| Got
Questions? Bring ‘em On!
What is Prospect
& Flourish?
How did the program
(and its premise) come about?
I want a
program that is targeted for just my industry.
Call me when it’s ready.
What is
the program experience like? It's not a boring
lecture is it?
Can I get
CE credit for my participation and successful
completion of Prospect & Flourish?
Who is this
Luscher guy? What makes him so smart?
What do you
mean, “Selling is easy”? No it’s
not!
What do you
mean this program isn’t about sales? It’s
all about sales, isn’t it?
What is the return
on my investment (ROI) in this program?
A month
later, I am back into my old reactive routines.
What do I do now?
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 program, 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 program. 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 Week 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. |
