Essential Sales, Client and Soft Skills for a Hard Market

This session overviews the best practice methodologies and skills that are particularly important in hard market conditions and that create the client and market relationships to enable the effective delivery of trading strategies. The skills and methodologies are equally as valid to brokers and insurers, or anyone who interacts with clients or prospects.

• The key pre-requisites to delivering effective hard market trading strategies – client intimacy, moving the conversation away from price, Client trust, market knowledge and relationships
• How to achieve these through consultative selling approach – solution provider and trusted adviser status
• Overview all stages of the consultative selling approach
• Key soft skills within the consultative selling framework – include effective questioning and active listening, and SPIN sales questions

Nick offers a unique combination of skills in the UK insurance training sector – an industry sales specialist and a professional coach and trainer. Nick is an Economics graduate with over 25 years corporate insurance broking experience.

He was a highly successful sales producer in the UK broking market before progressing into regional and then national sales leadership roles. As National Development Director at HSBC, Nick was one of only 40 people from a global workforce of 265,000 selected as part of the STARS programme to recognise exceptional performance. He is a highly trained consultative sales specialist, and his experience includes a secondment with a major management consultant to design a best practice sales process.

In the mid-2000s, Nick developed a chronic health condition; his journey to recovery fostered a new range of interests, and a passion for health, and performance. He studied widely, qualifying as a Master Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), obtaining a Diploma in Life Coaching, before going on to study Corporate/Business Coaching with The Coaching Academy. Nick is also a qualified Holistic Lifestyle Coach and Advanced Exercise Coach.

In the last two years Nick has worked in a self-employed capacity in training, coaching, and consulting. He works with a specialist adviser in Insurance sector M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions), and through Nick Thomas & Associates.

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