Respect Your Prospects

[CN1]

Scott - This topic of conversation follows a consistent thread of yours. Would you be so bold as to reveal your goal? Are you enjoying the fray or are you selling something?

[CN1]

I take my question back, Scott. I just looked over your website.

[scott]

Volstrike3 asked what I would tell a new producer given my admonitions against cold calling. The argument is that a new person's primary tool almost has to be the cold call. Few regular readers will be surprised that I disagree.

Let's assume a new producer, 25 years old, commercial lines, small agency "" 5 producers and support staff. Small town "" area population @ 250,000. I assume someone is teaching him the technical aspects of insurance.

Here are my suggestions for the young producer:

--You are in the marketing business. You must continually find ways to market yourself.

--Your marketing efforts must be aimed at showing and proving value to your prospect and client. People buy because of the perception of value. They decide your value and that of the insurance you are selling.

--Focus on building relationships. If you are new to the area, team with a senior person who can introduce you to civic leaders, attorneys, accountants, and business advisors. Join Rotary or Kiwanis to meet people. Attend chamber meetings. Collect people.

--Be a person of interest. Have command of the language. Be well read and knowledgeable in current events. Ask provocative questions.

--Leverage your relationships into referrals. Use your relationships to lead you to others. "Bill, I'm glad you found the article I sent you interesting. By the way, Tom Smith is in your firm. I haven't met him. Can I use your name? I'd like to invite him to coffee "" why don't you join us?"

[volstrike3]

Scott,

Your points are valid and your suggestions are useful. Following that path would lead to success eventually. However, producers need to write business in order to have a job. You cannot spend all of your time writing articles, going to civic functions/club meetings, developing referral sources and waiting for the phone to ring. I work with a lot of CPA's and civic leaders, it takes 2-3 years until they are going to be comfortable referring business to you. Showing up to a few meetings will not get you business. No CPA in their right mind is going to refer their best clients to a insurance producer with 6 months of experience. Most will wait to see if you stick around for a few years before they are willing to introduce you to their clients. How many financial advisors, insurance and mortgage guys have you seen come and go from your organizations?

Your an insurance consultant, would you let your clients place business with a 25 year old new producer? I doubt you would.

Cold calling and competing on price is not ideal but it is where almost everyone starts. It is something you need to do to pay the bills while you are improving your knowlegde, sales skills, referral sources and book of business.

[etimer]

Even if you do things like, hang your hat with CPA's you may not get business from them. For 18 years, my wife worked at a CPA firm, the second largest located in the city of our State Capitol. I would go in and do presentations to the CPA's, brought in guests that did presentations, (some of the presentations even gave CPE credits) never did I get any referrals. I did get a bunch of CPA's as clients but they didn't refer their clients. All referrals went to a very, very large agency that was owned by a college friend of the PIC. I did local radio talk shows and local TV. None of those avenues were proactive in getting sales. Waiting for the phone to ring is nothing more than an order taker and your pay should reflect it.

I don't know about you but living in a city takes money, a lot of it and the luxury of waiting for business to come to us just isn't a luxury we can afford.

I've been thinking about this entire prospecting and using the phone. Then it came to me. It really isn't different than dating.

From a male perspective dates don't usually come looking for you. If you go to a club and want to dance, you have the choice of sitting, not asking anyone to dance or you go out and find someone that will dance with you. I never understood what the guys that just stood around were waiting for, ask someone to dance have some fun.

Prospecting is the same way. If it didn't work we would all be sitting without business because people would hate us so much. The reality is that if you have a good personality, people will enjoy talking with you. You may not get their business but at least you met someone new.

Just as dating and the club scene, some people are not good at it. Some people don't want to be approached and some people want to be approached. If everyone stood there waiting for the other person to come to them......nothing would ever happen.

It's just the way the world has been and probably the way the world will be tomorrow. Rejection is part of sales and some people can't stand rejection and fall out of the sales job. Nobody cherishes rejection. Would it be a wonderful world if everyone came to me and I never had to face rejection? The answer is yes.

Since 1982 I've used the phone in the sales process and it just isn't my experience that people hate talking with me. But heck there are people that just hate life, let alone talking with me and that will never change. Possibliy they are the same people that sat around not dancing.

Scott,

Your points are valid and your suggestions are useful. Following that path would lead to success eventually. However, producers need to write business in order to have a job. You cannot spend all of your time writing articles, going to civic functions/club meetings, developing referral sources and waiting for the phone to ring. I work with a lot of CPA's and civic leaders, it takes 2-3 years until they are going to be comfortable referring business to you. Showing up to a few meetings will not get you business. No CPA in their right mind is going to refer their best clients to a insurance producer with 6 months of experience. Most will wait to see if you stick around for a few years before they are willing to introduce you to their clients. How many financial advisors, insurance and mortgage guys have you seen come and go from your organizations?

Your an insurance consultant, would you let your clients place business with a 25 year old new producer? I doubt you would.

Cold calling and competing on price is not ideal but it is where almost everyone starts. It is something you need to do to pay the bills while you are improving your knowlegde, sales skills, referral sources and book of business.

[scott]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses.

We have reached a place where we are not going to influence the other. The discussion is helpful. I have received many private emails - agreeing and disagreeing.

