1. Don't sit in the open and use cover
2. Buy gold to have on hand to retrain and reset skills
3. Use situational awareness for a first skill with camo for the other two crew members unless you can have one do SA and another do recon (been long time so can't remember who does the radio operator job also)
4. Once commander skill gets to 100% reset it with gold, pick 6th sense for 1st skill and retrain next skill to what you started with
5. Use gold and retrain crew to 100% when you get the next tank
Personally, I like to use recon, sa, offroad driving, snapshot, and cameo for first skills.