Recently, I was invited to give a sales seminar to a group of inner city entrepreneurs. The group leader cautioned me to avoid the “corporate speak” of previous presenters, to talk “to the group, not over their head.”

I had a dilemma – without interacting with the group, should I change my standard seminar for business owners? As I considered the question, I was reminded of the story of the skeptical prospect…

Some years ago, a sales consultant was invited to visit a skeptical prospect, to discuss training a team of eight salespeople. The consultant had worked for more than a year to realize this appointment. He had first identified the prospect by tracking the “help wanted” ads for salespeople where this company was advertising. Then he contacted and told the business owner, “You don’t need a salesperson; you need a new selling system.”

This is a tough sale – it isn’t transactional, it’s systemic change.

At first, the owner wasn’t interested. But the consultant persisted, and eventually, a year later, he had an appointment.

After two solid meetings, both parties agreed there was a fit and started working on an agreement. The prospect conducted substantial due diligence – checking 10 of the consultant’s references, both owners and salespeople who he had trained. (When was the last time you checked 10 references or someone checked 10 of your references?) The consultant was subjected to the due diligence version of a doctor’s fluoroscope.

But the prospect still wasn’t satisfied, as the consultant had no experience in their space, or business sector. These were the real McCoy of skeptics. The negotiation continued over two months, with several “false starts.”

Finally, one fateful day, the prospect’s president again articulated his skepticism. “I know your system works for all these other clients, but how do I know it will work in my unique space?”

The consultant reflected on this skepticism and was reminded of Aristotle’s great souled man. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents the “great souled man” as the epitome of human accomplishment – to be so respected by everyone that you command their serious attention when you speak.

© Bombadil LLC 2009

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The days are getting shorter. The nights are getting longer and more dangerous.

And the City of Elizabeth has become a war zone.

In 2006 Elizabeth had the 24th highest homicide rate in the country for cities between 100,000 and 250,000, even though by population it is on the low end of this category of medium size cities.

Though the national comparison data for 2007 is not yet available, Elizabeth’s murder rate increased by more than 20 percent in 2007 with 16 homicides in the city. Given that the national trend was down in 2007, Elizabeth’s rank can be expected to jump substantially.

Even more troubling than the murder rate is the few number of murders that are solved in Elizabeth. In 2007 nine of the 16 killings remain unsolved, more than 50 percent. So far this year, eight of the 11 murders remain unsolved. That’s nearly 75 percent. This means that if you kill someone, you have only a one-in-four-chance of getting arrested, let alone convicted for the crime.

Unfortunately I could not find statistics that allow for a comparison of rates of unsolved murders. However, it stands to reason to expect that a 75 percent unsolved murder rate ranks Elizabeth in the very top of any city in the country. This is not a distinction to be proud of.

Gang violence is at the root of the killings in Elizabeth. Everyone knows this. There are drive-by shootings. There are gang initiation killings. There are revenge killings. There are accidents, perhaps the saddest of all.

Everyone knows that there is a serious gang problem in Elizabeth. However, one person will not admit it. Unfortunately, that person is the mayor of Elizabeth, Chris Bollwage, and what he says carries a lot of weight in this city.

You have to feel sorry for the Elizabeth police department. When their city is in official denial of the very existence of gangs, it is hard for them to mount an effective defense against gang violence. For instance, the Elizabeth police do not even have a gang unit and they do not collect gang statistics or intelligence. It is no wonder that they have such a hard time solving gang killings when they do not even admit that there are gangs.

When you have a breakdown like this, it becomes incumbent on the county prosecutor to intervene. Ted Romankow, the county prosecutor, has tried, unsuccessfully, to provide help.

Mayor Bollwage has rebuffed him at every turn.

