Sales Center - Part 1

The following section is a varied and important one to a profitable independent agency. In it, you will learn the basis of the Sales Center concept and how Sales Centers have brought increased profitability, retention, and total-account sales into many agencies.

Many agencies establish a Sales Center with their existing personnel, or hire an additional administrative or customer service person to take over additional duties. Others find that the increased efficiency of a Sales Center allows them to expand their marketing efforts, and they hire an in-house or outside telemarketing staff to keep leads coming in to producers.

Your options will be covered in this section. Included are materials on:

• Sales Center Concept
• Sales Center Structure
• Sales Center Expectations
• Hiring a Sales Center Staff
• Sales Center Coordinator
• Telemarketers
• Training: Successful Sales Techniques
• Monitoring
• Expanding Your Marketing Efforts

THE SALES CENTER CONCEPT

The Sales Center, in concept, is quite simple: The duties that each staff member performs should be in concert with his or her strengths, level of expertise, role in the agency, and compensation.

It's not a radical concept-but the truth is that, in many agencies, most personnel are faced with tasks that are better performed by someone else. For example, producers are hired to sell, but most find themselves setting appointments, obtaining X-dates, handling telephone confirmations, and processing a lot of paperwork that, while necessary, is extraneous to the actual process of selling.

The Sales Center is a form of organization designed to improve your agency's sales productivity, improve retention, and increase total-account sales. The successful Sales Center accomplishes this in the following ways:

• Entry-level or clerical staff perform the most routine, repetitive paperwork tasks.
• CSRs (and/or telemarketers) free producers from service work, prospecting, qualifying prospects, initial contacts (X-dates, appointments) -- and, in some agencies, handle simple sales that may include Personal Lines, cross-sales, or Term Life conversions. These employees are now called Sales Center Assistants, and are managed by a Sales Center Coordinator.
• Producers devote their time and attention to what is their strength: selling. They keep appointments, complete applications, prepare surveys, compile and deliver proposals, and collect the premiums.
• Agency management focuses the Sales Center effort toward increased profitability-by establishing methods of qualifying buyers in advance of producer contact, and identifying and packaging coverages the agency wants to sell.

How does a Sales Center improve productivity? Producers are freed to sell;

CSRs are freed to provide quality customer service and pursue total account sales. The benefits you'll see include:

• Existing accounts become more profitable, because total account sales spring from routine customer service.
• Retention is improved, because, as statistics prove, a client with two or three (or more) policies is much more likely to stay with your agency than a one-policy client.
• Stronger control is placed on sales management, since the Sales Center enables your sales manager to monitor the activity of producers and CSRs by providing a systematic tracking of the number of X-dates obtained and appointments, calls, and sales made.
• A high-performance sales program is fostered by the sense of teamwork that comes from a Sales Center.
• Target marketing is easier, because the Sales Center organizes your efforts. Planning is facilitated, which usually results in improved carrier relationships.
• Your agency's value increases, because you now have an efficient, centralized sales organization.
• Your sales staff's morale is uplifted by the opportunity to reach more people, sell and service more effectively-thus increasing their income
• and delegate some of their paperwork to entry-level or clerical staff.

THE SALES CENTER STRUCTURE

YOUR DECISION

There are several approaches to establishing a Sales Center. All of the following approaches are in operation nationwide.

• An in-house salesperson can perform all the functions. This person should not handle call-in business or referrals, which take time away from prospecting and selling.
• You can hire a full-time Sales Center Coordinator to handle all of the functions, including obtaining the information to quote. This is a two-call process allowing the producer to call back to present and sell a recommended insurance program.
• Many agencies require Customer Service Representatives to obtain X-dates, usually a certain number per week-from clients and prospects, on a bonus system. A few CSRs have entered into commission arrangements on first-year sales.
• For prospecting, night calls can be very effective. Some agencies pay regular employees a bonus, or hire telemarketers to obtain X-dates and set appointments during the evening hours.
• Selling Personal Lines policy upgrades and collected coverage such as Accident & Sickness, Personal Umbrella, and Mortgage Protection through the mail has proved to be effective, though it involves a longer time frame than telemarketing.

