Maximize strengths, manage around weaknesses

We have the honor and privilege of working with great sales managers daily. Next month, I will be privileged to go to Nebraska and Alabama to facilitate our Leadership MasterClass. Our spring virtual Leadership MasterClass starts April 10 (Details here). A question that regularly comes up is: "How do I get my seller to (fill in the blank)?"

Sarah was one of the best sellers I had the opportunity to work with. She would make magic happen when she was in front of a client. Sarah went deeper into accounts than most sellers I've seen. She cultivated relationships. As a result, her clients spent more, benefitted more and Sarah made more. To put this in perspective, Sarah consistently billed $1.2 million a year in a "small" radio market that was ranked in the 130s.

Sarah was less than great at details, paperwork, order entry and keeping the CRM up to date. She worked so fast that her "busy work" would pile up. This caused headaches for traffic, billing and me. I could have spent hours – no, likely years – coaching Sarah on her paper trail skills. This would have been very costly and quite frustrating for both of us. It was a skill she simply didn't possess. Rather than try to "fix" Sarah's weakness, I hired a part-time sales assistant at minimum wage and dedicated her to Sarah.

Too often, as managers, we think our role is to "fix" the weaknesses of our teams. In my experience, trying to change weaknesses is frustrating, expensive in terms of time invested and ultimately shows slight improvement. Instead, if you focus on what people are good at naturally and coach them to be even better, everybody wins. The seller is more motivated because they are getting better at something they are already good at. The manager is more motivated because she can see immediate growth and impact.

Are you spending time, frustration, energy and money trying to improve the weaknesses of your sellers? Why not focus on their strengths and manage around their weaknesses? You might find the investment in the "managing around" far less than trying to fix them.

In Sarah's case, the cost was $12,000 per year for an assistant. The return on that investment was an increase of over $100,000 in billing - consistently. If I had tried to fix Sarah's weakness, not only would I have cost myself the increase, but I would likely have caused her billing to go down because I would have been forcing her to spend time on something she wasn't very good at.

Do you have a seller that you're trying to fix? What would happen if instead you focused on what they do well and helped them become better? Maximize strengths and manage around weaknesses.

Think Big, Make Big Things Happen!

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@rab.com. You can all so connect with him on X and LinkedIn.