The New "Summary of Gorilla® Campaigns" Document
By Ben Quinney, Senior Consultant
BenQ@BillGood.net
Campaigns are one of the major things that set the Gorilla System™ apart from all other systems. Until now, however, it has been difficult to find specific information on each campaign. You've had to go into the Campaign Center on the website and look at the individual overviews for each one of the campaigns. These overviews have now been consolidated into a single overview document that covers all of the campaigns currently available. As new campaigns are posted, this document will be updated.
The new document contains the basic information you need to facilitate decision-making when changing a campaign:
- The target market for the campaign
Is the campaign designed for Clients, Prospects, Mass Mail, Connections, etc.? - A brief overview of the campaign and its sequence
What is the campaign's purpose and what are the basic steps within it?
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Making the Most of Meetings
By Matt Hicken, Senior Consultant
MatthewH@BillGood.net
To communicate effectively, you must both LISTEN to others and SHARE your own ideas with them. When you plan for a group meeting, there are a few things that you need to implement to use everyone's valuable time as efficiently as possible.
Weekly Staff Meetings
You must use the Weekly Staff Meeting Agenda! This meeting should accomplish two main purposes.
The first is to make sure that the team is operating smoothly. If each team member is able to function well in his or her post, there should be a constantly flowing pipeline. The Marketing Department should generate interested leads. The Prospecting Department should generate interested and qualified leads and get them to the RR so he or she can sell them. The Sales Department should close the deal. The Service Department should produce happy Clients that come back for more and give referrals. Referrals flow back to the Marketing Department for further communication, and the process begins again. In order for this pipeline to run smoothly, each department has to communicate what it is doing. Make sure that team members have the opportunity to explain what they are doing and what they need to be most productive in their positions. Give them the chance to let the rest of the team know if they need to hire more help in their department. Everyone needs to know that he or she is a big part of the team. This will help to communicate job security and provide a good work environment.
The second purpose of the Staff Meeting Agenda is to make sure that you are talking about, and accomplishing, your weekly goals. One part of this Agenda is to review the successes of the week. This is a crucial part of keeping a happy and productive team. Let the team members know they are helping ensure retirement for someone. Let them know every time you have a Client smile and say thank you. Allow the entire staff to be a part of the good that the office is doing for your Clients and Prospects. If all of them know they are a part of something great, they will produce great things. Never skip this part of the Agenda!
RR/SV Housekeeping Meeting
This meeting should take place every afternoon to close out the day. This is the perfect opportunity to allow the Service Assistant to alert the RR of any problem issues and let the RR know when they are handled. In addition, for the RR who is having trouble staying on task because of new and great ideas that come along, this is an excellent opportunity to just write down those ideas and pass them along to the SV. The RR can share his or her ideas and still allow the team to stay on task during the day.
SA/RR Daily Meeting
This meeting should take place for a number of reasons. The first is to make sure that the SA is keeping the goals of the RR regarding the number of appointments desired. This is also an excellent time for the SA to ask questions about what he or she is doing. (Click here to see the "New Model Day" document written by Bill Good about this meeting.)
Other Meetings
Other types of meetings can occur during the afternoon. The entire purpose of a meeting with any team member is to help boost motivation and production. At times, a team member's production level may drop. Reasons for a drop in production can vary, but the RR should curtail this as soon as possible. For example: If the CO is having trouble finishing his or her work by the end of the day, the CO and RR should meet to find out what the trouble is and make sure the CO is able to complete the job duties in the time allotted. Don't let the problem persist until the CO loses the job and you lose your CO. If you set a meeting, be sure you LISTEN to what is said in it.
My invitation to every team out there is to work on communication, especially in your meetings. If every office had an excellent communication system, the office goals would always be accomplished. I hope that everyone can start out the New Year on the right foot, with excellent communication channels in place.
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The Marvelous Toy
By Lawrie Livingstone, Senior Consultant
You may recall the chorus of Tom Paxton's folk standard "The Marvelous Toy," a song in which a father hands down his favorite mysterious toy to his son, who also derives great pleasure from it:
"It went zip when it moved,
Bop when it stopped,
Whir when it stood still;
I never knew just what it was
And I guess I never will."
Do you remember when you went to the Gorilla Training Seminar™, got totally confused, came home and lived for the weekly Marketing Support phone calls to get your System up and running correctly? You wanted the System to "move" and knew that by keeping it moving, you would achieve the goals you set when you first bought the System.
