John and Dan are back with another installment in their series on adapting your sales process to the realities of phone or virtual appointments. As most of the country shifts...
Join Dan and John as they work through the 5 keys to conducting successful virtual and phone appointments. As more workforces shift to remote-only schedules, this is an opportunity to...
Feeling scattered? Consider going narrow. And deep. Like many of my readers, I am a regular at industry events and conferences, sometimes attending several in just a few weeks. The...
In this client-exclusive webinar, John and Dan revisit the process of finding pain and use an in-depth roleplay to demonstrate how techniques for finding pain might play out on a...
Want to build a great team? Try watching the NFL Combine. My son loved playing high school football, and during those years we established a tradition of camping on the...
Building trust and rapport with your prospect is not just about what you say. It’s also about how you behave. In this webinar, Dan and John talk about how you...
Nearly every sales system or methodology addresses the complicated relationship between prospects and the truth. Put gently, prospects will often tell us what they think we want to hear. More...
To Sell More, Replace Pain with Optimism First, find your client’s dark corners. Now… find a way out. One of the many challenges of sales is that we are often...
To close out the year, Dan and John pack a wide range of sales insights into this client-exclusive webinar. From who you bring on a sales call to how you...
If you follow the traditional proposal process, you give your clients an insight into your business that is easily shared with the incumbent and your other competitors. How do you...
You may need an app. And you may also need to make even more cold calls… Bob Dylan might not have been thinking about advisors, but he was right when...
Book a meeting from a meeting and watch your sales numbers grow. The motto “B.A.M.F.A.M.” has become ubiquitous in our office because one of our team members, Alisha, has used...
John and Dan sit down to talk about a common roadblock in sales that is sometimes invisible to advisors: the way your competitors sell. If your sales process does not...
Maybe your fears are a sign that something is wrong. Monty Hall, the famous game show host, once said, “I’m an overnight success, but it took twenty years.” From the...
John Pojeta is back with more ideas about how to turn prospects into clients. If I were to ask you if you have an open mind when you enter a...
Engaging high-value prospects almost always means unseating an incumbent advisor. If your sales process does not strategically address this challenge, the prospect is unlikely to drop their current advisor to...
Sometimes, making sales is about pulling prospects away from your competitors. As your practice matures, winning a sale means that someone has to lose. Early on in the growth of...
The first few moments of a meeting could make or break the rest of the sale, and you might not even realize what you are doing right or what you...
Sometimes, the best prospects are the ones who, originally, got away. The combination of a traditional sales mindset and industry developments—such as the rise of aggregators—can mean that advisors overlook...
Many advisors are often worried about coming across as pushy in their sales process, which can mean that they back down in places where they should have stood their ground...
This story is one of my all-time favorites, and it illustrates how counterintuitive a sales pipeline sometimes can be. One of our advisor clients specializes in working with farms of...
Taking a departure from the usual webinar format, John and Dan tackle a range of insights from the field to uncover trends in the challenges and obstacles facing PT clients....
In this exclusive PT webinar, Dan and John walk through the three most common sales mistakes advisors make when taking an appointment. This installment is full of laughs, but the...
Self-confidence can help. It can also hurt. How do prospects know that you are one of the top advisors in their region? Football analysts often talk about a quarterback’s vision,...
This is a must watch webinar for anyone in sales. In this exclusive webinar, John and Dan discuss one of the greatest challenges in sales, unseating the incumbent. Prospects are...
I think I’ve had something wrong about sales for a long time. I followed the classic wisdom of playing the numbers when it came to cold leads. If I met...
In this exclusive webinar, John and Dan breakdown the top 5 objections salespeople are likely to hear and discuss tactics and strategies for overcoming them. A mix of sales roleplay...
Yes, the water can be cold. Sometimes, you just have to make yourself jump in. The film Zero Dark Thirty recounts a semi-fictionalized version of the hunt for Osama Bin...
John sits down with Erika Bylund, co-founder of Point Sur Wealth Management to talk about her past experiences with lead generation and appointment setting services and how those experiences compare...
John sits down with Erika Bylund, co-founder of Point Sur Wealth Management to talk about her past experiences with lead generation and appointment setting services and how those experiences compare...
We have found that one of the secrets to engaging a cold prospect is the story we tell. With years of cold calling under our belt, we have refined what...
John and Dan are back with another exclusive PT webinar. In this installment, they explore the best practices for uncovering and developing pain with your sales process. With this step,...
When I first began my career as an advisor, a mentor gave me two lessons that I still use today: If you can’t measure it, don’t do it. The bottom...
In this PT exclusive webinar, John talks about the best way to approach an appointment setting program, from your process for determining if it’s a fit for your business all...
Sales can be won or lost on a first impression. In this exclusive PT webinar, John and Dan break down a repeatable, reliable process for making the first 5 minutes...