Whichever methods you choose, keep in mind that your Sales Center should be an integrated system, requiring all parts to be working efficiently to succeed. The individual chosen to be Coordinator will manage the process and determine its success. A commitment must be made by the agency owner to support the Coordinator and to become actively involved in the evolution of the Center.

Once the Sales Center process has been decided, the decision must be communicated to all employees.

Communicate before Making the Transition

You, as the agency principal, make the decision to establish the Sales Center as the coordination hub for your sales and marketing program-this is not the time to meet with employees for a group decision. But you must solicit feedback from all employees in your agency-particularly producers-in setting up the Center and tailoring the concept to the particular needs of your agency.

You should hold one or more serious meetings with all your agency personnel or with smaller groups to acknowledge the new discipline required by the system and emphasize the rewards that will accrue to everyone. These meetings are not meant just to "keep the troops under control"; you need the feedback, aid, and active cooperation of everyone in your office to make the Sales Center function.

All members of your agency, from office workers and secretaries to producers and managers, must clearly understand the goals, functions, and processes of the Sales Center. Clearly explain the need for such a change in the managing of the agency.

All employees must understand the new lines of communication and new forms of coordination essential to making the Sales Center concept work. And, equally important, employees should realize the rewards that will come from the new Sales Center; as the agency becomes more profitable, everyone in the agency makes more money.

Once you've defined your initial objectives and have discussed the Sales Center with your staff, you're ready to analyze what you can expect to accomplish with the Sales Center.

SALES CENTER EXPECTATIONS

The Sales Center is a proven organizational form that must be established along specific, well thought-out guidelines. But you can modify it in a variety of ways to fit the unique needs of your agency, whether large or small. This system can be structured to minimize the weaknesses and capitalize on the strengths of your agency.

To establish a Sales Center, you need two things: a complete understanding of the structure of such a center, and an understanding of your own objectives, so that you can tailor your own center to your needs.

Who Is Your Sales Manager?

Better management-that's what the Sales Center provides for you, and this means greater profits as well. In most agencies, many factors manage the sales process: principals, producers, clients, carriers. But your sales manager should be your Sales Center, which, through target marketing, lets you control:

• the types of accounts your producers see
• the commission per account that you want to see
• the "hit ratio" of the accounts
• your service costs (considerably reduced)
• your acquisition costs for each account
• the selling process
• the flow of information on each account
• the production time for handling each account
• the type of prospect you want

This enables you to analyze many other factors in the selling process, such as:

• the expertise within your agency
• the geography and selling territory for your agency
• prospect type availability
• minimum commission standards
• prospect visibility
• the desirability of accounts as viewed by competitors
• income vs. service costs of accounts
• agency profitability standards and goals

With the Sales Center managing your sales and marketing efforts, you can achieve organization, control, and the means to analyze your sales results.

Reasons for Increased Results

The Sales Center operates on two "laws."

• THE LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS. The larger the number of homogeneous units examined, the greater the predictability of events and outcomes within those units. The Sales Center identifies, organizes, and makes available to producers market units that are alike. The coordination of producer time results in each producer being able to see many more prospects per week than is possible at present.
• THE LAW OF MARGINAL RETURNS. Once your income equals the expenses and liability reduction needs of your agency-meeting your break-even point -- the dollars you spend will bring in income at a rate faster than expenses increase. This means that each new dollar of income contains proportionately more profit.

It's helpful to take a realistic look at the possibilities of a Sales Center operation. Recent studies of calls made during normal business hours to existing clients yielded the following results:

• Sales Center staff obtaining X-dates reached clients 61% of the time.
• On average, staff successfully secured X-dates 67% of the time.
• Following up for quote information produced a 90% success ratio.
• When following up close to expiration, producers reached the decision maker 85% of the time on the first call. The producers achieved this high ratio by noting the time of the previous call and an alternative work number.
• Closing figures varied from 22% to 35%, depending on a producer's sales ability and the competitiveness of rates and coverage in a particular area.

