Our Secret
Throughout the course of the day our phones ring a lot with people asking us, "What makes you guys so different?"
We have no problem sharing the methodology to our madness. It is pretty simple; we walk the walk to the best of our ability. We are confident enough in our business acumen we don't mind sharing. We have broken our practice down into a handful of metrics that are pretty good indicators of success in our marketing campaigns. We do our best to maximize consistency in hitting these core metrics and the rest will follow. Let's dig a little deeper.
Reality: How good is your team? How good could they be? It is more important to be honest with you than blow smoke at you. If you can't sell it we probably can't either. However, if you are selling and are simply looking to amp up your activity level than we may have a match. It is important that there are clear goals and expectations from the beginning. We offer conference calls to our clients so they can meet some of the members of their team. This is where we learn about our client, openings, handling reluctance, product specifics, live call phone numbers, etc...This is also why we transfer live calls and set up face to face appointments. You are the expert. You can tell a hot one in five minutes. If you can't by now your chances of success in the business are nominal.
Total Activity: We think the rule of thumb for success is three appointments a day. If this were consistently the number it would equal fifteen for the business week and sixty a month if you were in perfect attendance. How many of closes do you need to become profitable? 10% close ratio on the three per day rule means six closes per month. If you multiply this number, times you average commission per sale, it will estimate your revenue. This might not excite you if you are a home and auto insurance professional but if you are a life, annuity or employee benefits producer the bells should be ringing. Our rule of thumb is you need to average around $1,000 per commission or this won't be a match.
Total Calls: Look at your phone bill! Most phone bills are itemized now. Look at your extension and see how much actual client and prospect talk time is occurring on your line. You would be surprised that it is probably less than you imagined. The best case scenario is that most all of your time is taking inbound calls of people who are filling out applications. In reality, most sales professionals are, or should be, making outbound calls on a methodic and consistent basis. Our rule of thumb is 1-100. This means one genuine prospect per 100 attempts. If someone is telling you they are better than that have them contact us for a job interview. Note we said attempts and not calls? You need to eliminate ringing phones and answering machines. If you aren't using some form of predictive dialing you are bringing your attempts way down. If you hit half of this number of calls it would be two and a half new people a week or ten in a month. If you did not get enough appointments at the end of the month this would be the very first statistic to be reviewed.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management. I am not talking about the old Franklin Planner or some updated digital version of the like. Not trying to sound like a computer geek either but the truth is what is important about your client is a compilation of information that needs to immediately be at the ready from anywhere at any time. Most client or prospect information itself usually boils down to net worth, amount of business they have with you, urgency of the next transaction and satisfaction level. The polarity here is you want to spend your time with high net worth clients who are doing another transaction with you and when they are not they are telling their friends what a great professional you are. Unfortunately, most sales folks get bogged down with the opposite in service work that can't be delegated, chasing the prospect they always wanted and waiting on phone calls and commission checks. If you don't understand the power of a CRM you are working too hard. There are several on the market. Our product is free. Yup, we use it every day. It is streamlined, open sourced, flexible and scalable.
Dispositions: What is important about most prospecting calls is how they end; hot, warm or cold. A (hot) disposition is a face to face appointments or a live transferred call. An appointment is no different than going to the doctor or the dentist. You both know why you are there, when you are to be there and the subject matter of your presence. A live transferred call is someone who wants to talk to you now. A (warm) disposition is what we call tire kickers. These are the people that want email, letterhead, fax, etc...They won't commit to a face to face appointment or a live transferred call. A handful of these folks over the course of the year will probably verify. The (cold) dispositions does not matter why; not interested, working with someone else, fax, disconnect, etc...
* Always follow up with a certified mail piece before your call. Make it a simple hand signed note on your letter head that reminds them you spoke to them earlier in the week, give them a personal reference in the community, 800 number, link to your site and tell them you will be calling them this week. Fed Ex and UPS are nice but not necessary. A certified mail piece costs about $1.
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