Bill James – “More Business – Right Now!”

Having achieved his B.Com with a double major in marketing and personnel Bill started a long and successful career as a sale's professional. Continued targeted industry specific education has been ongoing and constitutes a regular part of annual planning.  He is currently Senior VP National and an active member of the Professional Advisors Association and the Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand.

The early years included cars, advertising and door-to-door sales. Moving into finance, a short promotion rich stay with AGC was followed by National New Business Manager at Nathan Finance and the position of Finance Manager for Nissan New Zealand. Here he created the first discounted hire purchase rates from car yards and instigated non-recourse finance for the first time as a result of reducing repossessions to zero.

Tempted into the corporate world at South Pacific Securities (part of McConnell Dowell) as Assistant to the GM he implemented a complete e-based sales program a decade before it was the norm. The first of five redundancies occurred on Christmas Eve three months later. He had a new job within a day as National Sales Manager (and later Operations Manager) for Multicorp Insurances at age 26. Here he ran all departments, negotiated multi million dollar contracts and helped create new records in sales.

More redundancies followed the 1987 crash and saw Bill thrown into survival mode for a number of years including (but not exclusively):

• Top sales advisor for National Insurance.
• Assistant to the GM of National Pacific Securities
• Contract financial controller for The Giltrap Motor group - South Auckland division (5 dealerships) and created the first positive monthly results in years.

Becoming the branch manager of a branch of the PSIS Bill quadrupled the size of the branch in 4 years with no money spent on advertising – word of mouth and customer service only. In the final year the annual target set 1st April was achieved by the 23rd May.

In 1991 Prudential Assurance recruited Bill and he became their “Rookie of the Year” achieving 430% of his initial target. In an industry that gives prizes out if 50 new clients can be gained he regularly created over 200 new clients a year and continued to win sales prizes on a regular basis.

Bill has been training for 18 years and founded the Inspired Learning Systems Brand.

An internationally recognized prize winning speaker (and current President of the National Speakers Association for Auckland) and facilitator, Bill has proven his referral marketing ideas across a wide range of industries while specialising in the service industries, especially finance an insurance. He now speaks, trains and facilitates to a variety of companies, assisting in innovative and incredibly effective new business generation tools and systems.

With the catch cry “More Business – Right Now” he has created many success stories for clients often increasing new business generation results by over 300%.

His experience now sees him in demand within the training industry, often being asked to consult and deliver to sales training organisations, replacing their existing delivery with his in a bid to increase the quality of their delivery to clients.

Some of the many clients that have gained from Bill’s input include:

Fidelity Life Insurance Sovereign Assurance AXA AMP The Professional Advisors Association Many insurance producer groups such as Swain Woodham, Abbots, Planet, The National Partnership, and others. ANZ Bank Group National Bank Visique Optometry The Self Storage Association. NZ Meat Workers Association Roost Mortgages

Mike Pero Mortgages Adam Parore Mortgages Humes Stresscrete Work4u Laminex Group The Royal NZ Navy The Royal NZ Airforce New Zealand Home Loans FCM Travel First Travel Group Kip McGrath Learning

Ecotec Franchise Group ORIX Lease Zeald RE/MAX Real Estate Group Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand Sales and Marketing Institute NZ Institute of Management TIME conference Markham’s Chartered Accountants Hayes Knight CA RSM Prince CA UHY Haines Norton Foundation for Youth Development