Recently the prosecutor suggested forming a countywide homicide task force that would incorporate resources from multiple police forces to help solve all these murders. That offer, too, was rebuffed, with Mayor Bollwage decrying the interference. So emphatic was the mayor that he sent multiple carloads of uniformed police to Scotch Plains in an obvious attempt to intimidate the prosecutor into staying out of Elizabeth.

One hopes these tactics, so similar to those applied by the gangs themselves, will not work. If he has to, the prosecutor does have the authority to take control of all or part of the Elizabeth police department. If this is what it takes to put an end to gang slayings, so be it.

Each year about this time I sit down with my staff and discuss their personal safety. Our office is only a half-block from the Elizabeth police station, but the area becomes so dangerous after dark that I require everyone to be gone before dark. This is a sad statement on the state of the city.

Andy Gole once told an accounting firm their sales presentation could stand improvement. They ended up hiring him.

So began the story of Urgency Based SellingTM and Bombadil LLC.

At the time Gole was a veteran salesman and entrepreneur running his own consumer products company and sales agency. His new accounting firm, GB&T, had invited him to review a proprietary software product. Impressed by Gole’s candor and concepts, the firm asked him to attend a sales call and were even more impressed when Gole stepped in and helped close the deal.

It was an epiphany of sorts, as it led Gole to begin leveraging off his experience in sales and business management and start a sales consulting firm.

Actually, epiphany might be too strong a word. Evolution is more accurate.

“I saw there was this gap in sales consulting,” Gole said. “I started doing things differently, but I didn’t know I was doing them differently. It was trial by fire and I kept on experimenting with different methods until I found a system that worked.”

That system became Urgency Based Selling, with which he typically coaches clients to double their closing ratio, according to Gole. Most recently Gole used Urgency Based Selling to help medical and pharmaceutical publisher Intellisphere increase sales by 55 percent in their first year working with him.

“All firms are prospects for sales consulting, but only a small segment looks for it,” said Gole, who founded Bombadil in 2004. “These firms are sales driven, systems driven, risk taking, sufficiently dissatisfied with results and willing to let go.”

Firms and sales teams struggling with performance must be prepared to let go of entrenched processes and cultures, breaking familiar molds to learn new processes, Gole said. Urgency Based Selling is an 18-step sales system that comprises best practices developed during 25 years of selling and more than 4,000 sales calls. Gole tailors the process to fit each client’s needs and sales sector.

There are three fatal flaws in selling, according to Gole: (1) assuming a prospect comes to a conversation with a serious intent; (2) assuming the prospect believes what he or she is being told; and (3) assuming the prospect knows how to make a decision. While these seem to be given premises, Gole asserts they are not and notes that other sales training systems also overlook them.

“Selling too often involves filling orders for people who are predisposed to buy from you,” he said.

The key to Urgency Based Selling is to go beyond this safe relationship and expand the selling audience. Gole has a proven track record of teaching sales teams to do that.

“Are you having a serious conversation with the prospect?” Gole asks. “Are you convincing a skeptical audience? And are you helping the prospect make a decision?”

Gole began learning about urgency early in his career when selling decorative containers for a Georgia-based company as an independent commissioned sales agent.

“The pioneering work (on the system) was done in the field selling an inferior product to hostile customers,” he said. “I never would have had the incentive to innovate and try new methods if I wasn’t in that cauldron. I developed a consultative selling system, which in itself is not unique, but refined it into a unique sales process and management system that ultimately was replicable.”

Replicating his success for clients requires a very strong commitment from senior management, a sales team that is both willing to take a stand and is cognitive – Urgency Based Selling requires analytical thinking, according to Gole – and at least two to three months of training for two hours per week.

“It’s a radical paradigm shift for most people,” Gole explained. “If a salesperson is very successful and satisfied with her performance, I believe you should leave her alone. My system is geared toward people who want to build up their business and companies that want to go beyond the low-hanging fruit.”

Intellisphere wanted just that. The company’s advertising sales were down 6 percent when they began discussions with Gole. But they were concerned with his lack of experience selling advertising and working in the pharmaceutical sector.

