A couple of years ago I served as owner of a larger agency. Wehad 22 producers, all with varying degrees of revenue andability.

The other four owners entrusted me to manage the sales team. AsI looked at my arsenal, it became clear that I had two types offolks: Of the 22, seven accounted for the majority of the sales.These were the sales people who were running new appointments,showing a lot of activity—these were the “horses.”

The rest of the group was either new to the industry or at theend of their careers. These employees simply came into the officeand just managed their books of business.

Realizing that serious change to the sales program was needed, Ischeduled a conference with the other owners to outline our newsales program for the agency. Our annual sales meeting was comingup and we agreed to put together the new sales plan to present atthe meeting.

I told my partners it was becoming increasingly clear that ouragency had two cultures running within the organization.

I told the team that I had an idea inspired by two videos onYouTube: the honey badger andthe Jesuslizard.

I suggested it would be a great idea to show these videos to oursales people, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each andcreating two competing teams.

The honey badgers would be our aggressive group. They wouldreceive extra sales training and support. Each honey badger wouldbe held accountable to monthly goals.

The Jesus lizards, our calmer, “old school” group, would takeall call-in leads and manage their books. They wouldn't have anysales goals.

At our sales meeting, I outlined a description of each group andallowed the producers to choose which group to join.

A week later at our agency owner meaning, three of the ownerswere upset with my presentation, calling it “over the top.” Oneadded that I “scared the hell out of our sales people” and thatpeople were confused as to the true nature of each program.

I needed to explain more about each team and we also agreed thatI would lead the honey badger team and another owner, the formersales trainer, would lead the Jesus lizards.

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The owners would review the monthly results of each group duringour monthly sales meetings.

We planned yet another meeting to bring all our sales peopletogether one more time. The Jesus lizard leader read a long outlineof his plan for his team, starting with a name change to “TeamJack,” a reference to some marketing the agency had done before myarrival.

Team Jack would be using the same format they had used in thepast—simple, straight forward, with no changes.

I was up next. I outlined the characteristics of a honeybadger:

• Hungry for challenge

• Aggressive

• Following an individually created sales process

• Maintain an 80 percent close ratio

• Do not sell on price

• Accept sales training

• Held accountable to self-established goals

• Report results weekly

• Make more money than you did last year

• Retain your book of business, but focus on newrelationships.

When I finished, a few sales people asked to be on my team.

About 2 weeks later, three of the owners had a meeting anddecided that the whole sales management program would be scrappedbecause they felt it was “dividing the company.”

Soon thereafter, the five owners met and agreed that we had toomany differences in our culture to continue as a singlecompany.

Through the use of two legal and financial teams, our agency wassplit in two (offices and staff) and a new company was born.

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Today, my agency is made up of honey badgers. I am asked manytimes about our approach to sales management and I always give thesame advice. KISS was not only a great band, but also the key inmanaging sales people.

To institute a sales management program in your agency, firstanalyze your producers: are they true producers, or merely ordertakers? Recognize their differences and put them into groups withlike-minded people.

Then provide each group with tools that are geared to theirstrengths.

Let each producer set his or her own goals and then hold themaccountable to that goal. So many times in our industry, goals areset by someone other than the salesperson. If you give them somerope, my experience is that they won't hang themselves, but insteadwill buy into “their” goals.

Once they've set their goals, work with them to create a“cookbook” calculation of the amount of activity they will have togenerate to reach their goals. Factors like average income persale, hit ratio, and number of new prospect contacts are part ofour cookbook calculations.

Once you have set up your groups, given them the tools, allowedthem to set their own goal and helped them with their cookbook, youare ready for the final step in the sales management process:

Leave them alone.

Conversationally manage the process and analyze the monthlyresults. If they hit the goal, great. If they don't, do your joband find out why.

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