It is difficult to identify, attract, and hire the over-achievers who have the capabilities to become Big Billers.  Once you have hired this potential superstar, you now have the challenge of training, motivating, retaining, and effectively managing them.   If you don’t bring out the best in your employees, their next employer will!

The following are five techniques that will help you bring out the best in your sales team:

1. Share Specific Expectations

It is important to outline very specific expectations for the individuals you supervise.  Recruiting is a sales profession, and sales is a numbers profession!  Make sure you keep statistics on every person you supervise so you will be able to provide them with their individual ratios after 120 days.  You can tell each employee the exact results they need to achieve each day to achieve their production goals.

Create a list of expectations when you initially hire a new employee.  Write down what you expect of them, and what they can expect of you.  Managers often tell me their recruiters are not meeting their expectations.  When I ask what those expectations are… often they cannot answer my question.  How can someone meet your expectations when they don’t know what you expect?

Write down minimum standards, average performance, and above average performance in all critical areas.  No one wants to achieve minimum standards and now you have statistics that will help you guide them.  When you know the individual ratios of all your employees, you will accurately predict production and they will predict their income!

2. Establish High Standards

Have you set a Standard of Excellence for yourself and your employees?  As a business owner, you set the tone and pace for your employees.  They will look to you as their coach, mentor, and an example to follow.  If you want to raise the bar in your company and create a Company Culture of Excellence, you need to review where you currently are and what steps you need to take to achieve levels of excellence.

The following are five Standards of Excellence practiced by successful entrepreneurs.  These will help you focus and achieve your goals:

Standard One:Leadership

Standard Two:Communication

Standard Three:Quality

Standard Four:Collaboration

Standard Five:Tenure

3. Create An Environment Where Failure Is Not Fatal

You don’t judge a person’s level of success by the number of their successes, but rather on the failures they overcome!  Successful people fail more because they try more.  When you hire an overachiever, they will want to try more, be more creative, and will therefore make more mistakes.

It is very effective to view a mistake or failure as a learning experience.   There are many skills and techniques that must be mastered to become a Big Biller.  You don’t want your sales team to become an extension of you!  You want them to be self-motivated, independent, and intelligent enough to make decisions.  It empowers your employees when they know failures are not fatal! 

When your employees are empowered to make decisions and possibly mistakes, the result will be increased profits for your company.  Make failures a learning opportunity so your team continues to learn and improve the level of success they attain.

4. Teach Your Employees To Watch And Emulate Successful People

A few years ago, I had a Wealth Coach make this statement to me, “The quickest way to escalate your wealth and success is to change the five people you hang around with most!

My initial reaction was not positive.  I thought it was insensitive and cold to think you had to change your friends to become successful.  Ironically, I’ve found this statement to be very true.  When I review the people that I spend the most time with now, they are not the people I spent my time with several years ago. However, I did maintain those prior relationships.

Teach your employees to watch and emulate successful people in your office and in our profession.  Big Billers love to talk about how they became successful!  Listen and learn!

5. Recognize And Applaud Achievement 

The recruiting profession is a sales profession and there is tremendous emphasis placed on personal production.  Too often the only achievements we reward are placements.  Our top producers become our superstars, winning most of the contests, bonuses, and incentives we offer.

It is extremely important that you also recognize and applaud outstanding efforts and small wins.  It could be something as simple as a great marketing or recruiting presentation, someone booking multiple send outs in a single day or helping another member of your sales team. Office morale will dramatically improve when you implement recognition and rewards.

When you implement these techniques, you will unlock your team’s potential and elevate their performance.

Training is also key to resolving many issues while helping your team achieve the greatest success.  If you’d like to talk to one of our experts about your specific challenges.