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Our Catalog

Guidebook Online   |   Management Online   |   Advanced Annuities *   |   Business Insurance *
Estate Planning *   |   Recruiting Brochure

Refund Policy: To receive a refund for a course, request one via e-mail to j.kerchner5@verizon.net within ten days. No refunds will be issued after ten days of purchase.

* Continuing Education credits are available for these courses in some states.
   Click here for CE credit information.

Quick Purchase
Guidebook Online

Single Copy, $99
Management
Online

I-1: Orientation &
Expectations, Plus
I-2: Philosophy &
Operations, $40

II-1: Recruiting, $25
II-2: Selecting, $25
II-3: Training, $25
II-4: Supervising, $25
II-5: Coaching &
Mentoring, $25

II-6: Business
Planning, $25

II-7: Communi-
cations, $25

II-8: Ethics &
Compliance, $25

Complete, $150
Business Insurance

Single Copy, $89
Estate Planning

Single Copy, $89
Advanced Annuities

Single Copy, $89
Recruiting Brochure

Order Form

GUIDEBOOK ONLINE

Relationship-Based Marketing & Selling
for Financial Services Professionals

Part I: The Career

Guidebook Online is about marketing and selling insurance and other financial products and services. It teaches a relationship-based, problem-solving approach that focuses on the buyer's needs, not the seller's desire for a commission.

Guidebook Online takes representatives through a process of self-discovery, offering specific tools and techniques they can use. Financial services representatives trained this way quickly rise above the rest of the herd, their careers taking a hard right turn into professionalism.

Both new and seasoned producers can study this information and apply it in their businesses. Or, if participants are prospective financial services representatives, Guidebook Online can help them decide if they're making the right career choice, after all.

Part II: Market Development

Marketing cannot be hit or miss; it must be part and parcel of your business plan. Your formal marketing plan should address getting new business and maintaining or increasing current business, while determining where your time and resources are now directed and where they can be most profitably be directed in the future. In other words, if selling is reaping the harvest, marketing is sowing the seeds.

Part III: Prospect Sources & Methods

Prospects are everywhere, but to be effective, prospecting must be planned, purposeful activity, not a series of random efforts to generate names. Large numbers of people need and want your products and services. Though not everyone is a prospect for you, an incredible array of sales opportunities are at your fingertips. With the right prospecting skills and good work habits, you can create a steady flow of prospective buyers, and will easily identify needs and concerns that can be addressed with your products and services.

Part IV: Earning Scheduled Meetings

In today's crowded, competitive marketplace, prospects will be looking at you as hard, if not harder, than you're looking at them. Scheduled meetings must be earned, so, in many ways, the "pre-approach," in which you get people to agree to see you, is arguably the most challenging part of the sales cycle.

Part V: Conducting Win / Win Marketing & Sales Meetings

Financial products and services sales interviews should guide prospects to a buying decision by establishing a series of understandings, agreements, or "commitments".

These are:

  • Needs Commitment;

  • Process Commitment;

  • Financial Commitment; and

  • Solution Commitment.

When each of these relatively minor commitments is made, buying becomes a natural part of a problem-solving process, not a major decision made all at once. Though people may be motivated by a wide-range of emotions, including love, pride, duty, greed — even the fear of appearing foolish — there's a clear, compelling logic behind their buying decisions.

Part VI: After the Sale

Once the sale is closed, take off your sales hat, and don your service hat. Set up an appointment to meet with the buyer for product delivery, and always deliver the product yourself, accompanied by a technical expert, as needed. Your goal is to resell the need and solution, but you are also beginning the post-sale period, an important phase in building client relationships.

You won't close every sale, but with an effective follow-up mechanism as part of your automated communications system, you can stay in contact with qualified prospects who didn't buy. By collecting X-Dates for follow-up contacts, you will soon have a sizable number of people to call again — as always, based on the prospect's timing and specific reason for the call. Follow-up calls represent activity, and activity leads to sales.

Part VII: Building & Maintaining Client Relationships

Technically, when you make a sale, you don't have a client, you have a customer. A customer is someone who buys from you once; a client is someone who will buy from you, again and again. Clients who trust you and your expertise will come to you (and maybe only you) for advice.

A client relationship is one in which both the buyer and seller agree that the first transaction was not a one-time event. Developing and maintaining healthy client relationships means that you can expect good persistency, repeat business, prestige recommendations and introductions.


Guidebook Online, Single Copy: $99.00

The single license option includes one username and password for access to Guidebook Online for one individual.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.


MANAGEMENT ONLINE

A "Do-While-Learning"™ Professional Development Program
for Financial Services Sales Managers

Phase I: Career Overview for Sales Management Candidates

The initial phase of Management Online encompasses two learning segments (sold together), which deal with aspects of financial services sales management careers in general.

Learning Segment 1: Orientation & Expectations

Financial products and services are generally not bought, they must be sold. And even in this era of e-commerce, no one has devised a better way of selling and servicing our products than through commissioned sales representatives working one-on-one with clients, supervised and supported by agency builders and Sales Managers. While most Sales Managers have been successful producers, successful producers don't all succeed in sales management. These are two very different careers, requiring different interests and abilities.

Learning Segment 2: Philosophy & Operations

Establishing an operating philosophy is an important element in any successful financial services organization. Though it may evolve over time, an agency's philosophical underpinnings — as is its general market orientation — are determined by the Company, the Agency Head, economic trends, business conditions, and geography. While individual producers are encouraged to develop prospect profiles and markets that are right for them, they're also expected to get behind the Company's basic principles and their organization's operating philosophy and general market orientation. Old or new, financial services organizations and everyone in them need to know where they're going.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase I, Complete: $40.00

Phase II: Career Skills

The second phase of Management Online has eight Learning Segments dealing with financial services sales management core career skills and other essential topics. These segments may be purchased individually or as a package.

