Mickey’s Corner: How a Firm Grew 50% in Six Months

This month we encountered a front-line manager who has had a record of success!

He recently took over a struggling office that had 24 producers. And in 6 months increased it to 36 producers at almost double production!

Was this a fluke? Could be. But our guy has been a leading manager in his organization for the last several years, averaging a net gain of 10 new producers annually. And is isn’t scared of raising the bar even higher!

So, how did he do it? Can this be replicated?

Here is this manager’s story:  

“When you first take on a new challenge, you have to assess things quickly.One of the most glaring things that I noticed upon arriving was that the managers were closing most of the cases for the producers.  On the one hand I was glad to see the managers were going on joint selling calls (they had good intentions), but as a result the producer’s skills weren’t being developed and production was suffering. As it turned out, this had a cascading effect…when I went in search of numbers to analyze, I learned they didn’t track any.

One of the most important things managers can do in getting producers up and running quickly is to track activity numbers so they can identify what is going well and what skills need improvement.

As the leader, I want to know what my team is doing so I can help my managers with bottlenecks and help them do the same. Lack of real-time performance data limited my ability to give any advice to the managers. Our goal should be to make producers more independent and run their business like their own. The best way to accomplish this is to lead with numbers…which were not available. So the first thing I did was put a structure in place, to make sure they had current data on both activity and results. It was so important to make that happen, that I insisted that everybody block off a half-hour a week just to input data, even though it may not take that long. All the producers are required to hand in a sheet with the activity data at 4:30 every Friday in order to have staff actually input the numbers.  Sometimes we even do it on a daily basis. It may be an overused phrase, but I’m big on “inspecting what I expect”.

Then every week we have Group Activity Review meetings, or GAR for short, where they go through the numbers on a white board, posting all the big wins. I also have ‘one-on-ones’ (meetings) with the managers, once again asking them, “Where are the bottlenecks?” And to make sure that I keep it up consistently, I keep a checklist for myself and the managers.

I knew that I arrived when they – the managers—started walking in, listing all the solutions to the challenges and issues they have with the advisors. Is it leads generated? Is it appointments set, appointments held or one of the skill ratios, etc.? Are they not calling?  Is it lack of goals or something personal? Do they not have the right leads?  Is the presentation poor? The question, “How do you expect to lead without the numbers?” is no longer necessary…they’re doing it. And they are doing something else that is even more important…getting their producers to analyze their own numbers to figure out how to get better and coming up with solutions before their ‘one-on-ones’.

Leading with the numbers is not always fun for the manager. Actually, it can be downright tedious and laborious, but it must be done every day, week and month. The result has been incredible! Not only are the producers more independent and thinking like business owners, both current producers as well as the candidates we are interviewing seem to welcome the structure and predictability. In an effort to limit these articles to close to one page, we were only able to share part of Justin’s tips. In future “Mystery Leadership Series”, we’ll give you more details of the unique things he put in place to help turn around his firm in a BIG way!  Please let us know if you like this new series. We’re here for you.”