What
is Prospect & Flourish?
Prospect & Flourish is
two things, really.
First, it's a new book
designed to help producers flourish by teaching them
how to prospect. It's not about sales. It's all about
prospecting.
Second, the book goes hand-in-hand with
an 18-hour professional development
program that targets the “weakest link”
in the sales process: prospecting. It is also a handy
supplement to our three-hour workshops, which we refer
to as "bootcamps." Sales training programs abound
that cover sales closing techniques—but the vast
majority of them pay mere lip service to an enigma that
can kill a potential business relationship before it ever
has a chance to take root: prospecting. The number one
reason sales people fail in most relationship-driven industries
and professions is that the average sales person does
not know how to prospect consistently, and effectively.
We teach that.
How did the program
(and its premise) come about?
In early 2005, Keith
F. Luscher (Google
Search) was approached by I. David Cohen
(Google
Search)—a long-time friend and Columbus-based
insurance professional with a national reputation not
only as a producer but a professional educator. Cohen
wanted to develop a program on prospecting for the insurance
industry. Knowing Luscher’s work as a consultant,
a published author and speaker on issues of interpersonal
communication, sales, and relationships in both business
and personal settings, Cohen felt it was the perfect match
to bring such a program together. The resulting program
was called Prospect or Perish.
By August of that year, the first edition
of the textbook for Prospect or Perish was published,
under I. David Cohen’s byline. The following month,
the inaugural class was held for insurance and other financial
service professionals at Capital University in Columbus,
Ohio.
Since that time, Prospect or Perish
was acquired by The American College, just outside Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. The program is now a permanent curriculum
course for insurance professionals seeking to earn their
Life Underwriter Training Council Fellow (LUTCF) or Financial
Services Specialist (FSS) designations.
Meanwhile, Luscher further developed
the curriculum to serve the needs of professionals in
other industries that are fueled by long-term interpersonal
relationships. For this elite group of producers whose
professions include real estate, securities, financial
services and other industries, the fundamental challenges
and solutions to the prospecting enigma are no different.
Indeed, the unique position of the program
(“It’s not about sales. It’s about PROSPECTING.”)
originated not in Prospect or Perish, but in
a career book Luscher wrote ten years earlier for college
students: Don’t
Wait until You Graduate! The book’s
premise, as quoted in the original proposal Luscher successfully
used to find a publisher:
“This is a career book
for students, but it is not about job hunting. We do
not talk about resumes, cover letters or job interviewing.
This is a book about building long-term, interpersonal
relationships. Such relationships are best created,
nurtured and leveraged not through looking for a job
or ‘using’ people, but by sincerely reaching
out to other human beings, searching for needs and filling
them.”
This dynamic is essential to
effective prospecting. Since its original publication
in 1998, Don’t Wait until You Graduate! has
become a permanent fixture in the landscape of today’s
college campuses, and is now in its second edition (released
in 2003). Further, a Chinese translation was also published
and is in distribution throughout Asia.
I want a program
that is targeted for just my industry. Call me when it’s
ready.
As we have said already, the principles
of prospecting are the same no matter what your business
is. What is different is how those principles sometimes
apply to situations that may be unique to your industry.
Our program accounts for that, and the textbook is filled
with different examples of how the principles of prospecting
apply to different professions, well beyond the insurance
audience for whom Prospect or Perish was created.
Further, consider the class experience.
If you are a stock broker, think about which type of environment
might have more to offer you: one in which you are surrounded
by other stock brokers who have the same problems with
few solutions amongst each other or, a more diverse environment
where the experiences and solutions that have worked for
one profession may indeed have lessons to be shared with
others. You decide.
However, if you would truly like a
customized program for your industry or company, let us
know and we can see if there is a way we can help you
produce the results you are looking for. Prospect
& Flourish is available as an internal, company-wide
solution for more cost-effective deployment among a larger
corps of producers.
What is the
program experience like? It's not a boring lecture is
it?
Heck no! We keep it fun! We keep it
lively! Plus, Keith Luscher hates the sound of his own
voice, so you are in luck there too! Participants are
limited to twenty, and the format is a guided, yet lively
and open discussion highlighted by group exercises and
field assignments.
Can I get CE credit
for my participation and successful completion of Prospect
& Flourish?
That depends upon what you do…
For Registered Securities Representatives,
Prospect & Flourish qualifies for CE credits
under the Firm Element portion of Continuing Education,
as monitored by the NASD. Under this plan, each brokerage
firm discerns what their educational and development needs
are, and build their programs accordingly. If you are
interested in taking Prospect & Flourish and would
like credits applied to your continuing education, please
contact your sales manager, or have him/or her contact
us. If there is anything we can do to help you in this
regard, do not hesitate to contact us.
More information can be found on the
NASD website at http://www.securitiescep.com.
For Real Estate Professionals,
the Ohio Division of Real Estate & Professional Licensing
has approved Prospect & Flourish for credit under
the elective course category. For more information, please
visit the Ohio Division of Real Estate's website at http://www.com.state.oh.us/real.
Want CE credit in your field for your
participation? So do we! Contact us and we will do whatever
we can to make it happen!
