How recognition fuels excellence: Inside ZAN’s ‘Hall of Fame’

Dinesh Mohan Tanikella, Head of Zurich Advisory Network (ZAN), took the recognition concept and made it physical. Inside his agency, a Hall of Fame board displays every MDRT member since the agency launched in 2021.

"If I'm an advisor who qualified for all three years the agency existed, you'll see three stars under my name," Tanikella said. "People want to increase those stars."

The board tracks dramatic growth: 12 MDRT members in 2022, jumping to 25 in 2023, then 36 in 2024, representing about 40% of all MDRT qualifiers in the market. He hopes to surpass the 50-member MDRT mark soon, equal to one-third of his 150 advisors.

But the recognition doesn't stop at the wall. MDRT advisors receive another public honour when they become teachers in what Tanikella calls the “Happiness Club.”

"We created a very robust Happiness Club where the MDRTs become the champions, and they hand-hold the aspirants in terms of helping them with many aspects of sales," Tanikella said. "At least three weeks per month, we have interventions by our champion advisors."

These interventions can include presentations to groups numbering 90 or more. Recently, a top advisor led a session on generating referrals and writing multiple policies.

The traditional model says the leader is the expert and everyone else learns from them. Tanikella is proving something different: The leader's job is creating conditions where expertise spreads naturally, peer to peer, multiplying far beyond what any single person could teach.

The above is an excerpt from the article ‘Double duty: Make top performers your best teachers’. The article was first published in MDRT - Center for Field Leadership.