. Copeland argues that the best way to get your foot in the door is by creating a sense of urgency. He said, “If you say, ‘Hey, you’re wasting money, you have a problem, you have an issue,’ it accelerates it because they may not know they’re wasting money each month. Now, there’s an urgency – it’s not about the product or the service, it’s about the problem. All of a sudden, they’re asking you to send a sample over.”
Developing a mastery of medical sales
Mace Horoff, author of Mastering Medical Sales – The Evolution – The Modern Playbook for Medical Sales Professionals, spoke to us about what it takes to develop a mastery of something by layering successful skills.
“Mastery is developed over time, but competency is the bare essential. It’s the same thing in medical sales – there are multiple skills involved in becoming a successful medical sales rep,” Horoff said.
The idea for layering successful skills is that you continue to develop your competency at certain skillsets, while introducing new ones into the mix. With all the resources available to the modern sales rep, it’s more accessible than ever to develop a mastery of medical sales.
“How lucky are we?” Horoff said. “We live in a time when artificial intelligence is exploding, and all these new tools are coming into the marketplace that allow you to practice in very realistic ways in private. You don’t have to do it in front of your colleagues, that role play every rep hates – but there’s no excuse not to practice now. If you want to achieve that top 1% in medical sales, you have to put in the work.”
Going Beyond the Sale
For healthcare providers, distributor representatives are far more than order-takers. As Shannon Trahan, director of sales, south region for CME Corp., explained, “Healthcare providers view distributor reps as trusted advisors.” By building strong, authentic relationships and showing they understand the everyday challenges of patient care, reps “earn a level of trust that goes way beyond transactional interactions.”
That trust is reinforced through service. According to Trahan, “The best reps act less like vendors and more like problem-solvers and partners, making the practice’s job easier and helping them focus on what matters most – patient care.”
Trahan pointed to a recent example that demonstrates this partnership in action. CME focuses exclusively on healthcare equipment, and customers rely on them to, as she said, “Deliver a Better Experience.”
One of their account managers learned late on a Friday that a long-delayed, backordered product had finally arrived. Although delivery would typically be scheduled for the next week, the customer had a facility opening on Monday.
The rep quickly teamed with CME’s project manager and warehouse staff to ensure delivery before close of business that day. As Trahan recalled, the facility opened on schedule, patients received needed care, and “the customer couldn’t have been happier.”