Training Objectives and Course Modules

Transcription

1 1. MARKET DEVELOPMENT Penetrating new markets allows your producers to generate business growth and a more sustainable business practice. In this series of workshops, participants will learn how to successfully penetrate new markets, convert non-clients into clients, and generate a whole new set of business opportunities. TMD Target Market Development: Marketing Yourself and Your Business This session will address marketing and how students can plan to more effectively deliver the company s products to the customer. They will learn the basic components of marketing and will analyze how successful companies around the world use unique marketing techniques to make people buy from them. Students will learn how to differentiate themselves from competitors to add value to the transaction of the sale of insurance, and to deliver the marketing message that will turn prospects into clients. TMD Target Market Development: Being a Creative Businessperson A businessperson needs to be creative to stand apart from the competition, but most people do not feel that they are as creative as they could be. This session will teach students how to engage their creativity and show it through their marketing, selling, and service to clients. Students will encounter challenging situations to give them practice in using their creativity. TMD Target Market Development: What Is Target Marketing? Target marketing is the key to success for thousands of agents around the world. Students will learn what target marketing is and the advantages of focusing on specific groups of people. The traits of a market will be discussed, and students will learn the five major categories of markets. Students then will discover what the five characteristics of an ideal market are, to avoid wasting time with poor-performance markets. Learning how major world corporations market their products will be included as a team project. TMD Target Market Development: How to Analyze Marketing Areas Students will be introduced to the fictional city of Athena to learn how to analyze a marketing area and determine the best potential markets available for penetration. It is through this case study that students will discover almost 50 possible opportunities hidden among the wealth of data that can be collected for analysis from any metropolitan area. TMD Target Market Development: Analyzing My Marketing Area Pre-Requisite: How to Analyze Marketing Areas As part of their pre-course assignment, students will be asked to bring data on their own business marketing area. Having developed analytical skills with the Athena case study in the prior session, students now will analyze their own marketing areas for possible markets. This will be done as a team with as many as six people and is the first step in an eight-step process to designing a complete market penetration plan. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 1

2 1. MARKET DEVELOPMENT (continued) TMD Target Market Development: Marketing Self-Analysis Using a market identification guide called Project 100, students will analyze various characteristics of people they know and sell to. This proven marketing tool is one important step in identifying possible natural markets to penetrate. Students then will be introduced to the Marketing Self-Analysis form, which will help them explore 13 facets of their own personal characteristics that will point toward additional possible lucrative markets. TMD Target Market Development: Selecting Markets Through analyzing their marketing area and doing a marketing self-analysis, students will have identified a host of possible markets that can be targeted and penetrated. In this session, students will narrow their search for markets and choose three markets to target, ranking them first, second, and third, according to their success potential. Students will learn from studying a sample approach and will work in teams to practice the skill. TMD Target Market Development: Market Information Once markets are prioritized and targeted, students will learn that it is important to know everything possible about the target market. They will learn a variety of sources they can use to obtain information about a market. Several examples will be included in the student notebook, including a proven, effective survey for a simple method of gathering data. One of the evening assignments for the first day will ask students to gather as much information about their top market as possible. TMD Target Market Development: Refining Market Information Pre-Requisite: Market Information This session will begin by discussing the part of the students evening assignment that challenged them to find information about their markets. This information will be shared in teams. The team s project during this session will be to help each other refine their information add to it, correct it, and update it based on the personal knowledge of the students and the instructor. TMD Target Market Development: The Market Narrative The Market Narrative is an important step in building a complete market penetration plan. Students will take the refined information developed for their chosen markets and organize it in a unique way that makes it pertinent and usable. They will learn that the narrative is very much like a story written about the people in their markets. In an individual exercise, students will write their story expanding upon their own market information in 16 specific categories or chapters. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 2

