The Brief
We were asked by Irish Life to design a training programme for 100 of the key Brokers in the country. All are business owners, with companies ranging in size from 5 to 10 staff, to larger companies with 40 and 50 staff, and some with 100 or more. Irish Life wanted to do something unique to help them in a practical way to enhance their businesses and the quality of service they provide to their clients.
Irish Life had a number of key criteria for the programme:
- It had to be cutting-edge, and built around core principles of Behavioural Science – understanding how people behave;
- It had to be practical and it had to deliver for these business owners – helping them to enhance service and grow their bottom lines, measurably;
- It had to be beautifully designed, and compellingly presented;
- It had to make them want to come back – we were warned that they would vote with their feet and not turn up for a session 2 if session 1 did not completely grab them.
Our Solution
K2 – Using Behavioural Science to Grow Your Business
We designed an Academy-style programme. Six modules – each one 2.5 hours long – to be delivered over a 12 month period. We named it K2 as K2 is considered the most difficult climb (though Everest is higher) and only the best of the best attempt it.
Brokers would attend the modules in groups of 10, and stay with that group for the duration. Between modules, each broker would receive personal coaching to help them implement the new learning. Each group also had access to online support through a specially designed K2 Portal.
Our Behavioural researchers and specialists put together each module showing the science and the research, the fascinating experiments on the various approaches, and, most importantly, showing how the theory could be applied in a practical way.
Each module addressed a single principle from Behavioural Science, such as Framing:
- How do you ‘frame’ or communicate an intangible product such as a pension, or life insurance, or income protection, in a way more likely to lead to someone acting on it.
- How do you frame your own service, the value you add?
- How do you frame fees in a confident, comfortable way that enables the client to see the value you add?
Results
The results were unprecedented. We started the programme with 100 brokers. At the end of the full programme, all modules and all coaching, 99 had attended every single element. The missing one person withdrew because of other commitments.
Irish Life rated it the best programme they had ever run. The 99 brokers gave spectacular feedback. A key outcome was the number of owners who had grown their businesses and their profitability. They had all re-framed how they presented their own business, changed their fee structures, changed sales processes, and most importantly saw the value they were adding for their clients in helping them to make complex life decisions more clearly.
The Follow-Up
The greatest endorsement of all: so successful was the first series that we were asked to design and deliver a second series, which we named ‘Beyond the Summit’. It followed the same format as the first series, with the same brokers attending – as well as some new additions – and the same stellar results.
