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

I told the team that I had an idea inspired by two videos on YouTube: the honey badger and the Jesus lizard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We planned yet another meeting to bring all our sales people together one more time. The Jesus lizard leader read a long outline of his plan for his team, starting with a name change to “Team Jack,” a reference to some marketing the agency had done before my arrival.

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

I was up next. I outlined the characteristics of a honey badger:

• 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 new relationships.

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

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

Soon thereafter, the five owners met and agreed that we had too many differences in our culture to continue as a single company.

Through the use of two legal and financial teams, our agency was split 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 many times about our approach to sales management and I always give the same advice. KISS was not only a great band, but also the key in managing sales people.

To institute a sales management program in your agency, first analyze your producers: are they true producers, or merely order takers? Recognize their differences and put them into groups with like-minded people.

Then provide each group with tools that are geared to their strengths.

Let each producer set his or her own goals and then hold them accountable to that goal. So many times in our industry, goals are set by someone other than the salesperson. If you give them some rope, my experience is that they won't hang themselves, but instead will 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 to generate to reach their goals. Factors like average income per sale, hit ratio, and number of new prospect contacts are part of our cookbook calculations.

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

Leave them alone.

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

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