MAB: Thanks for visiting with us, Dr. Teplitz! I really enjoyed the seminar you gave as part of the The Homeless Entrepreneur--The Suitcase to Briefcase Program -- as well as the previous ones I have taken with you. Your methods seem so much easier and more effective than most of the standard "motivational" workshops. Can you share with us what inspired you to develop this method? And why you call it "Switched On"?
Jerry Teplitz: I had been speaking professionally for many years, showing attendees at my programs a methodology called Behavioral Kinesiology, which demonstrates instantly how individuals can be negatively impacted by their thoughts and their surroundings. I then show my audience what to do to dissolve these negative effects. A gentleman in one of my seminars introduced me to Educational Kinesiology, a system called Brain Gym - which employs a set of very simple body movements and exercises to "switch on" the brain. I immediately saw that this perfectly complemented what I was already teaching. As I was very impressed with the power of this work to make changes to the brain's wiring system, I got certified to teach it.
Since the originator of the work, Dr. Paul Dennison, had his PhD in Education, his primary focus was with kids, learning and school systems. No one was teaching these valuable techniques in the business arena, so I got permission to develop my hybrid version of the work: a brain rewiring approach to increasing a salesperson's effectiveness. It became my Switched-On Selling Seminar.
I called it "Switched-On" because participants find the places where they are stuck in the selling process and then address them. In the seminar, they are actually able to switch their brains on for that issue. So what had been difficult for them in the selling process became easy.
MAB: What made you think these methods would be effective in business?
JT: Since I had seen how Brain Gym positively impacted children in schools, I thought it should also work for adults in business situations. So I did research on the Switched-On Selling seminar results by giving attendees a pre-seminar questionnaire and post-seminar questionnaires. I also followed-up with a third questionnaire, one-month later to eliminate the possibility of "seminar high" or placebo effect. We found that the results were spectacular.
MAB: Do you have any statistics to share to illustrate that?
JT: Sure, I complied all the seminar reports from the individual classes I had been conducting into a study with 695 salespeople. The attendees responded to 18 statements. Let me share the amazing results for one of the statements they responded to: "I am comfortable asking for the order and closing the sale."
At the beginning of the seminar day, 52% of these attendees responded to this statement by selecting as their answer "Strongly Disagree" or "Disagree," meaning that the majority in the attendees did not feel comfortable asking for the order or closing the sale. By the end of the seminar day, there were only 8% who did not feel comfortable with doing that. In the one-month later follow-up questionnaire, that number dropped to 6 percent.
While dropping from 52% to 6% is quite a large level of change in an important part of the sales process, there was an even more dramatic level of change in the sales people who selected "Strongly Agree." At the beginning of the seminar day, 16% said they were comfortable with asking for the order and closing the sale. At the end of the day, that number had jumped to 35%. And in the one-month follow-up survey, 50% of that group selected "Strongly Agree."
This means that the seminar recalibrated the attendees so that a total of 94% were viewing themselves as comfortable asking for the order and closing the sale. I don't know of another one-day sales training program that can report this kind of change in salespeople's attitudes about selling.
MAB: So, the salespeople's attitudes changed dramatically, but how did this affect their performance? Was there a change for a company's bottom line after having their salespeople go through your Switched-On Selling (SOS) seminar?
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