3 1. MARKET DEVELOPMENT (continued) WM Working Your Market: Product/Services Assessment Students will analyze the products and services available to them to determine which ones will likely be used to meet the needs of the clients within their target markets. An assessment form will be used, and work will be done in teams. Nineteen categories of products will be listed on the assessment tool, along with 23 services that are rendered by most companies. A different assessment tool, one without generic categories, also will be available for use. WM Working Your Market: Planning the Sales Process This session will be the highlight of building a complete market penetration plan. Students will review the steps of the sales process and learn that target marketing is most meaningful when the sales process steps are tailored precisely for the targeted market. By tailoring the steps, a marketing strategy will be created. Students will review a sample marketing strategy first and then develop a marketing strategy for their own chosen markets. WM Working Your Market: Market Aspirations Pre-Requisite: Planning the Sales Process Now that students have learned how to develop their plan for market penetration, the course will focus on developing students skills in crucial areas to actually implement the plan. This session will look at understanding the motivations and desires of the people they serve in markets. Based on recent LIMRA research on the middle markets, clients are divided into four key aspirational segments. Students will learn what marketing techniques are best for each segment and what products will most likely solve each segment s needs. WM Working Your Market: Interacting With the Market Pre-Requisite: Market Aspirations In this session, students will divide into teams of three for role-play. They will be given four situations where an agent is dealing with a prospect at a particular step in the sales process. The prospect in each of the four situations will assume the personality of one of the four aspirational segments learned in the prior session. The teams will rotate, with each member playing agent, prospect, and observer. The role-play will teach the students to adapt their style of interaction to the personality of the prospect. WM Working Your Market: Setting Goals to Increase Sales It is expected that the students will accomplish higher goals after developing skills in targeting and penetrating markets. As part of the pre-course preparation, students will be asked to collect and bring information on their current sales achievements. In this session, students will set new goals in activities such as prospecting, fact-finding interviews, presentations, and closes. They will set goals to upgrade their success ratios, such as prospects-to-interviews and interviews-to-closes. Students also will set new objectives for increasing the number of prospects from various sources. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 3

4 1. MARKET DEVELOPMENT (continued) WM Working Your Market: Marketplace of the Future Students will explore how their markets are expected to change and evolve in the coming years. Students will learn that consumers have independent characteristics and that they must be treated as a market of one. They will learn the eight key factors that will shape the future environment of our customers. This session also will investigate the connection between the propensity to save and the purchase of industry products. Students will explore five major factors that affect saving. WM Working Your Market: Relationship Selling Relationship selling is the trend in the industry today that describes the establishment of a unique connection or bond between agent and client. Students will learn how to establish this connection, which will lead to more sales and greater success. In this session, students will learn how to earn the trust of their clients and how to make clients respect them. Students will take a personal assessment, allowing them to discover what must be done to improve in both areas. In teams, students will address the subject of how they can build added value into the insurance sale transaction. WM Working Your Market: Beating the Competition This session will allow the students to explore who their competition is and how they can overcome the competition. It will be a new and unique approach that will give students the knowledge they need to better understand today s challenges. Students will learn the four basic levels of competition and they are not just other insurance companies! A team project will require the students to identify major competitors and discover ways to beat them. PM Penetrating Your Market: Focusing on the Right Customer In this session the students will develop criteria and profiles of the best customer type to match company, agency, and personal marketing strengths. The emphasis will be on client development that will lead to persistent business resulting in long-term relationships, not just one-time sales. PM Penetrating Your Market: Developing Customer Categories The students will work in small groups to develop customer clusters within their activity records, and to develop the beginning of a market profile to maximize productivity and effective client development activity. PM Penetrating Your Market: Learning What Your Customers Want This segment will present several ways for students to gain insight into the minds and concerns of their customers. Through interactive team discussions, the students will examine their own attitudes in situations where they are the customers, and then draw conclusions about their own business practices from these insights. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 4

5 1. MARKET DEVELOPMENT (continued) PM Penetrating Your Market: Creating a Marketing Profile and Rating System Using a rating system based on matching of company and personal market criteria to the student s own client list, the students will create a marketing profile of the best matches among his or her clients. Students will use this rating system to identify those customers with the highest long-term relationship development potential. The session will include discussion of persistency and cross-selling implications for higher-scoring clients. PM Penetrating Your Market: Your Business Development Individually and in small groups, the students will develop plans for building their advisory practices. Group activity will focus on defining professional images, identifying the types of referral sources and activities that will enhance professional credibility, and creating effective methods of building referral business. PM Penetrating Your Market: Developing Relationships to Create New Markets Using examples from the case study, students will develop plans for creating relationships with people who can help them to penetrate new markets. They will explore a process that will enable them to build relationships for career and market development. PM Penetrating Your Market: Expanding Your Influence in the Affluent Market Students will work in teams to discuss what success they have had in the affluent market. They will learn how to further segment the affluent market by occupational, geographic, social, language, and other special subsets. Students will discuss those things that they should know about any market they want to penetrate. PM Penetrating Your Market: Conducting Financial Seminars Students will learn how to plan, conduct, and follow up on one of the most popular marketing techniques in the financial services industry the financial seminar. Although seminars can be aimed at various audiences, this session will concentrate on seminars for business owners. The mechanics of arranging seminars will be explored along with a procedure for writing and delivering a dynamic and effective presentation. The session will include an actual seminar conducted by the students themselves. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 5

