summary

PRISMS for Marketing Reps empowers marketing reps, underwriters, and marketing underwriters to get the best premium from the best agencies.

Performance Results & Benefits:
• Best premiums from the best agencies • Increased premium commitments • Better loss ratios		• Increased productivity • Better customer relations • Competitive advantage

format

Learning points are provided through three interrelated components:

• Prework
• Three-day Workshop
• Detailed Action Plan

modules

Introduction & Objectives
Marketing and underwriting teams have a unique and demanding selling situation. In this unit, participants match their personal goals to company goals, and uncover the skills needed to partner with producers for the best premium and profit.

Goals Setting & Planning
Few people know the difference between mere “wishes” and well-stated, achievable goals. Participants set action-oriented marketing goals using a four-step process; outline alternative strategies for achieving their goals; and map out tactical steps for implementing their strategies in the Action Plan.

Leveraging Time
Time and self-management is critical for success in sales and marketing. Participants explore the critical difference between merely managing time for efficiency and leveraging time toward achieving goals. Participants then “grade” agency potential to determine producer priority.

Partnering
Creating business partnerships defines selling today. This unit demonstrates what it takes to be agency partners rather than insurance “peddlers.” When reps create partnerships, marketing becomes a cooperative process and the company becomes the preferred choice.

Appointing New Agents
By appointing agencies likely to generate the best business, reps leverage their efforts. This unit provides tools to help reps set appointment goals and move new agents into profitable production quickly.

Communication
Partnership selling demands excellent questioning and active — rather than passive — listening skills. By uncovering criteria and values through the use of a Needs Profile, reps can determine not only what an agent will buy, but precisely how to sell to them.

Presenting Solutions
To breathe life into insurance presentations, reps are taught how to use marketing collateral to its fullest advantage. They learn how opening statements, content and gestures affect the presentation. They’re given a specific formula to present benefits and answer the agent’s critical question, “What’s in it for me?”

Negotiating
Participants prepare for negotiations using a unique three-tiered goal-analysis process. Reps learn to apply different strategic approaches and use 13 negotiation strategies and tactics in specific insurance marketing situations.

Handling Objections
Participants learn that handling objections properly begins with understanding that objections are not obstacles but natural steps toward closing the sale. Six objection categories and a four-step process for dealing with each are presented.

Teamwork & Leadership
Partnering with agents means using skills and techniques developed for highly functional teams. Becoming and expert resource for agents often requires taking a leadership role in educating and guiding producers in profitable directions. In this unit, participants learn the principles of teamwork and leadership, and how to apply them to the real world of agency marketing.

Putting It All Together
In this final unit, skills are role-played in a relaxed yet realistic environment. Skill application is evaluated and feedback is provided. Reps leave the workshop armed with the skills, processes and practice to make marketing visions a reality.

summary

PRISMS for Agents is a dynamic personal and professional development program that empowers salespeople to increase premium, policy counts, and commissions.

Performance Results & Benefits:
• Increase premium & policy counts • Increase commissions • Improve prospecting • Greater lead generation		• Superior presentations • Higher closing ratios • More effective use of time • Increased overall productivity

format

Learning points are provided through three interrelated components:

• Prework
• Three-day Workshop
• Detailed Action Plan

modules

Introduction & Objectives
Insurance agents have an unusual and demanding selling situation.  This unit explores a sales process designed specifically for the agent/customer relationship.  Participants relate their personal vision developed in the Prework to their company’s vision and uncover the skills needed to truly partner with customers to increase premium, policy counts and commissions.

Goal Setting & Planning
The Koran says, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”  This unit teaches the difference between mere wishes and well-stated, achievable goals.  Participants set action-oriented sales goals using a four-step process: outline alternative strategies for achieving goals; and map out a sales “funnel” for implementing strategies in their Action Plans.  Using proper goal setting and planning techniques, agents can prepare sales strategies that are realistic, achievable and measurable.

Prospecting
Selling insurance successfully is heavily dependent on finding people who can and will buy from you.  Prospecting is the marketing phase of the sales plan.  This unit defines highly successful prospecting methods used to continuously locate leads.  Emphasis is placed on the more productive prospecting methods, such as third-party referral systems.  Fourteen prospecting systems are covered along with tools for productivity implementing them.  Participants learn to be more professional, more comfortable and more productive with the prospecting process.

Leveraging Time
Studies prove that self-management is critical for sales success.  The widely respected Johnson-Dauner survey determined that of the 73 factors influencing sales results, the number-one success factor is not product knowledge or even closing skills, but time utilization and planned sales effort.  Participants explore the critical difference between managing time for efficiency and leveraging time toward effectiveness.  Participants then look at their funnel and “grade” prospect potential to determine which customers will yield the highest return on time invested.