“Gole had powerful ideas,” said Herbert Marek, Intellisphere president and chief operating officer. “But to be practical, they had to be tailored to the essential details of the healthcare advertising space.”

With a 55 percent increase in sales the first year and an expected additional growth of 25 percent in year two, Intellisphere embraced Gole’s system and expanded his work within the company.

“We went slowly with the first assignment, with a substantial amount of monitoring,” Marek said. “Now that we’ve had two successes, we understand what Gole can do.”

Which is deliver proven results.

“Sales consulting is not a fit for every firm,” Gole said. “It involves disruption. But it is manageable. You have to have a vision, a hunger for exponential growth.”

Are you over-insured? Most likely.

Most companies have a one-size-fits-all health plan, regardless of the number of employees. As a result, all employees generally have a pretty good hospital plan, as  well as a prescription plan.

But all employees are not alike and companies may be able to save money on health insurance by better defining their coverage to better fit the needs and requirements of their employee population.

Given that companies usually have a mix of younger and older employees, does everyone go into the hospital every year? Why should a business pre-pay for hospitalization with high premiums for employees who are unlikely to need the  coverage? There are less expensive health plans that have a hospital co-pay that employees pay only if they go into the hospital.

Employees like the idea of paying just a co-pay and having everything else covered with no further out-of-pocket expenses. They get nervous when they see deductibles and co-insurance on their plans, and they like the lower premium rates – especially since employees now generally pay a portion of their health insurance costs.

The key to businesses understanding their options is the Maximum-Out-Of-Pocket cost, or (MOOP), which is clearly stated in a plan. For the most part, MOOP applies to in-hospital  costs which can generate the largest expenses, often into thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

MOOP can be kept to a minimal level through an expensive plan with small co-pays.

Or MOOP can be up to $5,000 for a single employee and $10,000 for a family for services performed by doctors/hospitals within the health insurance plan network.

People generally are familiar with how deductibles on car insurance can save money.

They understand the risks and make an informed decision as to what level of deductible is best for them.

The other factor in this “Let’s make a deal” exchange is co-insurance.

With a high premium cost plan, the insurance company generally takes 100 percent of the risk associated with employees going into the hospital. However, plans are available where businesses share (or co-insure) the risk. These plans usually entail the insurance company paying 90 percent and the business paying 10 percent of the hospital cost after the employee’s deductible, or the insurer paying 80 percent and the business paying 20 percent.

Do all employees really need a prescription plan that can cost more than $1,000 a year in premium expense for a single employee, and $2,500 for a family? Certainly employees who are on “maintenance” drugs to maintain blood pressure levels, cholesterol levels, etc., should have a prescription plan available to them. However, businesses should consider offering a second plan without a prescription drug card, one that costs less for the employee.

Does it make sense to have more than one health insurance plan?

For both the employer and the employee, it makes a lot more sense to have the optimum set of benefits for the dollars that are spent on insurance premiums. Given increasing rates each year, businesses certainly should manage these dollars effectively.

Savings and more efficient expenses could provide employees with other benefits as well as help out the bottom line that keeps the business profitable. It makes no sense to “torch” a $1,000 bill for a prescription card for a healthy single employee who is not on maintenance drugs. On the other hand, employees who take maintenance drugs are less likely to go into the hospital.

So why not have higher deductible/co-insurance plans?

Unlike the weather, businesses can, and should, do something about health insurance costs. At the least, they should contact their licensed insurance broker to investigate possible options for saving money. An insurance broker can advise a business about what may make good $EN$E for both their employees and their business.

Jim Faulker is a member of Coastal Financial Group, Inc., a full service general/master agency for major health insurance carriers with offices in Montville, NJ; Bethlehem, PA; and New York, NY. Faulkner can be reached at 973.952.0300, ext. 109, or jfaulkner@coastalfinancialgroup.com.