6 2. PRACTICE MANAGEMENT Growing a successful financial services practice requires mastering numerous management activities and being mindful of the true purpose of your business. Help your producers to understand the intricate details and perform exercises that will help them run a profitable practice. PM Practice Management 101: The Business Environment Students will learn the importance of monitoring the business environment in their country and around the world. A presentation will be given that provides key data about the country (e.g., demographics, economics, and competition) that will affect their business. In teams, the students will discuss the nature of these effects and how they can ensure the impact is positive. PM Practice Management 101: Coping With Change Students are affected not only by change from external sources, but also by changes that occur within their company. They will learn to deal with changes and how to manage them to their advantage. Students will review mistakes that businesspeople make in times of change and how those mistakes can be avoided. PM Practice Management 101: The Planning Process Students will learn how to do effective planning beginning with the creation of a philosophy, mission, and vision statement. A complete planning process will be learned, which includes how to assess the current situation, set objectives, design methods to accomplish objectives, and set up evaluation checkpoints. The concept of a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis will be introduced and students will learn to use the concept while working in teams. PM Practice Management 101: Solving Problems One of the most frustrating parts of a producer s career is dealing with problems. In this session, students will learn a proven problem-solving process. They will learn how to determine the difference between problems and symptoms. Students will be introduced to a specially designed tool to help them use the problem-solving process and will practice its use with real cases. PM Practice Management 101: Analyzing Your Performance When a producer s performance is less than expected, it is often difficult to understand why. If this is not answered, a producer may never get back on track and may eventually fail. Students will learn what affects their performance, how to analyze what might cause them to perform at low levels, and what to do to remedy the situation. PM Practice Management 101: Time Control A popular topic of discussion in any course, time control will be addressed in a handson manner. Students will analyze how they currently spend their time and make decisions about how they can better spend their time. They will learn some major concepts put forth by experts in managing time. Students will study 16 common business problems that result in poor time control and determine what causes them. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 6

7 2. PRACTICE MANAGEMENT (continued) PM Practice Management 101: Decision Making Pre-Requisite: Time Control This session will teach students how to effectively make decisions. Students will learn a decision-making process and will apply it when deciding how they will overcome the business problems identified in the previous session. Discussion will be generated in this session which can lead to a more effective and efficiently run business practice. PM Practice Management 101: Organizational Skills Being organized is a challenge for people in general and for many producers in the financial services industry. Students will learn how to become better-organized and how being organized can make their business more profitable. Through teamwork and discussion, students will learn the art of organizing their desk, office space, paperwork, filing, and record keeping. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Having an Entrepreneurial Spirit This session will present the students with tips on how to be more entrepreneurial in their business endeavors. They will explore techniques that successful entrepreneurs use to make their businesses grow and prosper. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Being a Creative Businessperson A businessperson needs to be creative to stand apart from the competition, but most people do not feel that they are as creative as they could be. This session will teach students how to engage their creativity and show it through their marketing, selling, and service to clients. Students will encounter challenging situations to give them practice in using their creativity. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Developing Your Professional Practice In this session, students will consolidate the program content to create individual plans for personal and professional practice development when they return to their own agencies. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Principles of Business Management This session will review, individually and in small discussion groups, the students own business practices and strategies. Principles are introduced to guide a professional business practice. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Financial Aspect I In the first of two sessions on the important subject of finances for their businesses, students will learn the importance of creating and managing a budget. They will be introduced to two major tools in the industry created by LIMRA: the planning book Looking Ahead and the activity recorder The Weekly Sales Planner. Students will be provided with time to do some individual work from Looking Ahead by assessing their personal effectiveness. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 7