How soon is it reasonable to expect results from a Sales Center? The standard time frame cited is six months-but in some cases, with a sufficient prospect file, word processing capability, adequate telephone system, and proper management, results have been obtained in three or four weeks. Activity is the key: The more calls made, the faster the X-date bank grows; the more X-dates come out of suspense, the more appointments made, and, finally, the greater number of sales made.

Now that you have an understanding of the Sales Center concept, structure, and results, the next challenge you face is in hiring individuals (and/or training existing staff) for the duties needed to make the Sales Center viable in your agency.

HIRING SALES CENTER STAFF

Once you choose to establish a Sales Center, look toward your staffing needs first. You'll need a Sales Center Coordinator, who will oversee the operation, and you'll need people to fill the increased duties previously mentioned: X-dating, cross-selling, appointment-setting. Whom you need to hire depends largely on whom you already have working for you.

Fundamentally, you can take two approaches:

• Offer your existing CSRs and clerical employees the chance to become Sales Center assistants. If these individuals are career-oriented, they may be very excited by the opportunities that this career path offers them. (And you may promote an especially sales-oriented CSR to the position of Sales Center Coordinator.)

You'll want to analyze their current positions to determine how they can free up enough time for their increased duties, determine how they can get the education they need to perform these tasks, and design compensation incentives that encourage them to be successful at X-dating, appointment-setting, cross-selling, and so on.

• Hire telemarketing personnel to take over just the duties of X-dating and appointment setting, and encourage your customer service and clerical staff to support the Sales Center effort by doing their best in the positions they already occupy.

Some agencies in this situation find that it's best to leave cross-sales and total account selling to producers; others make these sales a function of excellent customer service. Whichever you choose, you can make it work, depending upon your staff. (However, we stress that these are not duties a telemarketer should perform. Telemarketers are responsible for the initial contact, but do not handle insurance matters.)

In this section, you'll find tools that will help you hire the staff you need to go with either option. First, you'll find out how to hire a Sales Center Coordinator, who is needed with either option to schedule work, oversee progress, facilitate communication between producers and the Sales Center staff, and monitor the Sales Center's efforts. And later, you'll find materials that will help you hire telemarketers, if you choose to do so.

HIRING THE SALES CENTER COORDINATOR

The Sales Center Coordinator is the heart of the Sales Center. Selecting the right person for this position is crucial to your success. It need not be a full-time position; the time required will depend on the functions performed in your agency and the number of producers who will be involved. You may hire someone new for this position or promote one of your Customer Service Representatives to Sales Center Coordinator.

The Sales Center Coordinator's objectives are to:

• Coordinate sales and selling functions
• Prospect for new business X-date listings
• Handle new business appointments scheduling
• Schedule service appointments
• Act as a communication link for producers, CSRs, telemarketers

The Sales Center Coordinator must locate leads, secure X-dates, maintain the agency's suspense system, monitor results, and report to the sales manager. He or she might also be responsible for creating new sales letters, coordinating advertising activities, gathering statistical data to measure performance, obtaining quote information, and managing sales.

This is a people position. The person you choose will handle heavy client and prospect contact as well as serve as the communication link between CSRs, producers, and other agency personnel. He or she must have excellent interpersonal skills, be outgoing and charismatic, be self-motivated and disciplined, and possess developed sales skills. Previous sales experience is important.

