A 23% Sales Increase in Six Months
The Liberty Foundation was a small financial services company consisting of approximately 239 agents. They were founded in 1990 with the express purpose of bringing low-cost financial products to people who were tired of paying huge brokerage fees and commissions. By 1994 the company had established itself as a contender for the “low end” market.
The biggest challenge facing the organization at that time was the relatively large number of “under-producing agents.” As with many companies, most of the production was being done by less than 9% of the sales force.
One of the members of the board of directors had worked with Doug Carter in another company in 1989. She was also the top producer in the company. At her urging, the chairman of the board agreed to meet with Carter to see if there was something that could be done to train the agents in the middle of the pack to be more effective.
At the end of a one-hour meeting, the board of directors hired Mr. Carter to design a special program exclusively for The Liberty Foundation. They scheduled him in for his unique 90 minute group needs analysis. At this first meeting he met with 125 agents and recruits and identified their most pressing concerns, problems, challenges, and fears. Then, by using this information, he created a training program that uniquely addressed their situation.
The company scheduled one all-day training session on the third Saturday of each month for a period of six months. Each day consisted of six sessions. Each session was designed to address at least one of most important challenges facing the sales staff. After the first day, each participant would begin the next training day by giving a one-minute report of their specific activities and results in:
- The number of calls made.
- The number of contacts made.
- The number of appointments set.
- The number of appointments kept.
- The number of sales made.
- The number of sales kept.
- The total dollar volume of sales made.
- The number of referrals received.
Of the participants, 38% had a sales increase within 30 days, 80.47% reported they made a sale they would have lost without the training and within six months total sales for the organization had increased 23%.
What is of particular note is that this increase in sales occurred even though the company lost their two top sales people to a competitor within 90 days of the inception of the sales training.
