Mattson Heads Sandler Boot Camp for MassMutual Financial Group

Glenn Mattson, President, Sandler Training

On August 9th - 11th, Glenn Mattson headed a Sandler Training Book Camp for MassMutual reps in Bridgewater, NJ as part of an initiative to institutionalize Sandler's distinctive, non-traditional system and highly effective sales training methodology into their practices.  Agents, sales managers, and GA's from various MassMutual agencies traveled from as far as Philadelphia to attend the intensive, 3-day workshop at the beautiful Marriot Bridgewater Hotel and Conference Center.  

Attendee Harris Fishman, President and CEO of First Financial Group (FFG), was introduced to Sandler and Glenn Mattson years ago, when looking to improve his company's productivity.  His senior management team began working with Mattson and soon started finding success, improving their skill sets and practice management abilities.  At the time, Fishman was the Chair of the Training Subcommittee for the General Agents Association, a national association which represents issues affecting the field to senior MassMutual leadership.  Impressed with the results he was finding, he helped bring Sandler to MassMutual, suggesting they share the system company wide.

Harris Fishman, Pres., CEO FFG

"There were 30 general agents using Sandler in some capacity at the time, either through local Sandler offices or though Glenn directly.  They also happened to be some of our best practices.  I thought, why are we not sharing these ideas with each other and why is the company not getting involved in this," Fishman recalls.

MassMutual agreed, and decided the first step would be to roll out the platform to its managers.  

"We thought it most important to teach GA's and sales managers the general philosophy behind Sandler, so they could support our agents after they go through their own training boot camp," Fishman said at this most recent camp in Bridgewater.

Amanda MacLauchlan, a MassMutual Trainer in Central New York agreed with this decision.  "Cultural commitment to adopting the Sandler system is key - it has to be implemented from the top, down."

Embodying that vision is Bruce Sham, VP of Sales at FFG, and long time supporter of Mattson and Sandler.  Sham was one of Fishman's senior agents who started working with Mattson seven years ago, and who now has many of his own agents adopting the methods.

"As a MassMutual Agency, and as sales managers and trainers, it's our job to get new agents up and running as quickly as possible.  We have to give them a selling system, and that's what was missing from our training," Sham admitted.  "We would give them the approach, the language and inundate them with product knowledge, but they didn't know how to sell or how to respond to questions clients were asking; it was blowing them out of the sales process."

Bruce Sham, VP of Sales, FFG

All of Sham's senior sales agents are now in Sandler study groups; the Sandler system, fully incorporated into every aspect of their sales cycle.  "When people ask me why I embraced it, I tell them that after 34 years, I know if I'm not keeping up and changing, I'm going to be out of business.  You always have agents who are going to say, this is how I've been doing things for years, and I'm not changing; but I think for those of us who have been in the business for a long period of time, we're sort of getting used to the idea of, 'if it's not broke, break it.'"

Likewise, Michael  Vesuvio General Agent at Emerald Financial Resources feels that the institutionalization of Sandler is a wonderful thing for MassMutual and his agents.  "With MassMutual on board, it really helps because everybody is getting it - we're now speaking the same language."  With many of his agents in attendance at Bridgewater, Vesuvio stressed the importance of putting time into learning Sandler's system.  "Practice makes perfect," he said.  "It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to learn and stick to this system, but we're now starting to see the metamorphosis of our agents.  We're getting great feedback as a result, and I know it will bring us to the next level."