It is healthy to talk about these issues. The writers I heard from almost all said that they were seeing parts to the discussion that they had not considered themselves.

What more could we ask?

[darnovak]

I thought there was legislation passed several years ago creating the "NO CALL" list. You "cold call" someone on that list (without their written permission and/or a current business relationship) and you may be subject to fines, etc. Or are the legislation and the list both myths? If they do exist, "Cold Calling" was effectively outlawed. So will those of you making solicitations over the telephone without a current business relationship and/or the written permission of the "callee" please explain how you ethically and legally circumvent the "no call" legislation? Just curious.......

[etimer]

The do not call list is not a myth. Although if you want, you can call your State AG office and discuss the merit of such a list. If your State is like mine you will find two things:

1. There is very minimal, if ever, civil proceedings in such matters.
2. After the initial list was built, it is not growing in demand.

Also in our State there is not a do not call list for business. When the idea of a do not call list was brought up there was a flurry of complaints from a broad range of businesses. Businesses from roofer, to siding, CPA Society's, banking, insurance, etc. complained of the $$$ burden of such a law.

If someone wants to cold call individuals, you buy a list from the State. The list has been scrubbed of do not call people.

In our State, if your client is on a do not call list, you as the agent hasn't talked with them in the past 12 months, legally you are not allowed to call them. In our State law a business relationship definition is not open ended and has the 12 month rule. Heck there are people I sold life insurance to 3 years ago, I have no reason to call them but legally, if they are on that list I can not call them.

It's OK though, as my friend says, "You get the government you deserve." You want to be protected from the world, you will pay for it. The government is about to require each and every ISP to keep all personal information on everyone with an ISP address. The data retention requirements sit within the Safety Act introduced by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican.

So we once had a society that we as individuals had the freedom to say yes or no, leave me alone but now the government has those reigns. Throughout history what have governments always wanted? They have always thirsted for power. The wanting for and the growth of power, runs deep in current governments and all the way back to the Egyptian rulers.

There was a time people relied on government to do things they could not do for themselves, such as declare war and protect us from invaders. We are now cower to government like sheep to protect us from a ringing telephone. Meanwhile we have gangs like MS 13 growing in intensity all around us. It is estimated there are over 10,000 active MS 13 gang members. That should scare and worry you more than any darn ringing telephone.

So just keep giving up your will to the government and one day you will have no will outside of what the government gives to you.

In the USA Americans have become soft in the belly and expect others to do for them. Even physically we are becoming weak. You have obese young people that can't even walk a mile without major fatigue. Yet, we debate the terrible problem of a telephone call. Funny how governments start strong, have good intentions, its citizens engage in growing commerce but eventually there comes the segment of society that lives off of what the previous generations built. Then the end begins. It is weird how history truly does repeat itself. Odd very odd.

To answer your question. Yes you can call people that are not on the do not call list that is provided by your State government. Contrary to the media hype, the percentage of people not on the list is greater than those on the list. I always find it interesting how the media presents something, example: "Nearly four in ten Missouri residents placed their names on the statewide "do not call." Pose that same sentence this way, only 40 percnt of residents have signed up for the do not call list and 60 percent have decided to not sign up for the list. The fist sentence from a newspaper trys to make the 40% sound like a larger number than 60%.

Again as I said before it is all part of the fear mongering. Ah from a book that was required reading when I was in school: "Through "doublethink," people consciously accept anything the Party tells them, even if it contradicts something they already know."

I thought there was legislation passed several years ago creating the "NO CALL" list. You "cold call" someone on that list (without their written permission and/or a current business relationship) and you may be subject to fines, etc. Or are the legislation and the list both myths? If they do exist, "Cold Calling" was effectively outlawed. So will those of you making solicitations over the telephone without a current business relationship and/or the written permission of the "callee" please explain how you ethically and legally circumvent the "no call" legislation? Just curious.......

[etimer]

And of course this is an obvious extension to our never ending appetite for protection:

"Miriam Fisch is tired of having to watch advertisements before the feature film at her local movie theater.1 She is not the only one.2 Ms. Fisch and her lawyer have brought a class-action lawsuit in Illinois against Loews Cineplex Entertainment Group on behalf of all of the movie theater's patrons.3 The complaint alleges fraud by misrepresentation, fraud by omission, and a breach of contract claim.4 Ms. Fisch alleges that beginning the commercials at the time listed as the start of the feature film, stole time from her and other movie goers and is a deceptive business practice that forced her to view unwanted advertisements.5 The suit prays for damages of up to $75 per plaintiff and an injunction ordering Loews Cineplex to announce the official start time of the actual feature film.6"

Hm? When I find those TV advertisers are an invasion into my space, where is that phone book? Time to have a suit filed against them, or those bill board signs, or those well you fill in the blanks.

Funy though, the politicians, the same ones that made the Do Not Call laws, excempted themselves from the law. Ah it would be so nice be part of the bourgeoisie class and not the retrograde class.

And now I must go and make a living. To bad for society....I must actually sell something to somebody.

[darnovak]

Hey "etimer", thanks for the info. I remember reading several articles a few years ago that mentioned fines and court awards related to "no call" violations the most severe cases involved businesses that had used automated calling systems. regards, Dar Novak AAI