Thursday, February 14, 2008

Lessons Learned

Today I was privileged to train a group of 20 insurance sales professionals. I must admit I was nervous going in, especially when I found out the President of the group was going to stay. As we got into the training, I felt more relaxed and felt I was able to connect with most of the team. I really love what I do because of the people I get to meet. They are so awesome.

When I got back to the office I took time to look at the evaluations. Overall they were favorable. After reflecting on the evaluations and thinking back on the training I was struck by a common theme. The Get Clients Now! systems was well received. It is easy to put together and easy to implement. The need for follow-up is critical. There needs to be accountability built in through the on-going coaching. Finally, if you get just one thing from the program, you are already ahead of the game.

I want to elaborate on the last comment. You see all of these sales professionals are very busy, working under tight deadlines with high expectations. On top of that, some of the seasoned professional are already successful doing business the way they currently do business. So the idea of adding something new to their already full plate may seem a bit daunting to say the least.

The take aways I tried to leave them with were:
  • If you do one thing different, you will improve sales.
  • It only takes a little extra effort to make a big difference in your sales.
  • When they suddenly become distracted by some new initiative, they now have a plan to go back to refocus their efforts. With out the plan, they would just feel lost as to what to do next. That was very frustrating.
  • Having a plan is better than not having a plan. It's a place to start and then restart.