From 3 to 23: The Impact of the Online Academy with B23

or B23 in Glasgow, the announcement

Fof a Boxing Day lockdown meant that Scotland would be joining England in restricted working and, unlike in previous months, their office would also need to be closed. Over the course of ten days in mid-December, Roddy Barker, and his reduced team of three, including Office Manager Kurt Wilson, put together a detailed plan for a twelve-week ‘Online Coaching Academy’. The focus would be on development and recruitment, with the sales portion of the business being put on hold for the immediate future.

“Our whole office was littered with rolls of paper”, Roddy says. “We did a deep dive into recruitment, retention, coaching, sales, where we were on the path leading up to lockdown, what we wanted to achieve throughout it and then the goal for re-entering the sales field. We’re still riding the wave of that work at the moment.”

The success speaks for itself, with B23 having done more sales, hit more personal bests and had more promotions to leadership in the most recent four weeks than they did in the entirety of the final three months of 2020. They have undoubtedly come out of lockdown in a stronger position and the clearest demonstration of that is going from three core members in December, to an office of twenty-three by May.

“For Roddy, things changed quite dramatically,” Kurt tells me, “because he could no longer do what he does best. But for me nothing changed. I was still able to do my part - recruit. I think that was the key thing for us. For some people it might have been a terrible time to have the office closed, but I think Roddy and I very much approached it with the attitude of “Well, look at all of the things we can still do” so we treated it as business as usual. And although we couldn’t go out and do the sales, that’s not my end of the business anyway. From my perspective, it was about focussing on getting the right people in and looking after them.”

I caught up with Roddy and asked him about the process of putting together his online academy, as well as the unexpected benefits of setting sales to one side in favour of team development.

You had a busy twelve weeks then Roddy?

Well, four months in the end! But yes, we took the stance that we might not be able to go out and actively do the sales but we would do everything in our power to make sure that when we emerged, we’d come out the other side with a team that is stronger, more knowledgable and entirely capable of being the number one team in Scotland.

What gave you the idea of the Coaching Academy?

When it comes to sales-coaching, it’s very much based on systems. So by applying the systems and following the process the outcome is the sales. What we did was take our systems and coaching process and put it into an online platform. We knew we couldn't be in the same room to show people what to do, so the first thing was for us to learn how to transfer these skills through Zoom. If we did that well, we knew that when we reintroduced people into the sales field, all they had to do was apply the systems they were taught

How was the process of putting it all online?

I’d love to tell you it was really easy but as you can imagine it took a lot of work! It wasn’t just a case of putting together slides, because certain aspects couldn’t transfer in the same way without it being in person. You know, showing someone how to make a sandwich and then telling them how to make a sandwich are completely different things. So we had to really break it down. I was running at least three or four zoom calls a day, then, after six weeks, we were able to get our new leaders to actively start coaching the people we had recruited through lockdown. To get there, we had to really boil it down to its critical information—to its best communicated version—and in fact that then sped the process up.

Now you’re back in the office, what has happened to your online academy?

We’re still able to do online recruitment thanks to Kurt. Kurt’s work ethic and focus with regards to recruitment was one of the key driving forces of us being able to push on. And through that we were able to take all the coaching and put it into a booklet. So if anyone needs any support or help, when people are coaching in the office or on the sales field, they have this booklet to refer to as well. It’s been such a useful tool.

And what’s been the impact of that on the performance of the team?

Since coming back, over the last few weeks, Will McCreedy has highrolled the organisation, Calum Sharp has high-rolled it as well, and in the fourth week back the top three sellers in the organisation were all B23. From a coaching perspective, we’ve got four of our new leadership team all coaching, training, developing people, which isn’t including those that were doing it before.

So its been a worthwhile investment in the team then?

Yes, the real success of this time is that all of our focus went into development. We weren’t trying to do anything else, because we couldn’t, and now we are seeing the fruits of that. You know, our leadership team has really stepped up too. Kurt Wilson, the office manager, had only been working with us actively for two and a half months before lockdown and it’s been so impressive to see his attention to detail, his passion and dedication to make this a success. On top of that, when we were doing team nights he was actively on the call every Thursday, helping to run the quiz. It was the small details like that which I think made the big difference.

After all these changes to approach over the last few months, what is it you’ll take with you into the future?

The focus on the personal; the one-to-one. Whether its team nights or individual conversations, I think just having that connection with the team has made a massive difference. We’ve got a relatively young team who have spent a long time in isolation but they are the core of our business, and we want to make that investment in them.