Build a ‘Wonder Team’

Do you have people on your team who shouldn’t be there? Could you be holding onto chronic poor performers simply because you don’t have anybody else? If so, perhaps it’s time to take charge. Instead of envying those leaders who have a ‘Wonder Team’, join them! Struggling leaders often believe that profitable offices are made up of high performing ‘freaks’. Is this really true? Or could it be that leaders who succeed have done so because they concentrated on building a winning team?

Dig beneath the surface and you will find that successful leaders consistently do TWO things that struggling leaders don’t.

1. Hire

The question that usually sorts out the leaders who are going to make it is:

“How many First Interviews did you do last month?”It’s uncanny – struggling leaders do not look for winners. I don’t know why it is, but struggling leaders always do fewer than twenty first-interviews each month. This is the minimum level for leaders who intend to build a winning team: twenty first-interviews a month – each month, every month.

Just as poor salespeople don’t prospect for sellers, mediocre leaders avoid prospecting for winning team members. Oh, sure, they may ‘crank’ up their hiring program for a month or so, but sooner or later (usually sooner) they drop off the first-interviews. And when they do, they lose all hope of ever building a wonder team.

Winning leaders are always on the lookout for winning salespeople. For such leaders, being at the mercy of a mediocre team isn’t going to happen.

Is ongoing hiring really that hard? Gerald Crough, when leader of TG Newton Real Estate in Oakleigh, Victoria, was one of the leaders who was ‘blamed’ for having a ‘wonder team.’ He believes that it is simply a matter of priorities.

In 1995, Gerald conducted more than 3,000 First Interviews. He built a profitable team that produced $1,000,000 into his business each year over the next three years. Gerald door-knocked his area looking for winners one day every week for twelve months. How many winners did he find from this source? None. He was, however, able to trace twelve sales to that effort and more importantly said the door-knocking kept him focused on his goal to build a winning team.

Some leaders come up with all sorts of excuses. They say, “Hiring is expensive!” for example. Yes, constant hiring is expensive, but not as expensive as having a mediocre team. Others say, “Our clients think that we can’t hold onto our staff.” So what? Personally, I’d rather have my clients think I couldn’t keep team members than have them think all I could keep were the bad ones!

No matter what excuses leaders come up with, excuses is what they are. If you are not hiring, you are going to be at some point in your leadership career at the mercy of either a poor team, or no team at all. As Gerald Crough says, “It’s a question of where your priorities are.”

2. Lead

This is worth remembering: either you lead your team or your team will lead you. If you choose the latter option, you had better make sure the team is going somewhere you want to go!

If you have the right people on your team you will find your leadership role much easier. The biggest problem some leaders face is that they are attempting to lead the wrong people. Struggling leaders appear to hire people of dubious character – you can’t count on them. The converse applies. All leaders with winning teams have gathered individuals with one major character attribute:

You can count on them.I know two Queensland leaders who were struggling to break even. Their common complaint was that they couldn’t get the salespeople to do the right actions. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Yet this is NOT a problem faced by leaders with winning teams.

There were only two possible causes of their dilemma:

a. Their people could not be counted on to do what they said they would do;

b. They were not asking their people to do the right actions.

As it turned out, half the team could be counted on and the other half could not. These leaders asked the unreliable half to leave and kept the reliable half. All that remained now was to ask the people who could be counted on to do winning actions. So simple!

Find people you can count of and ask them to properly do winning actions. This is how you build a wonder team.

Some leaders kill themselves trying to lead people who won’t do the actions. Why bother? Use that energy to conduct first-interviews. Replace unreliable people with people you can count on. A wonder team is a formality under these conditions.

Ask the two Queensland leaders. They are not struggling any more. Thanks to regular Hiring, they have a team. And thanks to effective management programs, they make a profit.

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