29 Mar New Producers- At 10,500 Feet Elevation, It’s a Scary View
When I was young, dumb and single, I went skydiving. It was before the days of everything having to be a tandem dive, where you are securely hooked to each other.
Our training was minimal. One night watching safety videos, then we practiced jumping off of a 3 ft. tall tower, hit the ground and roll. Three days later, we're at the airfield, getting fit for jump suits, helmets and goggles. We practice our routine for a couple of hours that morning. Instructions were simple. Let the #1 jump instructor crawl out on the wing first. Then you follow him out there, and stand on the 8″ x 8″ platform that covers the front wheel on the airplane. After that, #2 jump instructor will move over and near you, while still in the plane.
Then follow this routine. Look at #1 and get a nod. Look at #2 and get a nod. Back and #1 for one more nod. Then up, down, go. It was that simple. I missed the last part of that. It comes with having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and is enhanced when you're 10,500 feet up in the air. When you look down to the ground, a barn looks like an ant.
Screwing up the routine wasn't good. The #2 guy wasn't ready, but we were on our way. And, instead of just letting go of the strut I was holding onto, I pushed off with my hands. In retrospect, that's a big no-no. Bottom line, we came out unprepared and rolling head over heels for about 3,000 vertical feet. I saw the sun, then the earth about 4 times.
Just to finish the story, we finally got planed out, and started to fly like we were supposed to, it just took an extra 5,000 feet of lost elevation to do so. From the pic's up above, you can see I pulled the rip cord, the chute came out, I flew and landed successfully. Happy ending after a very, very ugly start.
What does this have to do with New Producers? Well, the statistics are out there. 6 out of 10 crash and die. Dead on arrival. They never make it past the first year. There are 2 reasons, #1 you selected the wrong person. And the #2 reason is you give them about as much training as I got in preparing to skydive.
If you want to radically improve your New Producer hiring effectiveness… meaning more make it to the Million Dollar Producer finish line, then take some time to study my book -“Winning Strategies to Locate, Recruit, Hire, Train and Develop New Producers.”
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