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Maximize Strengths, Manage Around Weaknesses



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

Sarah was horrible at details, paperwork and order entry. She was working 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 – training and 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 very little 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 at which they are already good. 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 “manage around” to be far less than the investment in trying to fix them.

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

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

Jeff Schmidt is SVP-Professional Development at the Radio Advertising Bureau. You can reach Jeff at Jeff.Schmidt@rab.com or follow him on social media: Twitter, LinkedIn.

Source: Jeff Schmidt, RAB