Partnering
This unit demonstrates what it takes to be true partner rather than insurance “peddlers.”  Agents learn to provide extra value by building strategic alliances for long-lasting results.  Four different personality styles are explored along with ways to appeal to each.  Agents consider ways to become trusted advisors and business partners, not bothersome salespeople.  When agents partner with customers, selling becomes a cooperative process rather than a one-sided push for business.

Communication
Communication is the heart of selling.  Partnership selling demands excellent questioning and active, rather than passive, listening skills.  By uncovering criteria and values through the use of a Needs Profile, agents can determine what a customer will buy, from whom and why.  By effectively using these productive communication skills, agents can deliver a presentation that says, “Here’s what you said you wanted!”

Presenting Solutions
To breathe life into presentations, agents are taught how to use materials and resources to their fullest advantage.  They learn how opening statements, content, gestures and eye contact affect a presentation.  They’re given the F-F-B-B-T formula to present benefits and answer the customer’s critical question, “What’s in it for me?”

Negotiating
Agents negotiate everything but premium cost.  However, there is a fine line between presentations and negotiations, and agents must be prepared for the transition.  In this unit, agents learn a comprehensive approach to preparing for negotiations through a unique three-tiered goal analysis process.  Thirteen negotiation strategies and tactics are covered along with application to specific sales situations.  Agents learn how different situations require different strategies, and they apply an appropriate strategy to their Action Plan.

Handling Objections
Objections are natural steps, not obstacles toward closing sales.  Six objection categories and a four-step process for dealing with each are presented.  Objections are golden opportunities for agents skilled in analyzing and resolving them.  Instead of accepting objections at face value, agents learn techniques for recognizing and successfully handling objections.

Closing
Closing sales is critical to success.  After all, no close means no deal.  Yet closing is the most misunderstood part of the sales process.  This unit shows what closing really is, and provides realistic methods for obtaining closure.  Agents learn 14 closing techniques.  They gain confidence, learn when to ask, and understand how to motivate that final “yes!”

Putting It All Together
In this final unit, application of all skills is practiced in a nonthreatening yet realistic environment.  Skill application is evaluated and feedback is provided.  Agents leave the workshop armed with the skills, processes and practice to make sales visions a reality.

summary

When adjusters combine their technical skills with productivity, communication and negotiation skills, they close files faster, maintain case control, produce win/win settlements, and improve company image.

Performance Results & Benefits:
• Savings on claims paid • Lower claims expenses • Faster file closure • Better case control		• Improved company image • Better customer relations • More effective negotiations • Increased overall productivity

format

Learning points are provided through three interrelated components:

• Prework
• Workshop or Self-paced Learning
• On-the-Job Action Plan

modules

Introduction & Overview
The opening segment tests pre-course knowledge of productivity, communication and negotiation skills, then examines the benefits of enhancing and refining these skills.  Participants take a close look at job responsibilities and course content is outlined.  Participants then select a specific claim situation around which they will build course skills and role plays.

Claims Communications
This unit carefully delineates how the elements of communication affect the claims handling process.  Participants investigate various forms of communication including active listening and questioning techniques, then explore how to overcome the negative perceptions which can adversely affect the claims handling process.

Through the Claimants Eyes
Adjusters learn that effective business communication is a skillful combination of “style” and “substance.”  Technical knowledge and skills are combined with needs profiling, empathy and persuasion so that interactions are more effective, professional and productive. Also provided are methods for establishing trust, creating positive rapport, presenting the benefits of direct settlement, and handling denials.

Time & Self Management
Adjusters learn techniques for better managing their tremendous work load.  This unit exposes barriers to productivity and how to overcome them through win/win planning, prioritizing, goal setting, and settlement range analysis.

Negotiation Strategies & Tactics
Adjusters examine the differences and similarities in the range of negotiations they conduct with claimants, attorneys, agents, replacement houses, mechanics, etc., and how certain methods and skills can improve the process — and results — of each kind. They learn to recognize, use, and defend against over 25 strategies and tactics.  Special attention is paid to plaintiff attorney interactions, many of which involve highly skilled negotiators.

Conducting Negotiations
Specific steps for leading the negotiation process are explored, including properly opening a negotiation, establishing rapport, maintaining control, making opening offers, bargaining, handling objections, closing, and finalizing the settlement.  The different skills involved in telephone versus face-to-face negotiating are examined. Adjusters also learn how to identify and use “the perception of power” in a negotiation.