8 2. PRACTICE MANAGEMENT (continued) FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Financial Aspect II Pre-Requisite: Financial Aspect I This session continues to explore knowledge and skills vital for a successful business. Students will learn the profitability equation and how to implement it. The subject of expenses will be addressed and students will learn how to control expenses and therefore increase profit. This session will also cover distinguishing between profitable and unprofitable activity, business, and expenditures, and students will learn to perform a cost-benefit analysis. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Your Business Inventory Students will establish, with their pre-course information and the input of others, the elements of their business inventories. This includes knowledge and information, materials, equipment, and resources available to help them accomplish their goals. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Planning and Leveraging Your Resources In this workshop setting, students apply inventory resources to a case study, and then work in teams to apply their inventory resources to their own personal objectives. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Your Business Financial Plan This session will identify the profit levers of business operations, and will define the relationship between profitability and advisor compensation principles. FPP Financial Planning for Your Practice: Business Financial Workshop Using a simplified cost-benefit analysis process, students will practice using financial decision-making principles with a case study. BT Building Your Team: The Administration Dilemma Students will apply the problem-solving process to the administrative issues of their business practices. A list of top 10 administrative organization guidelines will be given. BT Building Your Team: Working as a Team Producers may form their own teams by hiring people with specific skills to help their business grow, or they may be part of a team by belonging to a unit or an agency within the company. In either event, it is important to know how to work as a team player and contribute to the success of the group. This session will explore the four stages of a team s growth and what makes teams successful. Students will form teams in this session to role-play a simulation that will help them learn the dynamics of team interaction. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 8

9 2. PRACTICE MANAGEMENT (continued) BT Building Your Team: Expectations and Responsibilities The students will work with a case study and their own situations to identify what expectations they have of others and others have of them, and the responsibilities involved in informing others and completing commitments. BT Building Your Team: Personal Development In this session, students will be given a tool to help them think through what future training they will need and how to plan for it. Students will learn how to help their managers and trainers train them. They will learn how training needs are assessed and how to use the Prepare, Explain, Show, Observe, and Supervise (PESOS) training method. Principles of how learning takes place and barriers to learning will also be explored. BT Building Your Team: Your Personal Work Style Through use of a short questionnaire, students will gain insight into their own working style and the work style possibilities of others. This tool will be used as a basis for discussing differences in behavior, communication, and decision making. BT Building Your Team: Interpersonal Skills Students will learn the art of interpersonal skills, whether making presentations before groups or dealing with people on a one-on-one basis. Platform presentation skills will be explored. Good listening and the concept of active listening will be introduced. Barriers to good communication will be reviewed, as well as types of nonverbal communication and how to react to it. Students will role-play in realistic one-on-one situations that will require that they use the skills learned in this session. BT Building Your Team: Planning, Problem Solving, Delegation In this session, students learn a complete planning process. They begin by addressing the importance of establishing a philosophy, mission, and vision for their practice. A problem-solving process will then be explored and students will get a tool to help them analyze and solve performance discrepancies. The idea of hiring staff to which specific tasks can be delegated is discussed and students will be shown the basic elements of bringing staff into their practice and training them. BT Building Your Team: Handling Difficult Situations As an advisor s career develops, there will be more possibilities for difficult situations to arise, requiring sensitive and ethical handling. In this session, students will use the inventory of skills and knowledge developed through this curriculum to deal, in roleplay, with several difficult situations. Students will deal with a death claim, a possible market conduct problem, and a client s financial distress and potential policy lapse. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 9

10 2. PRACTICE MANAGEMENT (continued) BT Building Your Team: Dealing With Change Students will be given guidelines and a process for thinking through and responding to change, both planned and unexpected, in their own work situations. BT Building Your Team: Communicating About Change In discussion and role-play, the students will explore the process of analyzing and preparing others for change in their working situations. Both case study and actual student situations will be used. BT Building Your Team: Managing Time and Goals In this session, students will take a look at two important factors they must manage in order to be successful businesspeople: time and goals. They will learn the difference between capital investment activities and current cost activities and how to shift their activities and time expenditure from one to the other. Students will analyze how they currently spend their time and learn ways to improve. A team work exercise enables students to list their most common time problems and determine what must be done to counter them. Alan Lakein s principles of time management will also be discussed. BT Building Your Team: Improving the Performance of Your Staff As the business of the financial advisor grows with personal and business owner clients, it becomes necessary to add staff to the practice. The financial advisor simply cannot do the entire job. However, staff members who perform poorly actually cost the advisor s business money. This session will introduce a checklist and procedures for dealing with poor performance and will show students how to reverse the situation resulting in successfully performing staff members. BT Building Your Team: Building a Team of Specialists This session will explore the idea of creating a team of specialists to work with an advisor to give clients access to more expertise than the advisor is able to give. The team may consist of such professionals as lawyers, accountants, investment specialists, etc. Students learn how to identify what is needed, how to approach professionals to be on the team, and how to make it successful. BT Building Your Team: Succession Planning Although financial advisors assist business owner clients with their succession planning, few actually apply the same diligence to their own practice. This session will teach students how to plan for their own succession. Students will begin developing their own plan in this session and will receive feedback. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 10