COORDINATOR'S SKILLS

Your new Sales Center Coordinator must have several types of skills to know how to do this job. Training for the position should include at least these areas:

• Telephone techniques: As previously stated, your Sales Center Coordinator should already possess basic telephone skills, but your training should provide pointers to help him or her sharpen them.
• Agency service center procedures: The objective here is to enhance communications with the other agency employees and give the Sales Center Coordinator an idea as to how the whole agency works together.
• Sales Center procedures: To maximize efficiency and prevent modifications of the Center to suit the Sales Center Coordinator's personality, you must make sure the functions are consistent and uniform.
• People interaction: The point here is to let the Sales Center Coordinator know and understand why people do the things they do, particularly as he or she deals with them on the telephone.
• Sales techniques: Your training should teach the Sales Center Coordinator to depersonalize the negative feedback he or she receives, enhancing job performance and success.
• Role-playing: Record the Sales Center Coordinator's telephone presentation and discuss how he or she handles it. This type of attention and review will help the Sales Center Coordinator to understand specifically what you have in mind for telephone presentations and to feel good about what he or she is doing.

Once you establish the days and time for this training process, do not interrupt that schedule. Avoid interruptions! You must train your Sales Center Coordinator as fully and quickly as possible. The position of Sales Center Coordinator is not the place for an untrained amateur.

Since the Sales Center Coordinator spends most of his or her time on the phone, strong communication skills are vital. Here are several suggestions that will help strengthen the Coordinator's skills:

ROLE-PLAYING. 

The most crucial part of the training of your new Sales Center Coordinator revolves around teaching him or her to handle objections that will be encountered while soliciting information and appointments over the telephone. Most of these objections can be anticipated in advance, and the Coordinator's methods of handling them can also be worked out in advance.

Two things should be understood by the Sales Center Coordinator before he or she begins to learn telephone techniques. The first is that every telephone call is an interruption for the individual who answers the phone. The Coordinator needs to develop sensitivity about the interruption process because the other person's mood or attitude over the phone will probably be affected by the activity that the call has interrupted.

Second, the Coordinator must give the prospect a chance to talk, asking questions when necessary and listening carefully, especially for the objections that the individual raises when asked for information. Before the Coordinator can decide how to respond, it is necessary to listen and concentrate.

COMMUNICATION COURSES. 

Communicating is a talent, but also a learned skill. A vast number of courses are available through universities, colleges, correspondence schools, and state and local associations.

WRITING COURSES.

 Your Silver Membership disc contains many letters designed for total account selling. However, your Coordinator want to create additional letters to send to prospects. Writing courses can provide the Coordinator with the tools he or she will need to generate effective letters.

SITTING IN ON SALES CALLS. 

First-hand observation is one of the most effective training methods available. Invite your Sales Center Coordinator to sit in on your producers' sales calls and observe their sales techniques. Then discuss which techniques the Coordinator felt were most effective, and why. This type of direct involvement will build rapport between the Coordinator and the sales staff.

POSITIVE FEEDBACK. 

It is important that you be available to answer your Sales Center Coordinator's questions and offer encouragement. Keep the Coordinator up to date on how you feel he or she is progressing. Discuss reports and any new techniques with which the Coordinator would like to experiment.

Positive feedback is a powerful motivator. When we are told we have done well, we naturally feel proud and seek to maintain that approval. This basic principle of human nature applies no less to the Sales Center Coordinator, and in fact is vital in ensuring a high level of productivity and effort.

In addition to these suggestions, we've provided you with a sample two-week training schedule. Use this schedule as a guide to train your Sales Center Coordinator.

Training Schedule

The following illustrates the type of training schedule you may want to use:

First Week

Day One. Insurance industry training-general industry overview (1 hr) .

Review office procedures and office manual (2 hrs).

Day Two. Review sales techniques.

Role-play telephone techniques (2 hrs).

Day Three. Role-play sales skills and telephone techniques (2 hrs).

Day Four. Role-play (2-3 hrs).

Review any material in the Operators' Guide on profiling prospects/clients.

Day Five. Role-play (2 hrs).

Listen to other people on telephone (3 hrs).

General review of entire week and program.

There should be an ongoing training and educational program consisting of listening to audiotapes, reading material, and visiting on-site prospects with salespeople.

Second Week

Day Six. First day on the telephone (2 hrs.)

Review calls with Sales manager (1 hr.)

Day Seven. Second day on the telephone (3 hrs.)

Review calls with Sales manager (1 hr.)