Putting It All Together
Participants unite the total process by investigating three scenarios: a first-party loss; a third-party collision claim; and a third-party BI. Professional role modeling on video is followed by participant role-plays using their own settlement cases. By role-playing and critiquing, participants build confidence in their awareness and application of PRISMS principles and skills.  A post-test is administered to show how much has been learned since the pre-test.

summary

PRISMS For Underwriters empowers underwriters to improve agency relations, increase profitable premium volume, and support company goals with teamwork.

Performance Results & Benefits:
• Better account acquisition • Improved agency relationships • Increased profitable premium volume		• Support company goals • Smarter negotiations • More effective communications • Increased overall productivity

format

Learning points are provided through three interrelated components:

• Two-day Workshop or Self-paced Learning
• On-the-Job Action Plan

modules

Introduction & Objectives
In today’s competitive environment, all company personnel must be encouraged to maintain a high level of sales, service, and company image. PRISMS introduces underwriters to the idea that everybody sells, the concept that helped Buck Rodgers, former chief marketing strategist for IBM, take his company from $250 million to $50 billion in sales. A video-taped interview with Rodgers and a class discussion based on quotes from today’s business leaders show underwriters their effect on the sales process and how taking part in a totally sales-driven effort can benefit both their own success and the company’s success

Communication/Listening Skills
Since producers deal with a company for their reasons – not the company’s – underwriters must acquire good listening and communication skills to discover what those reasons are. This unit teaches underwriters to ask the right questions and actively listen for answers so they’ll learn the motivation behind the placement of a piece of business. Different producers respond to different approaches. To help underwriters deal effectively with different producers, four primary personality styles are identified and skills for handling each are discussed. Listening habits are analyzed, and underwriters are taught to communicate benefits to producers. A fact/feature/benefit workbook is included to provide participants with an essential tool for addressing producer needs. When underwriters communicate benefits, they motivate producers to place business with your company.

Time & Self Management
This unit deals with setting goals, establishing priorities, and using time effectively. Participants evaluate their current use of time and identify barriers to productivity. They learn to prioritize, allocate resources, and classify producers to better manage their work load. When underwriters determine which producers deserve the bulk of their time, they leverage their efforts and become more productive and valuable to the company. Effective time management combined with a clear focus on goals gives underwriters the personal achievement skills they need to meet team objectives.

Telephone Strategies
Underwriters rely heavily on the telephone for day-to-day operations. Productive phone use involves much more than simply picking up the phone and dialing. This unit identifies the types of underwriter phone calls, the planning and preparation required for each call, and the skills that make calls more efficient and productive. With these skills, underwriters can be most effective on the phone. The telephone becomes a useful sales tool instead of an interruption.

Styles of Negotiation
What is the best method for negotiating with agents, brokers, or company personnel? This unit reveals the characteristics of win/win negotiations. It identifies the criteria for evaluating negotiation success and examines the three basic negotiating styles. Using the correct negotiating style ensures that the agreement will be durable and durability is a critical factor used to measure negotiation success. To negotiate productively, underwriters also need an understanding of different personality types and knowledge of what techniques work effectively for each type. When underwriters are able to tailor their negotiation techniques to the individual with whom they are dealing, positive, durable agreements results.

Pre-Negotiation Activities
Statistics show that poor pre-negotiation planning is the single largest source of negotiation failure. In this unit, participants learn a comprehensive approach to preparing for negotiations that will help them determine and reach their goals. The importance of planning for negotiation is emphasized and critical issues – such as where, when, and with whom to negotiate – are discussed and resolved. Participants evaluate their present planning skills and apply preparation techniques to role-play topics. The Negotiating Planning Worksheet and Three Tiered Goal Analysis Form are provided to help participants learn to set and prioritize their negotiation goals. The underwriter who handles pre-negotiation planning well will achieve productive agreements.

Negotiation Strategies & Tactics
Productive negotiating is a process of communication geared toward a series of objectives. The plan of action negotiators select to reach their objectives is their “strategy.” Without an appropriate strategy, negotiators have no format to direct them in pursuit of their goals. In this unit, underwriters learn how to construct a suitable strategy for any negotiation. If the strategy is the overall game plan, tactics are the “plays” a negotiator employs to implement the plan. This unit provides underwriters with dozens of tactics and counter-tactics that they will use and encounter. Exercises in this unit are designed to provide participants with the ability to strategize effectively and summon the ideal tactics and counter-tactics even in the heat of a tough negotiation. With these skills, underwriters are equipped to negotiate and to achieve better agreements in less time.