For those who followed the guidance from Marketing Support and "just did it," perhaps without totally understanding the System, the System kept moving forward. The FtM campaign DID bring in Muh-Ney and referrals.
As time went by, perhaps you lost an employee or two who went to Salt Lake and was trained on the System. What happened to your business? What happened if you didn't consistently send out your monthly drip? Did the System move, stop or stand still?
For those of you whose System is "zipping" along nicely, thankyouverymuch, and congratulations! You will have a marvelous year!
For those of you whose System is either stopped or standing still as you listen to it "bop" or "whir," consider taking the following action:
- Call Bill Good Marketing and set up a telephone appointment with a Marketing Specialist. The Specialists are there to help you implement the System! Detail where you are and what problems you are facing, and work out a strategy to get your System zipping forward again.
- Get out that huge, unwieldy sheet of paper called the "110% Gorilla Chart." Determine where you and each of your team members stand in terms of skills. For those who need additional training, see the WebEx™ training schedule online at http://www.billgood.com/webex.cfm/. You can also review the information in the BGM Radio Schedule and/or archive.
- Do you have a business plan? One that isn't three years old or formulated on a napkin smudged with BBQ sauce? Do you feel you have been "whirring" so long that moss is growing on your computer? Consider a chat with Michelle Cummings at 1-800-678-1480 x1260. Michelle is our On-site Consulting Specialist and will, in short order, help you to determine whether or not one of BGM's On-site Consultants is needed to help you get the most out of your marvelous toy.
May your business zip along in 2003!
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Too Busy to Train Your Staff?
By Bridget Bellon, Senior Marketing Consultant
In any small business, training and retraining is a must, but be sure you always start by hiring professionals. By professionals, I mean people who show initiative and are dedicated to getting the job done. You don't want to hire people you have to constantly keep after to learn their jobs or get their work done.
Once you have made the decision to hire someone, he or she should spend some time with the collection of books and training materials from Bill Good Marketing® before being put on the job. However, you and I both know that employee will need a lot more training specific to his or her job and your company. That will take time you probably don't have.
Here is the problem as I see it.
The intellectual capital of your company resides in the heads of only one or a few people. If they should leave, get sick, die, etc., the company's business is diminished if not destroyed.
Therefore, you and your team must make an ongoing effort to insure that the intellectual capital of your company is preserved and transmitted intact from one generation of staff to the next. To do this, each staff member should compile a Job Description Notebook. Job Description Notebooks and other training materials should be added to your Training Library as they are created.
Here are some recommendations on how to start a Training Library:
- Specific operational policies must be put in writing and/or preserved on cassette tape, video, or some other medium.
- As employees are trained or retrained, they should have a tape recorder suitable for recording cassette tapes.
- When employees ask questions, sit them down in the office, take out the tape recorder, and explain the answers as you record them on tape.
- Create a log to record the date the tape was made, a number for it, a brief summary of what is on it, and a list of people who should receive a copy of it for their job training.
- To easily track training materials, maintain a series of logs by job title in Microsoft Word or another program.
- Keep copies of documents, forms, checklists, letters, scripts, etc. that pertain to each job position in a binder. This is the Job Description Notebook for that post.
- Include specific company forms as well as Bill Good-related forms.
- Each document should have a tape and/or checklist on when and how to use it.
When a supervisor believes an employee is ready to start a job, it should be clear at that point that the employee is given 100% responsibility to do the job.
Certainly, as an employee starts doing a job, he or she may have questions. But at no point should a supervisor or other employee handle someone else's job. One employee may come to another and ask, "How do I do such and such?" He or she can receive an answer right then, or preferably, if the answer exists on tape, can be referred to the appropriate recording. If the answer is not on tape or is not documented, the employee should add it to the Training Library. The employee also remains responsible for completing the task in question.
Once an employee is given a job and receives training for it, he or she should be held accountable for that job.
Be aware, though, that I have had assistants say to me, "I don't want to create a Job Description Notebook because then I won't have job security. If I put down in writing how to do my job, you can get anyone to do it."
My response to that is--nonsense. Job security doesn't come from keeping what you do and how you do it a secret. Job security comes from doing your job well. Besides, at some point, every job description will expand and employees will need to train others to do some of the tasks they've been doing. They will want a Training Library in place. Trust me!