Computer overview (1 hr.)

Day Eight. Third day on telephone (4 hrs.)

Review calls with Sales Manager (1 hr.)

Computer training (1 hr.)

Day Nine. Fourth day on phone (4 hrs.)

Sale Manager listens to phone calls and critiques (2 hrs.)

Computer training (1 hr.)

Day Ten. Fifth day on phone (4 hrs.)

Sit in on sales calls (2 hrs.)

Review with Sales Manager progress and goals for the next 90 days (1 hr.)

Finish computer training (1 hr).

Grouping Activities

So that the activities of a Sales Center Coordinator can be performed in a cost-effective and efficient manner, activities or procedures should be grouped together and performed at the same time. For example, the Coordinator should enter all prospect names at the same time of the day, print and mail all letters one group at a time, and so on. A block of time during the week should be assigned to each function, to ensure that all steps are followed and nothing slips through the cracks.

While sales prospecting and selling is a relatively simple process, there are many steps to be completed. If any of these steps are skipped or incorrectly done, prospects may be lost. Although operating the Sales Center involves diversified tasks, one quality must not be overlooked when hiring the Coordinator: attention to detail.

Once you have established the goals to be met, they should be communicated in a clearly defined manner to the Sales Center Coordinator. Clear-cut goals will help your Coordinator to be more effective and locate problems. Here are some pointers that should help your Coordinator organize the work flow and use time effectively:

l. Always call for either X-dates or quote information during different hours.

2. Avoid interruptions that break your momentum and distract you from your calling.

3. Separate leads by the time of day they can be reached.

4. Make all established procedures clear to those involved.

5. Avoid leaving your name and number to have someone call you back; instead, ask when they can be reached and offer to call at that time.

6. Set up a file system for X-date tickets in transit (for example, waiting to send a letter, calling next week, logging results, and so on).

7. Determine the number of X-dates that need to be called and by what day.

Set goals as to how many need to be called each day in order to reach a desired income level.

8. Establish a minimum number of X-dates that need to be obtained each day to reach a weekly goal. Strive to exceed this.

9. Keep accurate up-to-date records on results of your calls. Tie these to the producers' results.

10. For each X-date month, create an alphabetical listing (X-date bank results report) and log in your results at the end of each week.

11. Immediately report any problems to management, so that they may be corrected as quickly as possible.

SAMPLE DAILY WORK SCHEDULE

Monday

1. Enter all prospects.

2. Make X-date calls to prospects who were sent an introductory letter on Friday of the previous week.

3. Send application letters on any closed sales.

4. Process checks and give to Customer Service Representative.

Tuesday

1. Make X-date calls.

2. Make survey/profile calls. When surveys are done:

a. complete quotes (this depends on whether it is a Personal Lines or Commercial Lines account), and

b. place on producer's desk.

3. Send application letters on any closed sales.

4. Process checks and give to Customer Service Representative.

Wednesday

1. Check with producer, set up appointments for qualified prospects.

2. Prepare application letters as appropriate.

3. Make X-date calls.

4. Make survey/profile calls.

5. Send appointment letters.

6. Create proposals.

7. Process checks and give to Customer Service Representative.

Thursday

1. Prepare introductory letters.

2. Prepare thank you for X-date letters.

3. Make X-date calls (morning).

4. Make survey/profile calls (morning).

5. Send application letters.

6. Create proposals.

7. Process checks and give to Customer Service Representative.

Friday

1. Send introductory letters (prepared Thursday).

2. Send thank you for X-date letters (prepared Thursday}.

3. Send application letters.

4. Process closed sales.

5. Make X-date calls (those that were not completed).

6. Make survey/profile calls (those that were not completed).

7. Create proposals.

8. Enter prospects/clients back into system, and suspense six months or one year as appropriate.

HIRING TELEMARKETERS

Much has been written about the role of telemarketing in insurance sales. Insurance agents are recognizing the benefits of hiring telemarketers, and this effort can contribute to the expansion of your Sales Center. As you expand your Sales Center efforts, you may find that telemarketers can help you increase your efforts even more, by obtaining X-dates and setting appointments for producers.

