DO YOU ‘THROW AWAY’ TOO MANY REFERRALS?
by Gil Simonds
How about this story? Has this ever happened to you?
A producer I was working with was ecstatic one hot summer day because he had just obtained 10 referrals from a client. I was excited too, and the producer began working those new referrals right away.
In tracking the success of those 10 referrals, the producer wrote only one. Is that good or just normal? Let’s just say that both of us felt it should have been better. An analysis led to these results:
- Two were not reachable; the producer never connected with the decision-maker;
- Two were messy businesses that the producer realized would be declined if submitted;
- Three had strong to severe loss issues;
- One failed to provide all the needed information;
- One was presented, but not sold;
- One was sold.
Could the producer have avoided this one-out-of-ten scenario? The first evaluation was there were only three referrals that the producer was either able to, or wanted to, quote. Within this group, he was really one for three!
However, what about the rest of the referrals – the ones not quoted? In our analysis, many of those were preventable – which means that he didn’t end up with 70% being “thrown away”.
The two that the producer was unable to reach were problems based on the “introduction” he got from his client to them. {Note: When you obtain a referral, you do ask for an introduction, don’t you?} Because the person calling their customer (our prospect) from the business wasn’t someone they knew, the call carried little weight. It wasn’t a powerful introduction – it wasn’t even lukewarm! – so it’s not surprising that the producer couldn’t get an appointment following this call.
The five that were either messy businesses or had heavy losses weren’t quality referrals. Was this the luck of the draw that the producer accepted this when he asked for referrals, or could he have prevented those “throw-aways,” as well? The next article in this series will discuss this question and offer a solution.
Gil Simonds, CPCU, is president of Total Management Resources (Atlanta, GA) an agency sales and management consulting firm. You can contact him at (404) 250-9007, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.totalmanagementresources.com.