Learning Segment 1: Recruiting

Recruiting is to sales management what marketing and prospecting are to selling. Like prospecting, recruiting involves identifying sufficient numbers of qualified individuals who, when successfully put through selection and training, will become valuable members of your agency. Like the producer who fails to prospect, the manager who fails to recruit will end up in a very tight bind. Thus, like marketing and prospecting, recruiting has a direct impact on your agency's growth and profitability.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 1: $25.00

Learning Segment 2: Selecting

Selection is a measuring and testing process. It includes a systematic approach to identifying and rejecting unqualified candidates and appointing the very best of the rest, assuming they want to come under contract (you see, selection works both ways).

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 2: $25.00

Learning Segment 3: Training

The objective of sales training (or, "career development" as it is also called) is to help agents develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits they need to meet their production goals. To put it simply, knowledge is what agents need to know; skills are what they need to do; attitudes are their outlook about the career and themselves; and habits are the behavior patterns they must develop to meet their performance standards.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 3: $25.00

Learning Segment 4: Supervising

Supervision provides the continuing, hands-on support agents need to keep their skills sharp and their production up-to-par. The right kind of supervision can make sure that agents stay on track and continue to do the things necessary to succeed. But that's not all. Effective supervision also makes sure that producers who should be in the business stay in the business.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 4: $25.00

Learning Segment 5: Coaching & Mentoring

Coaches understand that if their expectations are high, productivity is likely to be high. If their expectations are low, productivity is likely to be low. By extension, they know people with high self-esteem out-perform people with low self-esteem. As a result, a coaching style that is long on criticism and short on reward is the best way to shred an agent's self-confidence and hinder performance.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 5: $25.00

Learning Segment 6: Business Planning

Effective managers know where they're going and spend most of their time clarifying and communicating clear goals for the agency. Your own planning, goal-setting, and self-management experiences — as an agent, student, spouse or parent — will carry you forward, enabling you to manage these functions. In each of those other roles, you've had to organize your activities and resources to meet your goals.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 6: $25.00

Learning Segment 7: Communications

Communication is the process of sending information and understanding from one place to another. The communication process involves these basic elements:

  • Sender

  • Message

  • Channel

  • Receiver

  • Feedback

You can improve communication skills by becoming aware of these elements and how they contribute to successful communication in any organization.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 7: $25.00

Learning Segment 8: Ethics & Compliance

Financial services practitioners are expected to play by the rules, to be knowledgeable, principled and honest, and to conduct themselves as trustworthy professionals. This means:

  • Obeying the spirit as well as the letter of insurance regulations in the states where they are licensed.
  • Getting smart and staying smart. Knowledge is the key to proper planning and products. An ethical person will recognize his or her limitations and seek to increase competency.
  • Following NASD suitability and fair dealings rules.
  • Meeting Company legal and contractual obligations.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Phase II, Segment 8: $25.00


Management Online, Complete: $150.00

Includes all eight segments of Management Online, as described above.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.


Business Insurance *

Knowledge & Skills Training for Financial Service Professionals

Your ticket to the lucrative business and professional markets, this program will help you understand:

  • The needs, objectives, and concerns of small-business owners and professionals, and how to address them with your products and services.
  • The taxation of business insurance, and key planning concepts.
  • How to identify, qualify and approach business insurance prospects, and develop cases.
  • How to use your products and services as flexible sales tools in developing and closing sales.
  • How to cross-sell in the business and professional markets, get referrals and reintroduce clients to the sales process, again and again.

You'll learn how to get prospects' attention with unique sales ideas, how to analyze needs, how to design solutions using your products and services, and how to close sales and build profitable, long-term client relationships.

  • Action Assignments will help you build skills and begin making sales in the business and professional markets.< /li>

  • The Multiple-Choice Examination will test your understanding of the planning concepts you will soon be using with business owners and professional clients.

Business owners and professionals make up lucrative markets for your products and services. You don't have to be a technical "expert" to enter these markets. But you will need to get your bearings, learn how to use a few new tools and techniques, and keep up with new planning ideas and technical developments.

It's a great feeling when you know how. And you will!

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Business Insurance Complete: $89.00


Estate Planning *

This course surveys a financial services discipline that for many sales associates is the bedrock of their practice — and with good reason. Estate planning is sometimes associated only with the very affluent, and while those with considerable assets are key prospects, the market for estate planning covers a far wider range than many realize. Agents who specialize in this field know it is as lucrative as it is important.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Estate Planning Complete: $89.00


Advanced Annuities *

This course presents information on annuities, which have recently attracted a great deal of attention. Annuities are contracts under which insurance companies agree to pay annuitants a stated income for life, or some other predetermined period. The purchase price is paid either in a single sum or in a series of payments over time. Unlike life insurance, which can create a capital sum in return for as little as one premium payment, annuities are designed both to accumulate capital over a period of time and distribute capital over an individual's lifetime.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message, including your username and password to access the program.

Advanced Annuities Complete: $89.00


Recruiting Brochure: "A Career Opportunity"

Our recruiting brochure, "A Career Opportunity", will help you decide if a career in marketing and selling financial products and services is the right choice for you. It is not an easy decision for most, nor should it be in light of the mutual commitments involved. Order our generic brochure or customize it for your company.

Once you complete your purchase, you will receive a confirmation e-mail and a follow-up message with further instructions on brochure delivery.

Click here for a preview.

Click here for pricing and an order form.


* Continuing Education credits are available for these courses in some states.
   Click here for CE credit information.


To find out more about our Online Training Services, e-mail us
at j.kerchner5@verizon.net.


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