Though sales coaching and business insights often focus on the technical aspects of growth, like dealing with objections or how to discuss budget with a prospect, our Sandler Sales Coach...
How do prospects know that you are one of the top advisors in their region? Well, you have the designations, right? Do the fancy initials at the end of your...
Business owners and salespeople are no strangers to the idea of having and meeting goals, but how you set, frame, and apply your goals can have a significant impact on...
Everyone wants to give you advice. When should you accept? Experienced insurance advisors are often jaded. They have faced good times and bad. They have endured bad deals. And they have been...
Budget and price are often major obstacles in the sales process, and the solution to the challenge goes deeper than adding a new sales technique to your repertoire. In this...
Doing so will position you to capitalize on opportunities others don’t have the patience to seize The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is legendary in psychology circles. Researchers would bring a child into...
Maybe you gave up on it in 2010. It’s time to take another look. Social media marketing is so 2010, right? By now, you have heard a dozen gurus promise...
Here’s a plan to plan what you’ll be doing for the rest of the year. Most advisors—and business owners in general—approach business planning and projections for a new year with the same excitement they...
Storytelling can make the difference between a memorable and engaging sales experience and one that feels flat and stale. In this exclusive webinar. Dan Hudock, our sales coach, partners up...
Do you see growth opportunities in your market but aren’t sure that you have the right resources to capture that additional revenue? In this webinar, we explore the process of...
In competitive spaces like ours, the temptation to achieve growth at any cost is powerful. That doesn’t have to mean doing something nefarious or unethical. Little compromises, like taking on...
As your business expands, you will likely need to grow your sales team as well. In this exclusive PT webinar, John Pojeta and Dan Hudock talk about how you should think about your sales teams and...
In this webinar, John Pojeta from PT and our guest speaker, Jeff Thompson, from ECA Marketing, to discuss “The How.” They discuss areas such as revenue sharing, unique strategy offers such...
In this webinar, Dan and John talk about the part of sales that can dramatically improve or decrease the impact of your sales techniques: Attitude. In their discussion, they breakdown...
In this webinar, John Pojeta and Dan Hudock talk about the common stumbling blocks advisors face when taking appointments and how they can adjust their sales process to capture more...
In this webinar, Dan and John explore the skills and strategies you need to ask effective questions during your sales process. This approach not only allows you to develop pain...
If prospecting does not come naturally to you, you may want to explore these ideas in your quest for new clients. A fear of prospecting is not so secretly a...
In this roleplay, Dan and John tackle multiple variations of a meeting close, ranging from easy to hard. In this step, we lean on the upfront contract that was established...
Our work in appointment setting gives us a unique perspective on advisors’ businesses. We get to see a dynamic range of styles, approaches, and specializations as advisors from around the country engage...
Dan and John will set the stage with real PT client examples of how to handle “Not Now.” We have too many examples to count of PT clients sharing with...
The key in starting a process with any prospect is developing pain in their current behaviors to provide not only motivation for a second appointment, but genuine intrigue and curiosity...
John will discuss with Dan the realities of engaging a prospect who feels good about the incumbent. We will explore how to get the buyer to be truthful about the...
John will interview Dan to discuss techniques used on the first appointment to increase your number of second meetings. From how to open the meeting with an up-front contract, to...
In this phase of the sale process, our sales trainer Dan Hudock talks about how exploring business philosophies can help you find common ground with a prospect. By having this...
The two-minute drill is designed to reveal who you and your prospect are as people, stepping briefly away from the business talk to add a deeper dimension to the sales...
As our sales trainer Dan Hudock explains it, upfront agreements are an opportunity to bring down the walls between you and the buyer. By setting the expectations for the meeting...
In this exclusive client training video, Dan Hudock explains the value of using a “30-second commercial” in the final phase of the sales process to bookend the sales conversation in...
In life and annuity sales and in client service, confrontation can be a sticking point. Avoiding confrontation is a natural human tendency, but how we handle a confrontation can become...
The prevailing sales wisdom suggests that face-to-face interactions are best. The personal element of sales is best in person, so we should do our best to have our appointments that way....
When we talk about ways advisors can grow their practices, we talk about a number of opportunities: appointment setting, strategic partnerships, seminars, techniques for improving direct mail campaigns, thought leadership...
Explore these opportunities if you want to make a real connection with your prospects and clients. Relationship selling is one of the oldest sales methodologies. While I’d argue that there are...
We see a common trend in mature practices, and seven years of a relatively up market has strengthened it, especially in the Business to Business space. Mature practices—the kind run...
Take a deep breath. There is a lot of uncertainty on the horizon for 2018 as we face some big questions. We’ve faced uncertain times before, and we will certainly...
Marketing is often described as a “necessary evil.” You know that you need to reach beyond your circle of influence to capture new business, but it’s not what you enjoy...
First impressions matter, and there is no escaping that. When you first meet with someone, whether you are at a networking event or having the first meeting in a sales...