11 3. BUSINESS PLANNING The time that producers invest in planning and maintaining a direction for their business pays big dividends in the long run. Provide your producers with tools for creating effective, usable plans they can integrate into their business lives. BP Business Planning 101: The Planning Process Students will learn how to plan effectively. A complete planning process will be learned, which includes creating philosophy, mission, and vision statements, assessing the current situation, setting objectives, designing methods to accomplish objectives, and setting up evaluation checkpoints. The concept of a SWOT analysis will be introduced and students will learn to use the concept working in their teams. BP Business Planning 101: Analyzing Your Performance When a producer s performance is less than expected, it is often difficult to understand why. If this is not answered, a producer may never get back on track and may eventually fail. Students will learn what affects their performance, how to analyze what might be cause them to perform at low levels, and what to do to remedy the situation. BP Business Planning 101: Time Control A popular topic of discussion in any course, time control will be addressed in a handson manner. Students will analyze how they currently spend their time, and make decisions about how they can better spend their time. They will learn major concepts put forth by experts in managing time. Students will study 16 common business problems that result in poor time control and determine what causes them. BP Business Planning 101: Decision Making This session will teach students how to effectively make decisions. Students will learn a decision-making process and will apply it when deciding how they will overcome their business challenges. Discussion will be generated in this session which can lead to a more effective and efficiently run business practice. BP Business Planning 101: Organizational Skills Being organized is a challenge for people in general and for many producers in the financial services industry. Students will learn how to become better-organized and how being organized can make their business more profitable. Through teamwork and discussion, students will learn the art of organizing their desk, office space, paperwork, filing, and record keeping. BP Business Planning 101: Financial Aspect I In the first of two sessions on the important subject of finances for their business, students will learn the importance of creating and managing a budget. They will be introduced to two major tools in the industry created by LIMRA: the planning book Looking Ahead and the activity recorder the Weekly Sales Planner. Students will be provided time to do some individual work from Looking Ahead by assessing their personal effectiveness. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 11

12 3. BUSINESS PLANNING (continued) BP Business Planning 101: Financial Aspect II Pre-Requisite: Financial Aspect I This session continues to explore knowledge and skills vital for a successful business. Students will learn the profitability equation and how to implement it. The subject of expenses will be addressed and students will learn how to control expenses and therefore increase profit. This session will also cover distinguishing between profitable and unprofitable activity, business, and expenditures, and students will learn to perform a cost-benefit analysis. BP Business Planning 101: Marketing Yourself and Your Business This session will address marketing and how students can plan to more effectively deliver the company s products to the customer. They will learn the basic components of marketing and will analyze how successful companies around the world use unique marketing techniques to make people buy from them. Students will learn how to differentiate themselves from competitors to add value to the transaction of the sale of insurance, and to deliver the marketing message that will turn prospects into clients. BP Business Planning 101: Being a Creative Businessperson A businessperson needs to be creative to stand apart from the competition, but most people do not feel that they are as creative as they could be. This session will teach students how to engage their creativity and show it through their marketing, selling, and service to clients. Students will be presented with challenging situations to give them practice in using their creativity. BP Business Planning 101: Setting Goals to Increase Sales In this session, students will set new goals in activities such as prospecting, fact-finding interviews, presentations, and closes. They will set goals to upgrade their success ratios, such as prospects to interviews and interviews to closes. Students also will set new objectives for increasing the numbers of prospects from various sources. This module requires precourse preparation: Students will collect and bring information on their current sales achievements. BP Business Planning 101: Analyzing Your Business This session will review, individually and in small discussion groups, the students own business records. The concepts of business planning, productivity patterns, and market analysis will be introduced and related to the students own activity. ABP Advanced Business Planning: The Working Environment As part of the planning process, the business environment and its relation to the students and company s business plans will be discussed. Participants will develop relevant lists of critical issues in the working environment that may affect their business plans. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 12

