As mentioned in the previous post I have worked with a lot of different companies over the years, and a few had a sales training course which I was required to attend. The one I discussed earlier focused on memorizing a sales pitch word for word and indoctrinating the class into a "cult" of positive mental attitude (PMA). I think the latter was because their product was so horrible we had to keep a plastered smile on our faces while trying to sell it.
About 15 years later I went to work for another insurance company which had a completely different approach to their training. All they taught us for a solid week was their products, which were okay, but made the training meaningless since we weren't given much other pertinent information.
Imagine I gave you a toolbox and said, "This is all you need. Now get out there and build me a house!" If you had no construction experience, you wouldn't know which tools were appropriate, how to plumb pipes, saw wood, when to lay the foundations, or anything else. And that was a major problem.
It's great that we could talk about the products to clients, but our instructors omitted an important piece of information - how to get those clients. Keep in mind that just like the person who doesn't know anything about construction but is given the awesome toolbox, many of my classmates had never done any sales before. These folks were dead in the water and didn't even know it.
I talked to a couple of people in the class who had sold insurance products previously and we agreed that the others were behind the proverbial eight ball. The funny thing was the ones with experience had worked for the same company I had that was all about PMA. The three of us, who were not going to be working together once we got into the field, took the time to develop a semblance of a strategy of how to get the clients.
As expected, once we were cut loose to make sales, the ones with no experience threw in the towel after a month or so. This sales gig was hard. We were to call on businesses with three or more employees and sell benefits to their staffs.
In essence, it was two sales in one, because first we had to convince the business owner to let us in and start the paperwork to create the account. Many of these people had seen this pitch before and just weren't interested. It was additional work for them to have to deduct premiums from their employees' paychecks, as well as keeping up with billing. Some of these small business owners felt it really wasn't worth the time and effort.
But if we could convince the owner to let us in, then we had to convince the employees to buy products, which is where the commissions were made. As you can imagine, the sales curve was longer than usual and for those starting out, it could take months to make money.
That was when I figured out in sales training that I needed to start sending out preemptive feelers to any and all business owners I knew. That way when training was over I could hit the ground running and have a head start over my classmates.
It worked for a while and I did fairly well, but the high turnover of employees in these accounts led to many chargebacks, which was another topic that had been conveniently overlooked in our training. After a year with that company I cancelled my contract with them.
This company did no favors to their new agents by omitting giant gaps of information about the job, including setting up commissions to avoid chargebacks and how to prospect.
In the next post, I'll discuss another approach to the sales training method which was not great, but much better. In the meantime, happy selling!
Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. He's also the author of "You're Going To Be Great At This!", a humorous look at sales. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states.
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