It's been proven: In many agencies, telemarketing works-especially when combined with an organized, sophisticated marketing program that has the full support of all agency personnel. In this section, you'll find out about your options when using telemarketing.

THE TELEMARKETER'S ROLE

A true telemarketer differs greatly from any other Sales Center employee. While your Sales Center staff fulfills a variety of different functions in an agency-X-dating, total account selling, appointment setting, customer service-telemarketers stay on the phone, getting X-dates and, in some cases, setting appointments. If any insurance-related question arises, they immediately turn it over to someone else who can answer it, then move on to the next X-dating or appointment-setting call.

TWO OPTIONS AVAILABLE

There are two types of telemarketing operations from which to choose: an in-house setup or an outside service. In an in-house operation, you hire, train, and pay telemarketers to work out of your offices. In an outside service bureau situation, you pay a preestablished fee to a vendor that manages all these functions for you from an off-site location.

Many anxious account executives and sales managers prefer the control that an in-house operation offers, and it's true that telemarketing consultants advise this type of operation for many businesses. But there are insurance agencies that use an outside service with great success. On the other hand, many overzealous service bureau personnel will insist that this is the only professional way to establish a telemarketing campaign. In the real world, each situation has very definite advantages and drawbacks.

OUTSIDE SERVICE BUREAU

Although much of this section will be devoted to establishing an in-house department within your Sales Center (since each area offers different resources in terms of outside service bureaus), here we will turn our attention to evaluating the in-house/outside vendor dilemma.

An outside vendor will generally charge a per-call fee or an hourly rate per telemarketer. The hourly rate is often minimum wage, and sometimes an additional fee is charged for each successful contact (X-date received, appointment set, and so on). To estimate what a per-call fee will total, consider the total number of calls handled and the length of the call. Also, inquire as to whether there are fees for services in addition to the actual calling, such as telephone number look-ups.

ADVANTAGES OF AN OUTSIDE SERVICE BUREAU

When an outside vendor directs your telemarketing campaign, there are numerous advantages that may be critical to your success:

Decreased Costs: Unless your program involves a massive and steady volume of calls (in the range of 100,000 or more per year), you may find it hard to match the price offered by a service bureau. By combining your volume with that of other clients, a bureau can reduce overhead and labor costs and take advantage of tapered telephone rates and volume discounts.

Faster, Easier, Expanded Startup: A good telemarketing vendor has experienced telephone representatives and state-of-the-art telephone equipment already in place, so your program can usually be established quickly and cheaply. And many offer extended business hours, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week (this can be useful when trying to reach clients at home after work, and so on).

Knowledge and Expertise: A good bureau is often run by experienced, capable managers in the telemarketing field. And they often offer experienced telemarketing personnel who are already well versed in the ins and outs of selling by phone. In addition, some bureaus offer their services in creating ads, writing scripts for the telemarketers, and other tips that help you get a good response to your campaign.

Simplified Monitoring and Testing: A service bureau is often the best place to conduct a test of a new program. Advanced testing procedures can help you measure the effectiveness of your ads, scripts, and other aspects of your marketing program. And many vendors pretest a campaign to discern the effectiveness of telemarketing as the marketing method employed.

DRAWBACKS

The following must be carefully weighed when considering any telemarketing service bureau:

Frequent busy signals: Depending upon how many incoming calls you plan to handle, this can be a major disadvantage. Inbound service bureaus are able to provide economical service only by maintaining call patterns that result in many callers receiving busy signals.

Financial Stability: The telephone service center business is a new and sometimes difficult one. Phone companies have been known to shut off a center's phone lines with no warning, resulting in a damaging backlash if any advertising has been placed before the center shutdown.

