FROM THREE TO TWENTY-THREE T he Impact of B23's Online Academy
F
or B23 in Glasgow, the announcement
have been a terrible time to have the office closed, but I think
of a Boxing Day lockdown meant that
Roddy and I very much approached it with the attitude of
Scotland would be joining England
“Well, look at all of the things we can still do” so we treated it
in restricted working and, unlike in
as business as usual. And although we couldn’t go out and
previous months, their office would
do the sales, that’s not my end of the business anyway. From
also need to be closed. Over the
my perspective, it was about focussing on getting the right
course of ten days in mid-December,
people in and looking after them.”
Roddy Barker, and his reduced team of three, including Office Manager Kurt
I caught up with Roddy and asked him about the process
Wilson, put together a detailed plan for a twelve-week ‘Online
of putting together his online academy, as well as the
Coaching Academy’. The focus would be on development
unexpected benefits of setting sales to one side in favour of
and recruitment, with the sales portion of the business being
team development.
put on hold for the immediate future. You had a busy twelve weeks then Roddy? “Our whole office was littered with rolls of paper”, Roddy says. “We did a deep dive into recruitment, retention, coaching,
Well, four months in the end! But yes, we took the stance
sales, where we were on the path leading up to lockdown,
that we might not be able to go out and actively do the sales
what we wanted to achieve throughout it and then the goal
but we would do everything in our power to make sure that
for re-entering the sales field. We’re still riding the wave of
when we emerged, we’d come out the other side with a team
that work at the moment.”
that is stronger, more knowledgable and entirely capable of being the number one team in Scotland.
The success speaks for itself, with B23 having done more sales, hit more personal bests and had more promotions to
What gave you the idea of the Coaching Academy?
leadership in the most recent four weeks than they did in the entirety of the final three months of 2020. They have
When it comes to sales-coaching, it’s very much based on
undoubtedly come out of lockdown in a stronger position
systems. So by applying the systems and following the
and the clearest demonstration of that is going from three
process the outcome is the sales. What we did was take
core members in December, to an office of twenty-three by
our systems and coaching process and put it into an online
May.
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
“For Roddy, things changed quite dramatically,” Kurt tells me,
to transfer these skills through Zoom. If we did that well, we
“because he could no longer do what he does best. But for
knew that when we reintroduced people into the sales field,
me nothing changed. I was still able to do my part - recruit. I
all they had to do was apply the systems they were taught
think that was the key thing for us. For some people it might
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