13 3. BUSINESS PLANNING (continued) ABP Advanced Business Planning: The Three-Year Business Plan In this session students will begin to develop the criteria to set their personal productivity, marketing, and professional development goals for the next three years. ABP Advanced Business Planning: Providing Professional Sales and Service Students will develop a working definition of professionalism and create a list of skills and knowledge that are requirements for a professional business practice. ABP Advanced Business Planning: Your Business Plan and Financial Objectives Individually and in small work teams, the students identify the components of a realistic business financial plan. ABP Advanced Business Planning: The Logistics of Your Business In this session students will analyze the logistics of their business practices, including location, travel, administrative and time constraints, and complications. The impact and implications of logistical considerations will be explored. ABP Advanced Business Planning: Your Working Environment In this session the students will develop a full analysis of the context in which they are building their practices, including the macro-economic, company, and agency environments. Implications and impact of environmental factors will be added to the planning process. ABP Advanced Business Planning: Solving Problems in Your Business Plan Using a simple problem-solving process, students work in problem-solving teams to analyze and resolve logistical problems in their own business settings. ABP Advanced Business Planning: The Importance of Evaluation In this session, students will discuss in small work teams to finalize their plans started in the course. They will learn the importance of and techniques for setting up a system of monitoring metrics to make sure they stay on track with their plans. ABP Advanced Business Planning: Managing Activity to Improve Performance The key to performance and accomplishing income objectives is to manage one s activity contacts made, appointments, closing interviews, etc. Students will analyze their own weekly activity reports brought to the course, evaluate the positive aspects of their results, and determine what could have been done better. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 13

14 3. BUSINESS PLANNING (continued) ABP Advanced Business Planning: Planning, Problem Solving, Delegation In this session, students learn a complete planning process. They begin by addressing the importance of establishing a philosophy, mission, and vision for their practice. A problem-solving process will then be explored and students will get a tool to help them analyze and solve performance discrepancies. The idea of hiring staff to which specific tasks can be delegated is discussed and students will be shown the basic elements of bringing staff into their practice and training them. ABP Advanced Business Planning: Fundamentals of Business Planning Students will gain an understanding of the business owner market. They learn what the world of the business owner is all about most importantly, how they can help business owners solve their problems. Finally, students will begin making plans to move into the business owner market. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 14

15 4. BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS FOR PROFESSIONAL GROWTH Take producers personal business relationships to a new level by giving them fresh insights into their own work style. By better understanding their own business personalities, producers more effectively relate to clients, associates, friends, and family. Team workshops concentrate on skills such as influencing others, negotiating, conflict resolution, and ethical selling. BR Relationships and Commitment This session will review, individually and in small discussion groups, the students own business relationships and the meaning of commitment within those relationships. Guidelines for forming strong business relationships will be given as the foundation of the session. BR Stakeholders Who Cares? In groups, students will identify the stakeholders for their businesses and what stakes each has in the advisor s success and effective business management. BR Success Patterns A research-based list of career success and danger patterns will be presented. Students will be given a basis for considering interpersonal relationships in the context of longterm career development. BR Your Personal Work Style Profile Through use of a short questionnaire, students will gain insight into their own working style, and the work style possibilities of this tool will be used as a basis for discussing differences in behavior, communication, and decision making. BR Relationship Skills I Processes will be given for the interpersonal skill sets; asking for and giving support, and influencing others. BR Asking for and Giving Support Pre-Requisite: Relationship Skills I Students will practice the process and skills involved in asking for support in a professional work setting. Both case study and real student situations will be used for the role-plays. BR Influence Skills Pre-Requisite: Relationship Skills I Students will practice the process and skills involved in influencing others in a professional work setting. Both case study and real student situations will be used for the role-plays. BR Relationship Skills II Processes will be given for the interpersonal skill sets for negotiations and conflict resolution. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 15

16 4. BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS FOR PROFESSIONAL GROWTH (continued) BR Negotiation Skills Pre-Requisite: Relationship Skills II Students will practice the process and skills involved in negotiation in a professional work setting. Both case study and real student situations will be used for the role-plays. BR Conflict Resolution Pre-Requisite: Relationship Skills II Students will practice the process and skills involved in conflict resolution in a professional work setting. BR Difficult Relationships Pre-Requisite: Relationship Skills II Students will use the processes from the program to plan a way to work more effectively with an individual they have found it difficult to work with in their organization. Role-play and small team discussion will be used to prepare for the actual process as part of the post-course project. BR Doing the Right Thing In a case study situation, students will practice using processes to respond to a situation in which ethical decision making is required. BR Relationship-Building Forum Pre-Requisite: Relationship Skills I & Relationship Skills II To develop a full list of relationship-building tactics, the students will have an opportunity to exchange best practices in a small-group and large-group setting. Best practices will be compiled and distributed to all participants for follow-up and implementation after the course. BR Developing Relationships to Create New Markets Using examples from the case study, students will develop plans for creating relationships with people who can help them to penetrate new markets. They will explore a process that will enable them to build relationships for career and market development. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 16

