Your Manager Sucks!!! – At Training
But you need to suck it up, buttercup.
Your manager probably sucks at training. But it is going to be fine anyway. Why? Because at the end of the day, your success is 100% dependent on your efforts. There is a dirty little secret that prevails throughout the entire sales profession. Most “sales managers” have no idea how to recruit, manage, and train a sales force when they are first promoted. In fact, most sales managers got to their position with their company by being a “top-notch” producer. Let me ask you a question, “Who was the last great athlete that you can remember that was also a great coach?” To answer that question I think you have to go all the way back to the mid-1980s to Mike Ditka of the Chicago Bears. Ditka is one of the few examples of someone who was great in both roles. I’m not sure why most sales organizations think that their people can accomplish something that even Michael Jordan struggled with. MJ was arguably the best player ever to hold a basketball but was a lousy coach. The great sales organizations get this disconnect and truly help their new managers. They provide their newly minted managers with ample training and keep expectations reasonable until they grow into their role. Unfortunately, most sales organizations don’t. Instead, they change the title on their producer’s business card and tell them to, “Go get ‘em!”
The reason Jordan wasn’t a great coach was two-fold:
- He was an amazing, naturally gifted athlete.
- He had an inner drive and competitiveness that very few people in history have ever shown.
Listen, I’m not discounting the endless hours MJ spent practicing. They certainly were a huge factor in his success. What I am trying to convey is that he was so good that he was almost unconscious when he played. He never had to “think about” what his next step was going to be, or where he was going to pull up to take the shot. It just flowed out of his being. So consequently he had trouble passing it along as a coach to his team. Can you imagine trying to teach someone how to do something you do naturally? Think about how you would teach someone to breathe. “O.k. First, you move your diaphragm downward…. Wait, what? You don’t know what your diaphragm is? Well, let’s try this… Just expand your ribcage and… well….just breath!”
But I am convinced that his inner drive was more detrimental to his coaching than his giftedness as an athlete. He expected every one of his players to exhibit the same level of commitment that he had when he was playing. He often got frustrated when his players didn’t give the same all-out onslaught of competitive fire that he was famous for. Most sales managers also struggle with this concept. I know I do. I often want the success for that new agent more than they seem to want it for themselves.
I’m not excusing your manager for their lack of effectiveness. Ultimately they are going to have to commit to learning how to recruit, lead and train their team. What I am cautioning you against is putting your family’s financial future in the hands of your manager. If you don’t succeed, chances are that they are still going to be able to pay their mortgage. I’m sure they care about you and want your success, but I wouldn’t count on this alone to make YOUR mortgage. So if you can’t count on your manager to train you, what can you do to make sure you have every chance at success? Train yourself. Here’s how!
Tim’s 9 Steps To Training Yourself
- Stop whining and suck it up! – You have the opportunity of a lifetime staring you in the face. If anyone told you it was going to be easy, they lied! It is going to be hard. Only 11% of new agents survive their first two years in the insurance industry. Some carriers are better. Some are worse. The reality is that none of them have a success rate that is exciting. That’s the bad news. The good news is that anyone who is absolutely committed to success in this industry can not only survive, I am convinced they can thrive. I have seen way too many “marginally talented” new agents (including myself) have unbelievably great success to believe that YOU can’t be successful. The only question is, “Will you pay the price?”
- Shadow every successful agent you can. – It never ceases to amaze me how generous and open the top producers in our industry are. Don’t wear these people out. But if you ask them to go on one of their upcoming appointments or enrollments, they will be happy to have you join them. Especially if you tell them upfront that you aren’t expecting a penny from them. You just want to learn from the master! A word of caution: They probably aren’t any better at training than your manager. But just watching them will give you ideas. Take their best and forget the rest. Repeat this process with as many high producers as you possibly can.
- Avoid the losers. – I know that is harsh to call someone a loser but they exist. In every sales organization, there are a handful of people that have been around 3, 6, 9 months or longer that have hardly sold anything. Yet new agents will try to pick their brains. The only reason to speak to these people is to find out what they are doing and then do the exact opposite!!! I’m not kidding.
- Read. – According to my own research by polling hundreds of salespeople over the years, approximately 80% of salespeople have never read a single book on sales. As a VB salesperson, you have the opportunity to make a solid six-figure income. I was talking to a friend of mine who is a family doctor. After he pays his student loans, office expenses, salaries of his staff, etc. he barely clears $100,000 a year. I would guess that you expect that your doctor has read at least one book on medicine. When I have confronted my agents over the years, as to why they weren’t reading, their response was that they were too busy. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!? Busy doing what? It wasn’t counting their money, I promise you that. The best news about reading is that you already have access to a doctorate level of education in sales at your public library.
