It’s a tale as old as time (song as old as rhyme…). Great salespeople have tremendous success and end up having people reporting to them either as the agency principal or as a sales manager only to find that the staff cannot replicate their success. The great salesperson then gets frustrated that the staff is not producing at the same level or even approaching the sales process in the way that created the success in the first place. So the question is should your top person be your agency’s sales coach?
Why does this happen? It has nothing to do with the commitment of the leader or the staff. It may not even have anything to do with a difference in skill set. It has more to do with an inability to identify and translate the items that create the success of the great salesperson into actions that can be learned by the newer sales people. It typically is a lack of ability or desire of the salesperson to be a sales manager.
The analogy that I always use is the one of the superstar athlete that fails at being a head coach. There are very few superstar athletes in the modern era that have gone on to lengthy coaching careers. There are some examples of short-term success (Larry Bird), but most either never even attempt it or have very limited and short term success.
Contrast this with some of the best coaches of all time, Bill Belichick (sorry to everyone outside of New England) , Phil Jackson (sorry to my Boston friends), Scotty Bowman, and almost every baseball manager from Sparky Anderson to Tony LaRussa. None of them had success at the major league level, yet each one of them was able to propel individual players and their teams to the top.
I don’t think there is any big secret as to why this is the case. For athletes that have had limited success themselves, there are more varied areas of their focus. Superstar athletes work very hard but they focus on their skills and what makes them great. The scrappier athlete must work harder in more areas in order to gain any advantage that they can. This ends up with them learning more about the how and why of many different areas. When it comes to helping others, they are able to lean on this experience and work with a variety of different talents and skill sets to help them be successful.
I think there is a direct analogy to the insurance industry. Great sales people know exactly what it took for them to be successful. Often they can help others that have the same style and approach because that is in their wheelhouse. However, how do they approach someone with a different style, attitude or skill set? Without having to study different ways to be successful, it is hard for them to help cultivate others to achieve the same level of success.
There are two ways to combat this. If you have the size and personnel in place to bring in a sales manager, you should be less focused on that individual’s selling ability and more focused on their ability to help others be successful. Another approach is to bring in a sales trainer that has the ability to adapt their training to different individual’s skill sets. Here is where Agency Performance Partners and our AppX Sales training program come into play. This program is specifically geared to help people bring out the best in themselves. We bring in a different perspective and can help people with a new approach. We still strongly believe in a set sales process but everyone has different strengths, so highlighting those strengths and identifying areas of improvement on which to focus are key to make your staff more successful.
What do you think? Is it better to hire a sales manager that was a great salesperson that has the accolades to demand attention from the staff or someone that has had to look at many angles and while can’t hold up their accomplishments as high but can help others be more successful?
If you’d like to know more about our AppX Sales program or any of our programs here at Agency Performance Partners, please contact us today!