Conducting Negotiations
Adequate preparation and proper strategies and tactics are only useful if the negotiation itself is well executed. In this unit, participants learn the best techniques for opening, maintaining, and closing negotiations with producers and company personnel. They learn how to overcome objections, employ flexibility, and remove common negotiation “road blocks.” Finalizing and verifying agreements is a crucial – and often overlooked – last step in the negotiation process. Also in this unit, underwriters acquire techniques to help them conclude negotiations effectively and productively. By effectively steering the course of a negotiation, the underwriter gains greater control over both the process and the result.

Putting it all Together
After learning the elements of the PRISMS system, participants tie the process together in a single unit. Video segments show the elements and problems of the underwriter’s job. Here, participants view the entire process, reviewing and defining the skills that lead to success. Following these segments, participants role-play and critique their own underwriting situations to help them gain confidence in their ability to apply PRISMS principles and skills. By directly relating skills to underwriting, PRISMS produces results not just in the classroom but – more importantly – on the job.

workshop

With our user-friendly leader’s materials, your own staff can easily facilitate this groundbreaking enhancement to both on-the-job experience and prior training. The course has three interrelated components to ensure optimal learning and on-the-job results.

Pre-work
Participants individually select their own Current Persuasion Opportunity (CPO) for the ultimate customization of real world skill application. Application of skills to a real world CPO accelerates understanding and creates longer skill retention.

Workshop
Participants experience a coordinated blend of highly interactive class discussions, focus group and workbook activities and role-plays. PowerPoint slides and video clips add essential material.

Action Plan
During the course, participants apply learned skills to their own CPO—their real world situation. When they return to work, they have a plan to hit the ground running!

e-learning

The self-paced online program is a convenient and effective way to learn and practice the skills and methods of the 7 Triggers system.

Narrated by author Russ Granger, the interactive, multimedia format is divided into modules for easy access in a busy schedule. The program even remembers the user’s last location, and a full program menu is always just a click away for reference and review. Fully SCORM compliant.

application tool

The YesMaker

WHAT IS IT?
The YesMaker workstation and mobile app is designed to enable business professionals the ability to substantially improve client research and meeting planning so that agreements, commitments, and sales happen faster and more often.

WHAT DOES IT DO?
A vital technology tool offering a substantial competitive edge for anyone responsible for gaining agreement with others, the YesMaker incorporates the specific principles associated with The 7 Triggers to Yes persuasion program, based on the critically-acclaimed book of the same name by Russell H. Granger. The YesMaker goes far beyond any of the categories or enhancements available as part of conventional CRM systems, by prompting the user to develop uniquely effective approaches using highly-specific client insights and information.

As part of the 7 Triggers e-learning or workshop course, the participant is provided access to the YesMaker web and mobile application. The YesMaker not only encourages participants to employ the techniques and principles of the 7 Triggers, it is a vital tool for gathering, organizing, and using advanced client intelligence.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
Entering the registration key (available only to those who have completed The 7 Triggers to Yes program) prompts the user to import their client information, either from a contact program or a CRM system (the YesMaker can be used independently or as an add-on to most CRM systems; please contact us for more on CRM integration). New prospect or client entries may also be entered directly.

Once the selected contacts are imported, the special elements and fields associated with The 7 Triggers to Yes system are immediately available for each client. Data may key-entered, pasted in from other programs, or even sourced from Google or social media networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook. Users may easily organize the data into a priority structure customized for each client.

In addition to the custom reference material created for each client, users may also easily transfer specific data points to an integrated meeting planner. This enables the user to formulate highly-effective strategic interactions.

module content

INTRODUCTION
Persuasion is arguably the single most important business tool, yet few understand persuasion or use it effectively. In this unit, participants will:
• Define and record their CPO – Current Persuasion Opportunity.
• Discover the benefits of skilled persuasion.
• Gain an understanding of the brain’s decision making process.

THE AWESOME POWER OF PERSUASION
Persuaders rule. They always have. They always will. Leaders, advertisers, marketers, salespeople—all of us—have been using hit or miss emotional appeals for years. But hit or miss, trial and error approaches to activating emotional triggers are ineffective and inefficient. The 7 Triggers to YES makes your staff consciously competent with new scientifically documented data on how the brain processes decision making information. Applying new scientific discoveries, we can now successfully lead others to a shared conclusion. This unit explores:
• The process of persuasion for leading others to a shared solution and desired action.
• Analytical vs Emotional Decisions.
• The twin horses of the mind: reason and emotion.
• How to work with people rather than against them.
• The Building Blocks of Persuasion.
• How to effectively influence others’ decisions by understanding how they process decision-making information.
• Triggers, the decision shortcuts that help us make quick, correct decisions.