- Invest in yourself. – I know that many people reading this are new agents that haven’t made much money yet. The natural tendency for these people is to say things like, “As soon as I can afford to go to that seminar, I will be sitting in the front row.” Or, “I can’t afford that coaching program.” But the reality is that if you don’t invest in yourself who will? How can you expect to ever be able to afford the help you need unless you go get it first? It is very similar to investing in your retirement. You can’t expect to earn interest and have investment gains unless you have actually put some money into your brokerage account. I have spent literally tens-of-thousands of dollars in sales seminars and conferences. I also have bought and read about 800 books (and counting) on sales. (I personally buy sales books instead of going to the library because I want to be able to mark them up and share them with my team.) I started making these investments long before I could afford them. In 1998 I attended my first sales seminar. It was a full-day Brian Tracey training in Seattle, Washington. It cost $299 that I didn’t have. The fact was that I was dead broke. I put it on a credit card and was amazed that the charge cleared. That seminar changed my life. I used one of Brian’s techniques that very week to close a group that had stiff-armed me several times before. My commissions on that account were just North of $3,000. Talk about an immediate return on investment! But the total ROI on that seminar is incalculable. I continue to use the things I learned from that experience today! The same thing applies to every seminar and conference I have attended since.
- Learn your product. – My first sales manager, David Stewart beat this concept into me. He told me that the key to success is knowing your product inside and out. I’m not sure I completely agree with David. I think understanding the sales process is more important. Having said that, knowing your product inside and out will give you unbelievable confidence. I am a huge believer that confidence leads to competence and vice-versa. A word of caution here. You don’t need to know EVERY product your carrier has the day you start. My advice is that you shouldn’t even attempt to sell more than three to four products in your first year in the business. Some of my best enrollments have been where I have offered only two products. If your carrier is like most insurance companies, they generate 80-90% of their total sales on just a couple of their offerings. Why get bogged down becoming an expert on something you probably aren’t going to sell?
- Don’t ask to be transferred. – Unless your manager is lying, cheating, or stealing from you. There is a great temptation for new agents to see a different sales manager inside the organization that they are convinced would be better to work with. Their team seems to be run better. They are making more sales and seem to be having more fun. I promise there is someone in their organization that is wishing they could be on the same team you are on. The grass is always greener elsewhere. Don’t buy into it. Over the last 16 years, against my advice, I have allowed several dozen agents to move to a new manager. Guess how many times that has worked out. I’ll give you a hint, it’s a nice round number. Exactly zero. Of course, it is great to have a leader that is helping you develop. I have had great managers and horrible managers, but not once did I allow them to control my success. Neither should you! Your success is 100% on you. When I bought my Domino’s Pizza stores, no one from AnnArbor ever came out to help me grow my business. They didn’t hold my hand and show me how to negotiate with my landlord. They gave me an opportunity and it was up to me to take advantage of it. The same thing applies to you. You were the one who wanted to be in business for yourself. Don’t blame your results (or lack thereof) on your manager.
- Get a mentor/coach. – Pay for it, if at all possible. (It will force you to implement the things they suggest.) Find someone outside of your immediate organization that you can talk to on a regular basis. Oftentimes others can help us see the things that are holding us back better than we can. This is especially true if they have more experience than we do. The reason I suggest finding someone outside of your immediate hierarchy is so that you know that what they are suggesting is from a very pure motivation. You know that they aren’t telling you things that are going to benefit them in any way. I have been blessed to have several mentors in my career. In this podcast, I talked about the impact Joe Buzzello had in my life when he agreed to mentor me several years ago. Even though that formal mentor/mentee relationship is long over, we remain friends years after both of us leaving Aflac. I know that I can still count on him for advice when I am struggling.
- Make mistakes.- Tons of them. This business is caught more than taught. If you think that you can learn how to sell anything in a classroom or by reading a book, you are dead wrong. Yes, I know I just told you earlier to go to sales training seminars and read books. They are critical to your success, but there comes a day when you have to put the concepts you are learning into practice. The reality is that the largest gap in most people’s lives is the gap between knowing and doing. For instance, I know that eating pizza and drinking beer is not going to help me get to my fitness goals. I know that going to the gym is critical. I know that I need to spend more time in quiet contemplation and prayer. But that doesn’t mean I am making good choices all the time. If you don’t go out and have MASSIVE FAILURE you will never succeed. If you haven’t watched what Michael Jordan said about failure lately go watch this video now. I’ll wait here.
Seriously, please go watch that video. As my friend Heath Oakes says, “If that doesn’t fire you up, your wood is wet.” If you are allowing “call reluctance” or “fear of rejection” to derail you on a regular basis, maybe it’s time to go do something else. You are going to be rejected again and again and again and again and again. That is never going to change. How do I know? 16+ years later I am still failing every day. Every day I have to make a choice to put myself out there and believe that if I talk to enough people a few of them are going to tell me yes. Notice I didn’t say most of them are going to tell me yes. I said a few of them are going to tell me yes. But those few people who say yes allow me to keep the lovely Dizzy D in the lifestyle she is accustomed to.