Who is this Luscher
guy? What makes him so smart?
Good question! Luscher is smart, but
not a know-it-all. His success as an author, speaker and
consultant can be attributed more to his ability as a
listener than as a talker.
For a complete bio, click here.
To see Keith Luscher’s resume,
click here.
What do you mean,
“Selling is easy”? No it’s not!
Are we to assume that we got your attention?
Great!
So what do we mean by that statement?
In truth, selling is anything but easy. Selling takes
hard work—and it requires a real professional who
understands that the only true way he or she can create
value for him- or herself (i.e. a growing income that
fuels personal, professional and financial success) is
to first create value for the client.
However, for real professionals
who understand this, have practiced it and do what they
do from the heart, selling is easy.
Yet, prospecting continues to be the weakest link in the
sales cycle. What will make or break a sales career relies
first on one’s ability to prospect, and do so on
a regular basis. That’s what we mean when we say,
“Selling is Easy…It’s Prospecting that’s
Difficult.”
What
do you mean this program isn’t about sales? It’s
all about sales, isn’t it?
To sell, you must prospect. Everyone
has to prospect. Most people hate to do it, and we believe
that the five most common reasons
why salespeople don’t prospect enough are:
- They don’t understand the
value of what they are selling
- They have a fear of rejection
- They don’t know exactly what
to do or how to do it
- They are lazy
- They have a personal difficulty to
overcome
And yet, in
most sales education and training programs, prospecting
gets mere lip service. In some work cultures, you know
how sales people were told to prospect? They were
given a phone book! Indeed, you have plenty of resources
and options at your disposal to learn more about “selling”—but
there is not enough out there to help sales people confront
their fears and overcome their personal challenges when
it comes to prospecting. So, it is about sales, but it
isn’t. This is all about learning to keep your pipeline
full. This is all about prospecting.
What is the return
on my investment (ROI) in this program?
Don’t you really mean,
“What do I get for my money?” In reality,
this is the wrong question to ask, but we will get to
that in a moment.
Indeed, the return on your investment
is fairly simple to calculate. While guarantees in many
professional industries are difficult (and in many cases,
unethical and illegal) to extend, we do guarantee this:
if you adopt just a few of the approaches that you will
learn throughout this 18-hour experience, you WILL see
results. It is as certain as planting seeds in healthy
soil and nurturing your crop—you will see a harvest.
But your return on the investment is and always will be
very much up to you (for more on this, see the next question.)
To calculate a numerical return, consider
this simple formula (which we call The Power of One):
Let’s be conservative
and say that what you learn in this program enables
you to create at least one new client relationship.
In most professions, the
program has just paid for itself—perhaps
many times over depending on the work you do and the
rate of commission. To take it further…
Look beyond your first commission
for that single new client…what do you think
will be the lifetime value of that
one client? How much might you earn through serving
that single client over the lifetime of your career?
But wait, we’re not finished…
What about all the new clients
to whom that one first client will introduce you to,
as a direct result of your outstanding service, and
your newly developed skills in seeking referrals? The
payback on your investment grows exponentially!
But, like we said, ROI
is the wrong question to ask. The real question should
be: How much are YOU PAYING right now, NOT to prospect?
Consider these facts:
You are paying
not to prospect when you share a commission
in exchange for a lead (but you still do all or most
of the work yourself).
You are paying
not to prospect when you work on a lower
commission scale for a “feed” of often-unqualified
leads (but you still do all or most of the work yourself).
You
are paying not to prospect when
you fail to seek referrals (or more often, fail to seek
referrals correctly, because most people simply don’t
know how to do it correctly).
You are paying
not to prospect when you allow a client
to fall through the cracks, and before you know it,
they have gone somewhere else for service.
You are paying
not to prospect when you fail to follow
up on a new friend or acquaintance correctly and in
a timely manner, despite your stated intentions to do
so.
You
are paying not to prospect when
you are unable to build rapport with a prospect, simply
because your listening and interpersonal communication
skills are not properly honed.
The list could go on, but we hope you
get our point.
A month later,
I am back into my old reactive routines. What do I do
now?
Let’s jump ahead a month after
you have completed the self-directed program in the book,
to this very moment when are sitting at your desk (or
looking in the mirror, or driving your car…) and
you suddenly tell yourself: “Hey, I am falling back
into my old, reactive, routines.”
Congratulations. Really.
Actually, this is a problem that we
address directly in the the book. It is called oscillation—and
it is described as going back and forth between thought
and behavior patterns, and life structures that either
lead us toward the results we want, or away from them.
It’s why diets don’t work—we go on and
off of them too much to create any meaningful, lasting
results.
The same can happen in prospecting.
Recognizing the problem and having awareness of it is
the first step to either avoiding it or overcoming it.
Alumni of Prospect & Flourish are given the
tools they need to help create structures that help to
avoid this pattern of oscillation. Plus, we want to stay
in touch with you. We want a to keep track of how you
are doing, and the results you are creating with your
new knowledge and skills. We want to be in this with you
for the long haul. You know why? It’s all about
what we share in Chapter 5—we want you to experience
the service and benefits so that you will go out and tell
others about what we helped you achieve. |
