Consumer Services
The next generation
To keep a business strong, leaders must train leaders
By Erik Cassano
Smart Business Cincinnati | November 2008
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Chris Cicchinelli
president, Pure Romance Inc.
If you’re a newly hired management-level employee at Pure Romance Inc., you’re going to be spending a lot of time with Chris Cicchinelli.
“I typically have them shadow me for three to four weeks,” says Cicchinelli, president of Pure Romance. “They sit in the different meetings. Even if they’re from IT, they sit in and understand the financial pieces of the business, how the actual business works with the consultants.”
Cicchinelli says developing leaders is essential for the long-term survival of any business, and if you are leading a growing company, the impetus for developing new leaders must start with you.
That strategy has help Cicchinelli — and his mother, Patty Brisben, who founded the company — grow Pure Romance into an $80 million company, with thousands of sales consultants in all 50 states holding in-home parties to sell relationship enhancement products.
Smart Business spoke with Cicchinelli about how to develop the next generation of leaders to help your business continue to grow.
Identify future leaders. A leader needs to be able to have good judgment skills, someone who can communicate and deliver a precise and clear message.
I want someone who is going to be challenging, as well. A lot of people don’t like to be challenged at the top level, but I like my leadership asking me why we are doing things. They’re not just questioning me personally, they’re questioning me because they might face that same question out in the field. We like people who will challenge and ask why we’re going in a certain direction, people who want a little bit more information.
The final piece to this is loyalty. Loyalty is a huge part of being a leader. Those are the criteria. It’s not always your top salespeople, it’s not always your top recruiters, it’s not always the people that wear all the corporate logos. It’s the people who have all the factors I listed.
At Pure Romance, we identify new leaders in a couple of different ways. The first one is a voluntary piece. You have to write in, talk a bit about your background. We look for people who have been in sales before, people who have the passion for the business, who can deliver the message of the business.
We look at how they write, then we interview them. Patty and I sit down, she interviews the candidate, then I interview the candidate. We interviewed200 people to get down to where we are right now with75, and we both have to agree on them, though we agree to disagree on some of them. We sit down, talk about the pros and cons, we go through the line list of where we think the strengths and weaknesses are.
