When it comes to prospecting, every agent has done his or her fair share cold calling on the phone, the White Pages in hand, furiously 'dialing for dollars.' Godwin & Johnson, an agency in Oak Lawn, IL, solved this problem by diving into a pool of local talent to implement what the agency calls the most important element in its Personal Lines marketing program.
WHAT THEY DO
Under the producers' supervision, a part-time staff of four high school juniors (11th graders) works for two hours per evening Monday through Thursday. They develop 80 to 100 X-dates per evening, which is a lot for a relatively small cash outlay.
The agency learned through trial and error what type of person was best suited to the job. Says Bob Godwin, agency principal, 'We use four high school girls, preferably juniors and we use only A and B students. We pay them $4 per hour as independent contractors, and each girl obtains an average of 20 X-dates per night.' Why the bias toward high school girls? 'Young men didn't work out because they were too combative. Older persons didn't fit in because the pay was insufficient.' Thus, responsible high school females proved to be just the ticket. The girls appear to handle the 'mentally brutal' work that cold calling can be. 'They just keep shaking off the abuse and forging ahead,' says principal Ron Johnson. Another bonus: 'They also don't expect a large income,' he says.
Working from the White Pages in the local phone book, the girls obtain X-dates, recontact prospects close to renewal time, and gather information, which the producers then use to prepare quotes. Producers write about 110 applications per month, thanks to this routine (and averaged 150 to 200 applications per month in the early years of the program).
The girls stay with the agency an average of four months. This may seem like a short time-span, but when you consider the depths of this pool of talent, it's fairly easy to replace them. After all, in a teenager's eyes, phone work at $4 an hour stacks up pretty well against flipping burgers at the local fast-food place for $3.35! Have you waded into your own pool of local talent? A nearby high school could be chock-full of fledgling selling stars!