17 5. TARGETING MORE AFFLUENT CLIENTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS Help your producers master the art of target marketing to enter viable new markets. Equip them with the latest techniques for identifying more affluent prospects and business owners, creating a plan to appeal to them, and developing effective interpersonal skills that best relate to the market. TH What Is Target Marketing? Target marketing is the key to success for thousands of agents around the world. Students will learn what target marketing is and the advantages of focusing on specific groups of people. The traits of a market will be discussed, and students will learn the five major categories of markets. Students then will discover what the five characteristics of an ideal market are to avoid wasting time with poor-performance markets. Learning how major world corporations market their products will be included as a team project. TH How to Analyze Marketing Areas Students will be introduced to the hypothetical city of Athena, a major urban area in the country of Fairland. This city will serve as the backdrop for learning how to analyze a marketing area to determine the best potential markets available for penetration. It is through this case study that students will discover almost 50 possible opportunities hidden among a wealth of data that are similar to what can be collected for analysis from any metropolitan area in the world. TH Analyzing My Marketing Area Pre-Requisite: How to Analyze Marketing Areas As part of a pre-course assignment, students will be asked to bring data on their own business marketing area. Having developed analytical skills with the Athena case study, students now will analyze their own marketing areas for possible markets. This will be done as a team with as many as six people and is the first step in an eight-step process to designing a complete market penetration plan. TH Marketing Self-Analysis Using a market identification guide called the Project 100, students will analyze various characteristics of people they know and work with as clients. This proven marketing tool is one important step in identifying possible natural markets to penetrate. Students then will be introduced to the Marketing Self-Analysis form, which will help them explore 13 facets of their own personal characteristics that will point toward additional possible lucrative markets. TH Selecting Markets Pre-Requisite: Marketing Self-Analysis Through analyzing their marketing area and doing a marketing self-analysis, students will have identified a host of possible markets that can be targeted and penetrated. In this session, students will narrow their search for markets and choose three markets to target, ranking them first, second, and third, according to their success potential. Students will learn from studying a sample approach and will work in teams to practice the skill. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 17

18 5. TARGETING MORE AFFLUENT CLIENTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS (continued) TH Market Information Pre-Requisite: Selecting Markets Once markets are prioritized and targeted, students will learn that it is important to know everything possible about the target market. They will learn a variety of sources they can use to obtain information about a market. Several examples will be included in the student notebook, including a proven effective survey for a simple method of gathering data. One of the evening assignments for the this day will ask students to gather as much information about their top market as possible. TH Refining Market Information Pre-Requisite: Market Information Students will begin by discussing the part of their evening assignment that challenged them to find information about their markets. This information will be shared in the students teams. The team s project during this session will be to help each other refine their information add to it, correct it, and update it based on the personal knowledge of the students and the instructor. TH The Market Narrative Pre-Requisite: Selecting Markets The Market Narrative is an important step in building a complete market penetration plan. Students will take the refined information developed for their chosen markets and organize it in a unique way that makes it pertinent and usable. They will learn that the narrative is very much like a story written about the people in their markets. In an individual exercise, students will write their story expanding upon their own market information in 16 specific categories or chapters. TH Products/Services Assessment Pre-Requisite: Selecting Markets Students will analyze the products and services available to them to determine which ones will likely be used to meet the needs of the clients within their target markets. An assessment form will be used, and work will be done in teams. Nineteen categories of products will be listed on the assessment tool, along with 23 services that are rendered by most companies. A different assessment tool, one without generic categories, also will be available for use. TH Planning the Sales Process Pre-Requisite: Selecting Markets This session will be the highlight of building a complete market penetration plan. Students will review the steps of the sales process and learn that target marketing is most meaningful when the sales process steps are tailored precisely for the targeted market. By tailoring the steps, they will create a marketing strategy. Students will review a sample marketing strategy first and then develop a marketing strategy for their own chosen markets. TH Market Aspirations Pre-Requisite: Planning the Sales Process Now that students have learned how to develop their plan for market penetration, the course will focus on developing students skills in crucial areas to actually implement the plan. This session will look at understanding the motivations and desires of the people they serve in markets. Based on recent LIMRA research on the middle markets, clients are divided into four key aspirational segments. Students will learn what marketing techniques are best for each segment and what products will most likely solve each segment s needs. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 18

