23 Jan New Producer Hiring: How to Avoid the Black Hole Producer
When you hire the right new producer, oh does it feel good. That newbie comes strolling in with that look on his face, arms crossed, standing in that pose … and you know without even asking him, he closed the deal.
The grin gave it away, the strut, the swag, the confidence.
Occasionally you get a really good one, the one that everybody wants to emulate, the white and shining light. He’s afraid of nothing. He’ll pick up the phone and call the prospect everyone else says, “don’t waste your time with, they’ll never buy from you.”
He doesn’t care what you say, he’ll pick up the phone and give it a shot.
Not only that, he’s a student. You don’t have to kick him in the pants to learn the business. You don’t have to worry about him missing your sales meetings. He’s all in, he’s a producer.
The Black Hole
Then there is the black hole, the guy that somehow convinced you early on that he could sell. That he wanted to do well in life. Then, on that glorious day when he finally got the job, the real “him” came out. The “sales” actor disappeared and the real, dreadful, mediocre, lethargic, lazy “him” showed up.
You’ve seen a worm turn into a butterfly, but you’ve never seen a butterfly turn into a worm until now. You’d never seen someone show up so well while being interviewed (the butterfly), then turn into a worm so fast after being hired. That’s why it’s the black hole.
The more important question is how to avoid ever doing this again?
How to Avoid Hiring the Black Hole
The answer is simple, but not always easy.
Think about it, how does the con-artist, faux-producer ever get hired? Well, for a couple of interviews, they put on a really good show. They say all the right things; the kind of things that cause you to believe they have ambition, drive and fortitude. But they don’t, because if they did, they would find a way to be successful, wouldn’t they?
So how do you spot a faker, pretender, faux-producer? The best resource I’ve found is an evidence-based hiring system.
Think Navy Seals for just a moment. It might sound strange to use this parallel for hiring producers, but I’ve found it works well. Before you officially become a Navy Seal, Army Ranger or Green Beret, you go through some pretty heavy duty stuff. They want to know if you can handle fatigue, hunger, sleep deprivation and cold weather. They want to know if you have grit, passion and perseverance to make it through the tough times.
The Ability to Stay in the Game
Consider this please. Selling insurance is not a tough physical job, but it is a tough mental job. If someone can’t manage his mental state and stay in the game, he will more than likely turn into the black hole we referenced above. Believe it or not, once you determine if your new producer candidate has the basic credentials you desire, she is good at building relationships and relatively smart, the hard part is seeing if she has the resilience, perseverance and tenacity to stay in the game.
Most new producers don’t, as you’ve seen from industry reports put out by Reagan Consulting and MarshBerry. They quit on the job. They keep taking your money, while they hide behind their desk and a stack of papers, but they don’t actively prospect and seek opportunity. They quit, because they didn’t have grit.
That is one reason the Navy Seals put their candidates through a lot of exercises to test their endurance under difficult situations.
Endless Rejection
You need to know if your newbie has the ability to deal with rejection. This is a big one. If they can’t, they won’t prospect. Just as bad, they won’t ask tough questions of the prospect, the kind that get to the truth. They won’t go back and get the detailed info they need to impress the underwriter and get favorable pricing. When they get mentally tired, they also start to feel physically tired. When that happens, they quit for the day, sometimes for the week. Worst case, they quit all together and you don’t know for six months.
The facts are in, more than 50 percent of new producers fail. If you are tired of dealing with black hole producers, the kind that suck up all your time and energy and give you very little in return, you have to find a way to determine this before you hire them, before you waste $50,000 to $150,000.
The Navy Seals, Green Berets and Army Rangers got it right. They don’t just ask questions to determine a candidate’s ambition, drive and resilience. They don’t just run a personality profile. They don’t ask their partners opinion. They create tough situations and see if their candidates can make it through. They get evidence, not opinions.
Evidence-Based Hiring Process
If you’re working with a headhunter that is stacking up three to five candidates and suggesting you make a quick decision or you’re going to lose out, the evidence-based hiring process is not for you.
The evidence-based hiring process works best with a candidate that has a job, where neither of you are pressed to make a fast and reckless decision.
Your goal is to engage potential candidates in enough exercises to actually see whether they have the characteristics of high-performance producers. You want to test endurance, tenacity, ability to create relationships and street smarts. You want to put the candidates in some frustrating situations and see how they deal with it. You want to know if they are coachable. You want to see them deal with rejection. If you don’t do this, you will be guessing, hoping and wishing you made a good decision.
According to industry statistics, you’ll be wrong more than 50 percent of the time. Do it this way, and you’ve increased your chance of success to 80 percent. Do the numbers, hiring the right producer from the start adds up to a lot of green-backs.
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