THE 7 TRIGGERS TO YES
We finally know definitively that the brain is hard-wired to take mental shortcuts whenever we make decisions. Internal mechanisms—triggers—help us quickly assimilate information and take the right next step. Those who understand how triggers work have enormous power to help others make easy, quick decisions. In each of these 7 critical trigger units, participants will learn:
• What triggers we each universally employ to shortcut the decision process.
• How to evaluate potential triggers for each situation.
• How to apply each trigger.
• The most important elements of each trigger.
• How to help others quickly make decisions that are right for them.
• To apply elements of each trigger to their CPO.

The 7 Trigger units are:

THE FRIENDSHIP TRIGGER
Trust, friendship and common bonds are a key trigger. This trigger forms the basis for other triggers to be effective. The many key facets to this trigger are explored.

THE AUTHORITY TRIGGER
By effectively showing credibility, knowledge, and authority, you reduce the risk inherent in most decisions. Like Friendship, the Authority Trigger is a critical stand-alone trigger as well as a precursor for other triggers to be activated.

THE CONSISTENCY TRIGGER
We are slaves to consistency. The brain maintains a database of prior actions and feelings. The newly discovered chemical and biological brain flows urge us to be consistent with this archive. When we learn what others are consistent with, we can frame our request accordingly.

THE RECIPROCITY TRIGGER
This is the well documented, universal psychological requirement for quid pro quo. Every human society employs this trigger, and scientists now believe society as we know it exists principally because of this powerful internal trigger.

THE CONTRAST TRIGGER
In the real world of the brain, objective values simply don’t matter—perceptions rule. Perceptions are based on “where we were – where we are now,” which scientists call the “adaptation level.” Setting the right adaptation level, and the specific order in which we present options and choices, creates the right perceptions to activate this trigger.

THE REASON WHY TRIGGER
Scientific studies create and validate the Reason Why Trigger. Ask without a reason, get turned down. Provide a reason for acting, and you persuade compliance. Why? Because a specific emotional element in the brain accepts what it considers to be a valid reason and acts immediately rather than sending the reason, and the request, to the thinking part of the brain.

THE HOPE TRIGGER
Hope is the strongest motivator of all human activity. We hope for happiness, for what we want, we hope to avoid what we fear. Hope is a fundamental powerhouse trigger that controls our decisions and actions. It is unmatched in persuasive ability. Learn what others hope for, and it’s fascinatingly easy to frame requests to activate this essential trigger. The course presents the elements of each trigger, shows how activate each trigger, how to apply individual triggers and trigger combinations. We provide a process for determining which triggers will be most easily activated in each persuasion encounter.

PERSUASION TARGETS
To successfully persuade others we need specific persuasion goals. In this unit, participants will:
• Learn the single critical element that determines success or failure.
• Be able to apply the Four-Step Goal-Setting Process to measurable persuasion goals.
• Learn how action-oriented goals can make achieving YES! easier.
• Learn to avoid the “someday syndrome” for achieving goals.
• Rewrite their CPO using the four-step goal process.

PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION
Persuasion result is totally dependent on the quality of communication. The best skills are worthless without the ability to properly communicate your requests. In this unit, participants will learn:
• The definition of true communication—it’s not what most think!
• How and when to identify values and decision-making criteria.
• How to formulate questions to uncover needs, wants and goals.
• How the right questions guide the persuasion process.
• How to actively listen rather than waiting to speak.
• How to understand others—and be understood!
• To apply communication & questioning skills to their CPO.

PERSUASIVE PRESENTATIONS
New persuasion skills breathe vibrant life into stale, old style logic and reason oriented presentations. Even the needs/benefit approach is now expanded exponentially. In this unit, participants will gain the ability to:
• Frame, organize & prepare presentations leading to successful persuasion results.
• Make the best opening statement.
• Determine which trigger information will make the most impact.
• Frame the presentation using carefully selected triggers.
• Deliver persuasive, well organized interactive presentations that lead to desired decisions and actions.
• Apply relevant triggers information to their CPO presentation.

RESOLVING RESISTANCE
Skilled persuaders easily turn resistance into golden opportunities. In this unit participants will:
• Learn how to recognize and disarm resistance.
• Know how to properly react to resistance.
• Learn how to respond to objections with the Four-Step Process.
• List several objections they might get to their CPO request.

CLOSURE
Armed with solid persuasion skills, closure comes naturally! In this unit, participants will learn to get that final YES! by discovering:
• How to determine the right time to close.
• How to use key persuasion triggers to get commitment – that final YES.
• How to apply different closing methods.
• How to close every single encounter!
• How to achieve successful closure for their CPO.