19 5. TARGETING MORE AFFLUENT CLIENTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS (continued) TH Interacting With the Market Pre-Requisite: Market Aspirations In this session, students will divide into teams of three for role-play. They will be given four situations where an agent is dealing with a prospect at a particular step in the sales process. The prospect in each of the four situations will assume the personality of one of the four aspirational segments learned in the prior session. The teams will rotate, with each member playing agent, prospect, and observer. The role-play will teach the students to adapt their style of interaction to the personality of the prospect. TH Setting Goals to Increase Sales It is expected that the students will accomplish higher goals after developing skills in targeting and penetrating markets. As part of the pre-course preparation, students will be asked to collect and bring information on their current sales achievements. In this session, students will set new goals in activities such as prospecting, fact-finding interviews, presentations, and closes. They will set goals to upgrade their success ratios, such as prospects-to-interviews and interviews-closes. Students also will set new objectives for increasing the number of prospects from various sources. TH Marketplace of the Future Students will explore how their markets are expected to change and evolve in the coming years. Students will learn that consumers have independent characteristics and that they must be treated as a market of one. They will learn the eight key factors that will shape the future environment of our customers. This session also will investigate the connection between the propensity to save and the purchase of industry products. Students will explore five major factors that affect saving. TH Relationship Selling Relationship selling is the trend in the industry today that describes the establishment of a unique connection or bond between agent and client. Students will learn how to establish this connection, which will lead to more sales and greater success. In this session, students will learn how to earn the trust of their clients and how to make clients respect them. Students will take a personal assessment, allowing them to discover what must be done to improve in both areas. In teams, students will address the subject of how they can build added value into the insurance sale transaction. TH Beating the Competition This session will allow the students to explore who their competition is and how they can overcome the competition. It will be a new and unique approach that will give students the knowledge they need to better understand today s challenges. Students will learn the four basic levels of competition and they are not just other insurance companies! A team project will require the students to identify major competitors and discover ways to beat them. TH It Is Not a Job, It Is a Profession Students will come to understand the uniqueness of this career that they have chosen a profession that answers to the client. Students will explore the real meaning of their profession and how to enhance it by adhering to a code of ethics. A sample code of ethics will be reviewed. Students will also take a post-course test and will be assigned a post-course project that will allow them to continue building skills. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 19

20 6. HIGH-NET-WORTH CLIENT FINANCIAL PLANNING Financial planning for prospects with complex financial needs requires advanced skills. Provide your top producers with these skills, including conducting a thorough needs analysis, recommending appropriate products, and motivating people to take action. Participants will learn the keys to creating long-term trusting relationships and referrals. HF The Need for Financial Planning Students will discuss the benefits of financial planning to the general public and the advantages of a career in financial services. Statistics on death, disability, as well as financial independence and their implications, will be examined. Finally, students will analyze what their competition really is competition for the disposable dollar of the client and why purchasing other things can be more appealing to the prospect or client. HF The Evolution of the Profession After reviewing the three stages of growth of an industry, students will look at industry trends that are in evidence around the world. In teams, they will analyze how these trends would affect their business and how they can prepare themselves to survive and thrive in times of change. Students will learn how the industry is evolving into more of a total needs financial services business, and they will discuss the difference between a traditional agent and a financial advisor. The concept of product push-and-pull will be discussed and students will learn the advantages of pulling clients to them by solving their needs. The knowledge and skill components of a financial advisor will be reviewed including linking skills, where an advisor links solutions to good fact-finding, and a concentration on client needs and objectives. Finally, students will look at the traditional financial planning process and how it evolved from the practical planning process using Diagnosis, Objectives, Methods, and Evaluations (DOME). HF Ethics and the Financial Advisor An important subject for the times, students will understand the necessity of a code of behavior in dealing with today s client. They will explore the merits of having high integrity, maintaining objectivity, increasing competence, being fair, maintaining confidentiality, practicing diligence, and always being the ultimate professional. Scenarios will be presented to the students where, depending on decisions made by a hypothetical advisor, ethics could be compromised. The situations are realistic and will force the students to analyze the situation and decide what they would do if they were the case advisor. Students will come to realize that their integrity may be challenged and it is important to make the right decisions about their actions. HF Psychology of the Financial Planning Process Being effective with a prospect or client involves good communication and understanding that prospect or client. Students will look at the importance of the first impression they make on a prospect and discover that how they look, how they sound, and what they say is crucial. Looking successful, body space, eye contact, and body language of both the advisor and the client will be explored. The session also includes a discussion of the concept of transactional analysis, a social psychology that helps advisors to effectively communicate with prospects and clients in interviews. LIMRA 2012 The Centre for International Assessment & Development TheCentre@limra.com 20