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Scott Johnson was hired by the Florida Association of Insurance Agents (FAIA) in 1974 to address the crisis du jour which, for independent agents, was how to sell against “Direct Writers.” Specifically, State Farm and Allstate not only seemed to have a lower price but their agents were regarded as better “sellers”. It was also generally held, for example, that independent agents weren’t inclined to “selling” in the traditional sense; they weren’t trained to close sales and/or didn’t have a sales culture in their agencies. This was a deadly combination that resulted in eroding over half of the independent agents market share in all but just a few states. Their plight was exacerbated by agency companies reluctant to pay for sales training because they feared independent agents would simply use what they learned from one company to sell products for another. The FAIA and a consortium of insurers called, The Last Manifesto, wanted to change this set of circumstances and hired Scott Johnson to teach independent agents how to overcome the price objection, handle sales resistance and “close” more sales.
Scott taught the program he developed in the 70’s for over ten years, during which time he video taped thousands of role plays and accompanied sellers on hundreds of sales calls. Literally, he travelled the country--cataloguing the techniques of those sellers he considered to be “elite”. Then, he combined that decade worth of empirical data with another 20 years of research into every aspect of the science of persuasion. He then spent three years placing it all into a coherent, step-by-step, plan for closing more sales. Those “Elite” selling techniques and their application constitute roughly one third of the book; Platform I. Platform II teaches how to apply those same techniques to a group environment, such as a corporate boardroom, RFP committee or large convention. And, Platform III is about Self Management--teaching sellers how to set personal revenue and sales production goals and then to manage themselves and their time to reach those goals.