MEET SHELDON

Give me a call and let’s connect

“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 is true, about the billion-dollar insurance call centers where I coached the coaches.
  • I could share with you, and it is 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.  (Check the results page on this site to hear it directly from my customers.)

Instead, I will tell you that it’s all about the right markets, message, and methods.

  • I know this because 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 thorough 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 seek first to understand before I ever make a suggestion.

Five Elemental Truths:

  1. You must operate within your character.
  2. You must speak less and listen more.
  3. You must orient toward adding value.
  4. You must expend effort only on those with whom there is a mutual basis for doing business.
  5. You must ask for the business.

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
  • Jim Holden’s — Power Base Selling ö Secrets of an Ivy League Street Fighter
  • Michael Gerber’s — E-Myth
  • Richard Bach, Tich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi, and many others