Yellow and Red Alerts

There must be some reason certain firms generate achieve better organic growth than others. Said another way, if two equally skilled firms compete, then why does one produce double digit growth and the other negative growth?

The answer: pro-active management of red and yellow alerts leads to growth.

To help my clients improve their sales capacity and performance, I have developed the ‘red and yellow alert’ approach.

This is how it works.

The 3 Zones

There are 3 zones in which producers can spend their time. How much time they spend in each influences their level of success.

The green zone

A success factor for achieve top performance is the time your producers spend in the green zone focusing on four key activities:

Sales

Relationships

Pipeline development

Continuations

Research shows that producers who spend the majority (80%) of their time focusing on these four key activities achieve optimal performance, enabling them to perform to their full potential.

Benefits of spending your time in the green zone include:

Superior organic growth performance

Outperforming your peers in new business and retention

Not sacrificing profits for growth

The yellow zone

Producers who spend between 30% and 50% of their time on the top performance activities are working in the yellow zone and therefore not achieving their full potential. This is also the warning zone, as they can quickly slide down into the subpar performance of the red zone.

Yellow zone warning signs include:

Revenue per employee is falling

Pipeline is not full

Closing ratio less is than 50%

Few professionals are meeting or exceeding their goals/targets

The red zone

Producers who spend less than 30% of their time on top performance activities are working in the red zone and achieving far less than their potential. I also refer to this zone as the service trap.

Red zone warning signs include:

Organic growth has slowed to low single digits

There is no distinction between sales and service

All clients receive the same service, regardless of revenue

Professionals spend most of their time on service issues instead of on key growth activities

Producers’ behaviours and mindset say ‘Clients only want to deal with me’

Green, yellow, and red alerts form part of your culture of accountability.

Here are five things you should focus on to make sure your business operates in the green zone:

An annual planning process. Agree upon the specific strategies and behaviours that create predictable results and will provide guidelines to keep producers on track. Set non-optional sales metrics of what you want to measure, and then actively manage what you measure

Pipeline management. Ensure your pipeline keeps flowing and is being replenished with referrals and qualified prospects that represent your ideal clients

Preparation. Make sure everyone is working from the same playbook, following a similar sales process, practising the language of asking for referrals, generating meetings, and conducting initial meetings with prospective clients

Improving sales capacity. Make sure all producers have a customised action plan to improve their leads, appointments, conversions, closings, and pipeline building activities

Effective teamwork. Have a clear separation between sales and services. They involve different roles but have the same goal of acquiring and retaining ideal clients. Salespeople should sell and service people should service.

When you notice experienced producers moving from the green to the yellow zone, take corrective action immediately, before they wind up in the red zone.

For new producers, create an action and provide the help and resources they need to improve their sales capacity and move them quickly into the green zone.

Managing red and yellow alerts is the quickest path to producing superior compound growth results and will put your producers on the road to a brilliant career and lifestyle.