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Your Marketing Support Representatives
By Matt Hicken, Senior Consultant
MatthewH@BillGood.net
In the Marketing Support Department, we have many consultants who have been trained to get you (the RR) to your ultimate goal of doubling your production or working half as much with the same production. Just as there are a number of specialties you as a Financial Advisor may have, we too have specialists in the Marketing Support Department.
First, we have Start-up Specialists. These consultants have been trained to get your team up and running once you get back to your office from the Gorilla Training Seminar™. They specialize in directing you until you get your foundation in place. From time to time, they will send you to our Campaign Specialists. These consultants work specifically on campaigns. They know what each campaign does and can advise you on which ones best fit your marketing needs. Periodically, they will help you troubleshoot your campaigns to make sure they are running effectively. If you have any special needs with the campaigns, you might be sent to a Senior Consultant. Senior Consultants have a lot of experience in getting a smooth pipeline flowing within your office. They will help you make sure you have a team organized to allow the flow of prospecting. They will also help by fine-tuning your in-office procedures, such as implementing your Model Day, monitoring stats, and keeping your communication channels open in the office.
If you don't do what your consultants tell you, or if you just aren't there for your phone appointments, then you will go to Hammer School, which is run by a Senior Consultant. He or she will "hammer" you to get your act together so that your business can grow. If you are really troubled, if you repeatedly don't show up for your calls or try to pass them off on your staff (which means big trouble over time), or you don't work with the plan you agreed to, you go to Stick School. Bill Good runs this school personally like a third grade math teacher with the biggest ruler imaginable.
As a whole, the Marketing Support Department will help you build your pipeline and create and implement a marketing plan to keep your name in front of your clientele. Marketing Support Representatives will help ensure that your day is filled with interested and qualified Clients and Prospects so you can bring in the money. They have the training and experience to assist you and your staff. If you do what they tell you to do, you will reach your goals.
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January 2003 GORILLAS OF THE MONTH: David Babinski & Chris Scalese
In every issue of the Gorilla Times®, a Gorilla who has shown outstanding performance through the System or experienced some other great accomplishment is chosen to be the "Gorilla of the Month." Bill Good interviews this Gorilla to find out what has brought him/her success. This issue features Gorilla David Babinski; his partner, Chris Scalese, was unable to attend. In the interview, David talks about how the System helped his business increase production dramatically and create a strong team.
BG: Ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to introduce to you our Gorillas of the Month: We have David Babinski and Chris Scalese. Chris is on an appointment, so David is speaking for the partnership. They are based in the financial world center of Dickson City, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of the giant metropolis of Scranton, Pennsylvania, population 75,000. And if anybody wonders, "Can you create a million-dollar practice in a small area?" the answer is yes, yes, and yes. David, you and Chris came on the System when?
DB: Well, it's an interesting story that I'm sure is repeated over and over. I came on the System in 1992 as a Sales Assistant, and I developed into a junior partnership and went off on my own. Then I didn't have the System; about two years off I went and bought my own System. So I became a Gorilla in 1999.
BG: All right. Now, 1999, were you and Chris partners then?
DB: No, I was actually working in a financial planning shop that did mostly retirement plans and pensions. My job was to work with the people that were actually retiring out of the pension and I needed the System to keep track of that, and then eventually that just developed into my desire to only work with retirees and that's when I hooked up with Chris. It was July of 2000.
BG: All right, now in 2000, the two of you together produced how much?
DB: I don't have good statistics for that, but if it was 200,000, that was a lot for us. 2001, we had the full year together on the System. We did 472K. 2002, we just finished up the books--we did several thousand below 1.2 million.
BG: Okay, good. And you guys are independents, correct?
DB: That is right.
BG: All right, now let's go back just a little bit. From the year 2000 to right now--we're recording this January 10, 2003--a lot of people have seen their revenue go down 25, 35, 45, I've talked to people who have seen it go down 50%, but you are up six times in that period of time. What did you do differently?
DB: Well, I went from basically "being myself," if you will, with a financial planning practice that focused on the actual pension assets themselves to putting together a team and implementing the Bill Good model.
BG: Now, did you have any capital to do this?
DB: Well, it costs money. I didn't have it. We borrowed it.
BG: Okay. So what kind of commitment did you have to make to put this together?