One of the most popular TED Talks of all time is Simon Sinek’s 2009 presentation titled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” The whole video is worth a watch, but the...
My son started wrestling a few years ago. If you’re familiar with the sport—and I wasn’t—you’ll know that most wrestlers put on a singlet almost as soon as they are...
Jordan Belfort entered mainstream public consciousness with the box-office-busting Wolf of Wall Street. His vices and unscrupulous behavior aside, Belfort was undeniably a juggernaut of sales technique. At the close...
Eric Schmidt, the 100th richest person in the world with a resume that includes work at Google and Apple, once said, “Revenue solves everything.” When you have money consistently coming...
The DOL ruling is out. So what now? It’s time to step off the emotional roller coaster. Let’s get back to finding new clients. For as long as I can...
These days, when the government starts to even hint at changes in legislation, advisors have a hard time resisting the urge to turn their backs on the wave and paddle...
The start of any New Year is rife with uncertainty for advisors. It’s a fresh start, and any number of market shifts or industry changes could transform how you do...
Seth Godin published his book Unleashing the Ideavirus in 2000, popularizing the concept of developing a message so interesting that people can’t help but talk about it, creating a contagious...
In recent years, a service mentality has begun to dominate our industry. The thinking goes that an exceptional service experience will wow a client into fierce loyalty and inspire a...
Whenever producers talk about the future of the insurance and financial planning industries, the conversation often involves market trends — what legislation is on the horizon and what shifts are...
This article original appeared on ProducersWeb. No pain, no gain. Exercise aficionados have been repeating that mantra for years. It’s what they tell themselves when their routine pushes them so...
This article originally appeared on ProducersWeb. An appointment setting program can be a valuable source of new business for a producer, but the sales scenario is different from a cold...
Insurance News Net recently published a case study from the PT Services Group. In this article, we analyze the strategies and tactics that one producer used to successfully integrate appointment...
When we partner with producers, one of the first steps in our process is to establish a storyboard that represents who they are, what they do, and what makes them...
Historically, the financial services industry has largely stayed away from getting involved in social media for many reasons – fear of losing control of its messaging, inadvertently violating compliance regulations,...
Over the last few years, I have made regular attempts to start a physical fitness regimen by going to the gym and eating better, but those attempts are short-lived. Many...
Ever find yourself in this scenario? You just met with a hot prospect who seemed eager and interested in learning about your product offerings—in fact, you were 99.9% sure you...
Looking back at 2010, amid sweeping political reform and global financial uncertainty, our industry has been changing. Just two years ago, the leading edge of more than 76 million baby...
Last week, we began a series designed to help you determine if and how you should be using high-quality business intelligence. We discussed the consistent volume of data available and...
This is the third in a series of posts intended to provide our point of view on the most efficient ways to conduct a successful marketing campaign using high quality...
This is the fourth post in a series of blogs designed to help you prepare to begin a business intelligence program to build a pipeline for lead generation and sales....
When it comes to insurance business intelligence reports, most busy brokers and insurance salespeople prefer quick returns. Ideally, they want the business intelligence reports they are purchasing and pursuing to connect...
Identifying potential prospects is the first step in closing the deal. As insurance sales professionals know well, not all of the potential prospects you speak to are ready to buy...
For insurance sales professionals, gathering business intelligence and then selling to those potential prospects can be an uphill battle. The most successful insurance professionals will turn to a company that provides...
Here is the second part of our guide of the most common mistakes insurance sales people make when managing business intelligence. 4) Failing to Nurture a “Colder” Potential Prospect – Too...
You understand by now that voice-verified business intelligence helps you to close more deals, but have you thought about how useful they can be when it comes to recruiting the very...
Leveraging business intelligence regularly is a big part of success as an insurance sales professional. However, equally important is maintaining a good relationship with the clients you already have. The 80/20...
As an insurance or financial sales professional, your job is to get the prospect to pick you. With so many different health care packages out there today, it is likely...
Insurance sales professionals know there is plenty of stress attached to the job. Each day brings an increasing number of competitors and rejections. Add to that the pressure to building...
Those who sell insurance for a living tend to have divided opinions about the effectiveness of social media in helping them to build their pipeline for lead generation and sales....
Everyone makes mistakes, including even the best group health insurance salespeople in the world. What differentiates them from the rest of the pack, though, is that they understand that rather...
Good insurance sales professionals know that in order to really get ahead they need to employ a number of different tactics when it comes to following up on business intelligence,...
As more businesses look into changing their health insurance options, you may find that the number of potential prospects that you identify increases. You also can be sure that the...
Every insurance or financial services professional has the image of a “perfect salesperson” in mind. Their perfect salesperson consistently has a high personal sales total and loyal clients who are...
Purchasing exclusive, voice-verified business intelligence is one of the most effective ways to begin developing a pipeline for lead generation. Used as part of an overall insurance marketing strategy, this is...