JT: That's a great question. Several of our clients have done bottom line research on the impact of my program. One was an insurance company, the South Carolina Farm Bureau. They decided to do their own research project by putting half of their sales force through the seminar. The other half acted as the control group and did not attend the class. The measurement used was to compare the previous year's sales figures to the current figures. They tracked everyone for four months after the seminar. Agents who attended the SOS Seminar had a 101% increase in premiums while the control group only had a 30% increase. This was actually a 70% increase in the company's bottom line all from aone-day seminar.
MAB: That's an amazing story!
JT: Also, the President of A-Active Termite and Pest Control, Kevin Kordek, had heard me speak during the middle of the last recession to a group he belonged to called Entrepreneurs' Organization. Afterwards, he decided to put half his sales force through the seminar and I suggested that he put his mediocre salespeople in the class. Kordek enrolled 8 salespeople and he discovered that the sales performance of six of the eight people immediately jumped from mediocre to higher than his top sales people!
MAB: Wow, I bet that got his attention! Did they decide to put the rest of their sales force through the program?
JT: Yes, they did, A year later I asked Kordek what he observed after everyone had taken the seminar. He told me that his company's profits had doubled and that his company was the #1 distributor in the entire country on 2 of their high end product lines! He also said one of his sales people had a 300% increase in his sales and received a recognition award for this accomplishment from the Virginia Pest Management Association.
While those figures are impressive, there's one more exciting piece to the story. Five years later, the world's 4th largest pest control company bought Kordek's company because they wanted to know what his "secret sauce" was that made his company so much more successful than other companies his size in the industry. After the purchase, he told them that one of the key parts of his "secret sauce" had been putting his salespeople though the one-day SOS seminar five years earlier.
MAB: That's fantastic! So this certainly seems to work for sales--are there other applications for your methods?
JT: I saw the need for entrepreneurs to be switched-on for the process that they have to go through to succeed. Becoming an entrepreneur can be like learning a foreign language without assistance, or having some assistance but still struggling. This led me to adapt the Switched-On Selling Seminar materials to match what an entrepreneur needed to be doing. One of the groups that I offered this seminar to was the Homeless Entrepreneur group in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I was very impressed with the level of change that the attendees experienced.
I have also created a number of other versions which adapt the SOS Seminar materials to different areas, such as, Switched-On Network Marketing, Switched-On Management, Switched-On Advanced Entrepreneur and there is even one that I teach for golfers called, appropriately, Switched-On Golf. This seminar is a PGA Certified Course for Golf Pros who are getting recertified. All these seminars are currently presented live. Two additional seminars are now online courses: the Switched-On Internet Marketing Seminar and the Switched-On Start-Up Entrepreneur Seminar.
Additionally, the election of Donald Trump is inspiring many Democrats and Progressives who have never run before or even had much to do with politics, to run for office. Because of this, I decided to create a course designed to switch their brains on for all the new activities they need to learn and become comfortable doing when running for office -- from asking for donations to debating to assembling a team. The seminar is called Switched-On Campaigning. My intention is for the candidate's brain to be switched on for the activities necessary to run a successful campaign while getting rid of any blocks they may have had about the process of running for office. The best part is that these blocks will be gone in minutes! I also recommend that Campaign Managers take the seminar to make sure they are switched on for their roles in the campaign.
MAB: Well that is a great idea, this may be just what the Left needs to streamline the process to save our country. I'll be very interested to see your statistics from that seminar, Jerry! Let me know when you get started with that, and we can talk again, that sounds like it has great possibilities for the progressive movement. Thanks for visiting with us!
JT: We are just beginning to offer the Switched-On Campaigning seminars to groups that are recruiting candidates, I look forward to coming back to talk with you about how that develops!
Dr. Teplitz' books include Switched-On Selling: Balance Your Brain for Sales Success ( co-authored with sales guru Dr. Tony Alessandra), Switched-On Networking: Balance Your Brain for Networking Success ( co-authored with networking expert Donna Fisher), Brain Gym for Business: Instant Brain Boosters for On-The-Job Success (co-authored with the founders of Brain Gym, Dr. Paul Dennison and Gail Dennison), Switched-On Living: Easy ways to use the mind-body connection to energize your life and Managing Your Stress in Difficult Times: Succeeding in Times of Change.
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