by Brian Brady
Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL
I’ve recruited and trained, directly and indirectly, over 300 loan salespeople in my career. I learned, as a new Branch Manager, that one way to enhance the overall production of the team was to practice the Nobel-Obama strategy. Here’s what we did:
We’d look for a promising new originator and make him the sales leader. Oftentimes, we’d pick the second-best performer, in a group of rookies, and feed him preferential leads, shower him with extra training, and “crown” him the tiger of the bunch. The reasoning behind that strategy was that the second-best performer would rise to the challenge and be that superstar while encouraging the legitimate superstar to challenge the golden boy.
It helped if the golden boy had a compelling story to tell. One young man emancipated himself from his parents at age 16, put himself through college, and even slept 2-3 nights in his car while temporarily homeless. He had been homeless because he was waiting for his initial commission check at his first sales job. He certainly had a better story to tell than the well-connected young lady who grew up in the tony suburb of Scottsdale so we crowned him the superstar.
What we did was to encourage the sales staff to believe that hard work was the key to success rather than having an “advantaged background”. We wanted the team to believe that if the golden boy could make six figures, anybody could. It didn’t always work. Usually, the polished young lady would defect to a competitior. Business got tough, the golden boy would struggle or implode, and our competitor profited from our mistake.
Some might consider what the Nobel Committee did today brilliant. Crowning an international golden boy encourages other heads of states to mimic our President’s behavior. I imagine Ahmenijad might be inspired to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons, the new Cuban leadership might stop killing and imprisoning dissidents, and the Dalai Lama will stop telling lies about Mainland China. Absent conflict or challenging times, the Nobel strategy might succeed as well as the one I used on sales rookies in the ’90s.
Today, I’ve learned an easier way to attract talent. I look for eager, accomplished, smart people now and offer them equality of opportunity. Allowing people to own their accomplishments makes for a more productive sales team. That strategy puts us in the difficult spot of having to earn our associates respect rather than to bribe them for it but it affords me less drama.
PS: I heartily congratulate our President on this prize. While I don’t always agree with his foreign policy, throngs of Europeans do. It is always a great day for America when our President, unbeknownst to him, is honored with any prize.