DB: Well, with most things, if you're going to do it, you have to do it right, so I knew (from already having been a part of the System, if you will, with my previous job as a Sales Assistant), I knew that to do it was not just the trip to Utah, was not just the cash for the computer and the software--it was the team, and I had to build the team. I had a payroll of three or four thousand dollars a month before I was making anything. So we committed to the System, if you will, but we also committed to the people required to make it happen. And we started with the CO and then a Service Assistant, and when I say it like that, within two days I had both of those positions filled. And then after I got together with Chris we started with the sales side.
BG: All right. So within just a few weeks of you and Chris getting together, you had a CO, you had a Service Assistant, and what else did you add? When did you add your Sales Assistant?
DB: By January 2000, we had a part-time person making appointments for us, so three months later, we basically had THE team.
BG: All right. Now to promote your business, what did you do?
DB: Well, we basically consider ourselves a seminar company; that's what we do for a living. We happen to also give financial advice, and that's how we make money. But basically, everyone in my shop is set up to implement and promote seminars. And that's how we did it; that's how we grew it. And we tracked it through the Bill Good System.
BG: Okay. So what kind of seminars, how often do you do them, how do you promote them? Let's take a look at the seminar model.
DB: In the very beginning . . . we tried classroom-style in a local hotel, three thousand pieces of mail. We had maybe 30, 40 people with, you know, a couple pitchers of water in the back of the room, and we pontificated for two, two-and-a-half hours, something like that, with questions. And we would get three or four appointments and open an account if we were lucky. And in the midst of all of this, it seemed that people were leaning back towards lunch seminars, dinner seminars. We decided, well, let's try it. We were already on the hook for the staff, we were already on the hook for a bigger, better office, furniture was coming, computers were coming. We started to have dinner seminars at a local restaurant (which, if you say the name, and everybody already knows right where it is, you don't have to give directions--that's the restaurant you want to pick). We started to have seminars, dinner-style, probably Nov/Dec 2000, and since then, we've probably done, I'd say, 73-75 seminars in the past two years. For 2002, 41 seminars in 52 weeks, so not quite one a week, but way more than one every two weeks.
BG: All right. So are you doing straight mail-only seminars?
DB: That's correct. Mail only with just a number to call in; we handle all the reservations in-house. We farm our mailings out to a company that has the list, does the mailing, and, prints our invitations for us.
BG: Okay, and how many times are you going back to the same list in the course of a year?
DB: Well, it is THE list--it's the same list the whole time--but to do 41 seminars, because the room only fits 50 or 60 people, we only had to do probably 12 mailings. But I would say that those 12 mailings were to the same list. So as long as it's pulling, we just keep mailing . . . the same invitation I was using in 1996! Wedding style with a live stamp and a return address on the back that's not a company. I think there was a book, Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success, that lists some of these things. And we've just been doing them ever since.
BG: All right, so when you do a mailing, you're promoting how many seminars?
DB: We'll have three right on the mailing--Have your choice of dinner, dinner, dinner--and we probably will have to have one to two "overflows." We always have five reserved with the restaurant when we send the mailing, but we try and fill those three first, and then normally we'll have an overflow closer to the first date and an overflow closer to the last date.
BG: Okay. Now, when somebody comes to a seminar, if they don't come in for an appointment, what happens to them?
DB: They go into the System as a prospect, they get a somewhat consistent monthly newsletter, they get all of our wonderful--I think you call them "Feel Good"--letters and whatever the holiday letter is, the Christmas letter, the 4th of July letter, they get all of those. And they continue to get re-invited to the seminars.
BG: Okay. Now, do you have an arrangement with your list company to pull people who have attended and become clients, or do they just continue to mail to the same people?
DB: You know, we had debate about that, but the answer is, they continue to get the invitations. I've had clients call up and say, "Oh, I'm so glad you sent me that invitation. My friend Bob was asking me about this--can I just come again and bring him?" And I say, "Absolutely!" And some of them just come again alone and think we're just going to give them updates, but it's the same exact seminar. And they say, "Oh, I'm so glad I came because I picked up this or I picked up that." I would absolutely discourage someone from taking current clients off that list.
BG: Okay. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. All right. I believe you told me how many first appointments you held last year--I think I remember 274.
DB: Yeah, 274, 278, something like that.
