Trend Benders
Want to increase the productivity of your office or company? Find, install and spread trend benders in your organization.
by Larry Kendall, author of Ninja Selling and chairman of The Group, Inc.
Have you ever seen one of your sales associates double or triple their income in one year? How did he or she do it? Success leaves clues. Look closely, and you may discover a trend bender.
What is a trend bender? You observe a sales associate cruising along, incrementally improving each year, and suddenly there is a spike where his or her production increases at an exponential rate. What happened? Was it luck or a trend bender?
Warning: Shiny objects posing as trend benders are often sold by speakers, internet promotors and at Realtor® Expos. To find out if there is a true trend bender at work, you want to do four things:
- Document the associate’s process in detail.
- Repeat it to see if the associate will get predictable results. (This ensures it wasn’t luck or a one-time occurrence.)
- Repeat it with another associate to see if it works regardless of personality.
- If it works for others, spread the word in your company. You have discovered a trend bender!
Discovering and spreading trend benders in your organization is a primary responsibility of a good manager and coach. We have documented dozens of trend benders over the years and teach them in our Ninja Selling classes. One example of a trend bender is a good database or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Helping your associates put together a good CRM will turn the dial on their productivity.
The Science Behind Trend Benders
A survey of 20,000 Realtors® found that fewer than 40 percent had a database—even scraps of paper and business cards in a shoebox counted. Some 60 percent had nothing! Those with at least a semblance of a database earned 251 percent more than those who didn’t have a database. Helping your sales associates set up on a user-friendly database is a trend bender.
Case Study
Steve and Jessica Bohner own Premier Realty Group in Stuart, Fla. Their entire office went through our four-day Ninja Installation training. After the training, one sales associate, Candace Harman, came to them with a box full of papers, cards and sticky notes and asked, “Can you help me put these into a database? I love my clients, but I’m frustrated that I can’t stay in touch with them.” Candace is a 35-year pro and a consistent $4- to $5-million producer. Jessica helped Candace put together an electronic database to start 2016. Here are her results:
- 2015 production (pre-database): $3.9 million
- 2016 production (post-database): $17.4 million
Now that’s a trend bender! Candace can now stay in touch and deliver the kind of “wow” service of which she has always dreamed. The results of installing this trend bender were career- and life-changing for her!
Want to increase the productivity of your office or company dramatically? Start by finding, installing, and spreading trend benders in your organization.
