MEET SHELDON
I’d love to meet you
“I don’t study insurance pricing, binding, underwriting, workflow, claims, loss ratios, contingencies or anything else related to the back-end of insurance agency operations. Let me just get that out front.
- I study sales and human behavior, and I do this primarily for insurance professionals so they can boost the profit and pleasure they get from work while delivering more value to their customers.
- I could tell you, and it would true, about the billion-dollar insurance call centers where I coached the coaches.
- I could share with you, and it would be true, that I coach with equal success single-location, million-dollar agencies, and multi-state, hundred million dollar agencies.
- I could crow about the double-digit increases here and the high percentage gains there. But I won’t. Hear it directly from my customers by reading the results page here.
Instead, I will tell you that…
- At the age of twelve, I made my first of countless sales mistakes by asking the nuns at my Catholic School if I could take Chanukah off. (Wrong market and message!)
- Proving the adage that good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment, I failed with four different start-ups before I found a clue. (Troubled methods!)
- After four years as an Army officer, including the rigorous Airborne jump school, I traded military discipline, bearing and stamina for a civilian career that required the same attributes: 100% commission-based selling in Boston’s corporate jungle.
Within two years I was promoted to be the New England Region, Sales trainer for Uniglobe Travel, the third largest travel franchisor in the world at the time. Subsequently, I was recruited to a series of sales and marketing leadership positions in public utilities, information technology and the software industry.
Man, that was a lot of selling! Inspired by my success and failures, I launched SteadySales.com to help service professionals sell. (Finally, the right market, message and method!)
Along the way I earned an MBA from UMass Isenberg School of Management, and became an Entrepreneurial Business Planning Instructor through the NxLevel Educational Foundation. I am also a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach whose book chapter on salesmanship helped propel Guerrilla Marketing on the Front Lines to an Amazon.com best-seller. (Okay, it was only for two days, but still.)
Lest I be too consumed with work, my wife, two daughters and roles as a perpetual volunteer, ski instructor and white water rafting guide keep my focused on matters of the heart. My world HQ is in Williamsburg, MA.
I have three coaching principles:
- Meet people where they are.
- Ignite their own desire to improve.
- Repeat
Influences:
My approach and philosophy are informed by the writings and teachings of many luminaries in the field of sales, marketing and personal development including:
- Jay Conrad Levinson’s — Guerrilla Marketingseries of books
- Marty Neumeier’s — The Brand Gap
- Joseph Pine and James Gilmore’s -The Experience Economy
- T. Harv Ecker – Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
- Tim Sanders – Love is the Killer App
- CJ Haydens’s — Get Clients Now
- Geshe Michael Roach’s — The Diamond Cutter
- Steven Covey’s — 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- Jacques Werth’s — High Probability Selling
- Michael Gerber’s — E-Myth
- Richard Bach, Tich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi, and many others
Sheldon’s knowledge and passion for sales is infectious. He shared many great idea’s, not the least of which was a fun sales contest that allowed me to reward the staff while interacting with our clients. His lesson on transitioning from service task to sales ask was also a major winner with my team and we all embraced it. Rewrites have slowed, which was a major goal of mine, and all of us are now asking questions regarding how and why we do certain things in the agency. I thank him for that.
We highly recommend Sheldon and his Steady Sales Program. Our team was struggling with making the ask for up sells & cross sells. After only a few short months we found our team using Sheldon’s strategies and by 6 months our ask rate doubled. Results and attitudes following closely behind!!! Sheldon came with a wealth of knowledge, an interest in understanding our needs, and worked with our team to make this program a success. Thank you Sheldon
I’m happy I participated in your program with my staff. We all grew more comfortable with the discomfort of selling which increased our confidence in both new business sales and cross selling. As a result, we implemented improvements in how we communicate with our clients using multiple forms of direct communication. We launched a cross selling campaign that ties what we learned from the program to our goals as an agency. Your program was well worth the financial and time investment.