BG: And you opened 130-some accounts--new clients last year. So you're right at 50% closure there as well. Now, what are you doing with the people that come in that don't close, or have retirement dates months or years away and you've given them green cherry status?
DB: Known future opportunity for most of them. And once every three to four months, I will send out what we call a product mailer, something that actually solicits business. And we'll pick up some of those. They'll go, "Oh, I've been meaning to come and I know you've talked to me about this or that and this is due," and then come in and they literally just walk in with a check because they're ready to go. So they're not treated much differently right now, although I have in the back of my head that they should be treated more like a connection style, more aggressive. That's what I have in mind for 2003, is to somehow get the Wilson Campaign working on them as a way to keep in front of them a little bit more consistently than we have been. But I think that that's one of the places that's going to help me get to two million is to follow up on those people much more aggressively.
BG: That's the goal for this year, right?
DB: Right. That's why I'm working. What I'm trying to do this year is not work 41 nights out of the year--work a little bit less and have my database supply more of those appointments for me.
BG: That works for me. All right, let me ask you one other question. These product mailings you do--as you know, for some time, I have recommended that financial planners should do periodic product mailings. You're a good student; you've been a good student for ten years, David. Give me an example of a product mailing. What's a product mailing?
DB: Callable CDs. You know, "Are you disappointed with the local bank's interest rates?" I think a million, million-and-a-half came in the door on that one in assets. Or "A lot of my Clients ask me, 'What are we doing today for better interest rates?'" or something that references "My Clients are already taken care of and now I'm thinking of you." That type of a feel. And I'm pretty sure that's yours, because I don't think I could have come up with that.
BG: I don't recognize that; that might be yours.
DB: Okay. Well then, I got it from somewhere. But you know, people have responded to that and it's just that they're not hearing from their advisor, any advisor. People come in to see us and they haven't spoken to anyone in over a year. And they don't know where to go. People absolutely do not care what happened; they want to know where they should be going. They don't want to hear excuses about why they're where they're at--this is how we could fix it and this is how we can make sure you're still going to have a comfortable retirement.
BG: Hey, what are the odds that you'd send me one of those product letters and I'll make it Letter of the Week?
DB: I will email one straightaway. I know you're trying to wrap it up, but I do not want to discount the fact that my team is unbelievable. I don't want to end without getting that in there.
BG: Give me a quick profile of what you've got; I've got a couple more minutes.
DB: Okay. I've got Jackie, who was the first person we ever hired that first day when we just started our business, and she's been with us ever since. She is running our seminars for us flawlessly; she also runs my office. We would not exist in the form we are today without Jackie--she's incredible. I thought it was a dream three years ago when I read your material and it said pick a date and show up: That's the RR's responsibility for a seminar. I'll come in in the morning, and be like, oh, there's a seminar tonight? Is anyone coming? And it's just done. I don't even pick the date anymore because they have discretion over my calendar. Without her, that would not happen. So she was the original Service Assistant, and then as our practice grew, I hired two Service Assistants, Bonita and Eileen. I've got a Marketing Director, Laura, and she has under her Mary Beth who is a Caller who sets my appointments. Under her is a CO, Steve--he's part-time. And Jackie is Event Coordinator/Office Manager. So I feel I have the team in place now that I would need to get to where I want to be. And that's the whole gem of the Bill Good System: you don't want to have the team that you can afford; you want the team that you would need if you were already there. And that's what we did from the very beginning. We had three employees when we couldn't even afford to pay ourselves. And Laura tells me starting next week we have a part-time Caller as well. So that's seven people on my team. I wanted to get that in there, because the team is what makes it happen.
BG: They're critical. You'd be a $200,000 producer.
DB: You could be a $200,000 producer on your own; you could be a $250,000 producer on your own with the Bill Good System, because it's a very, very fancy Rolodex. You put those part-time team members in place right out of the gate and it doubles. It has to happen because you don't have anything else to do.
BG: Terrific. All right. David Babinski, speaking on behalf, I know, of Chris Scalese and your entire team, thank you very much. You're great Gorillas, great students, good friends, and I appreciate your taking the time with me today. And for the benefit of people listening to this over our Real Audio broadcast, if you're a client, David's letter will be posted in the Letters Library. David, thank you very much.
NOTE: This interview has been condensed for online posting. To read it in its entirety, please click here.
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© Copyright 2003 by Bill Good.
All rights Reserved.