IN-HOUSE OPERATION

ADVANTAGES OF AN IN-HOUSE OPERATION

Many small businesses prefer to keep their telemarketing operations in-house and, indeed, this type of campaign seems to be a natural extension of any insurance agency's Sales Center function. Running a campaign in your own facility offers several important advantages:

Control: This is the number one advantage of an in-house system. You hire the telemarketers, you train them and write their scripts, and you hear them on the phone presenting your products and services. Thus, you can easily determine the quality of the presentation heard by your clients and prospects.

Database and Co-Worker Accessibility: In an in-house operation, your telemarketers have access to your company records and client files, and other employees serve as a valuable source of information. If a client/prospect who is contacted for an X-date has a question about his or her coverage or another service your agency provides, the appropriate people are there to answer that question right away. You can train your own telemarketers to handle much more complex calls than the average service bureau could handle for you.

Product/Agency Knowledge: Telemarketing is a people profession, and you'll usually get a better performance from people who are loyal to you and your company. You can train your own telemarketers much more extensively on your own products, services, and agency goals.

Experience Accumulation: By establishing your own telemarketing department, you'll be able to accumulate a variety of experience from your operation in a much greater quantity than if you use outside services. This sort of experience will help you evaluate all your marketing efforts and better plan for the years ahead.

DRAWBACKS

There are two major disadvantages to establishing an in-house telemarketing operation versus hiring an outside service bureau:

Unique management problems: Most marketing personnel are not familiar with the types of management problems that occur with telemarketers; often these problems are better handled by techniques familiar to factory supervisors. Telemarketing is labor-intensive, employing people on a part-time basis and often at minimum base wage. An entirely different set of rules and supervisory strategies apply than would apply with agency producers, for example, or customer service people.

High initial costs: Depending on the scope of your operation, an in-house campaign may require tremendous initial capital outlay for office space, desks, phone lines, telephones, computerized equipment, and hiring and training.

There's no easy answer to the in-house/outside service bureau dilemma. Each agency's answer will be different, just as each agency's area provides different resources and prospective insurance consumers. The best advice that can be given when approaching this decision is to assess your needs, goals, and budgetary decisions fully before committing to a program. What type of campaign are you contemplating (and can you afford it)? Be specific about the goals you expect to accomplish, and establish a reasonable time frame within which to assess your results.

Be sure to survey all the resources available to you in your community. Test new programs if possible. Talk to your insurance carriers' representatives for advice, references, and possible sources of funding. And once you've chosen a program, make sure your management gives it all the support it needs to make it effective.

Automated vs. Manual System

If you decide to conduct an in-house telemarketing campaign, the first decision you must make is whether the campaign will be, for the most part, manual or automated. More than any other factor, this decision will greatly affect your budgeting, hiring, training, and monitoring efforts.

Automated Telemarketing Systems. There is currently on the market telemarketing software that will perform almost every function for your telemarketers. Simpler systems store prospecting information; more complex programs offer you the chance to track every telephone call from the first dial to the sale. You can monitor how many times your telemarketer dialed, connected, and spoke with the contact, and then track how long it took to make the appointment and whether or not a sale was made. This type of accountability allows you to determine who your best telemarketers and producers are, whether certain employees have more success with certain types of prospects, and so on.

Some software offers features such as au autodialing and automated scripts. Autodialing allows you to activate the computer to dial a list of numbers automatically: When one number is busy or no one answers, the computer hangs up and goes to the next on the list until it gets an answer. An automated script program allows the script to appear on the screen and, as your telemarketer encounters various objections, he or she can refer to the automated script to offer answers to those specific objections.

These are only a few of the many features in telemarketing software. For an idea of what else is available, just leaf through the latest issue of TELEMARKETING magazine.

A fully automated telemarketing campaign may be expensive initially, but you may recover your costs more quickly because of increased productivity, decreased training time, decreased staffing needs, and more efficient monitoring. On the other hand, your system may require extensive set-up and training time. Be sure to examine your needs and budgets in detail; this is an important decision. Each agency is different. You need to analyze your budget constraints and find what works for you. In the following pages, we will be largely addressing manual systems, involving training methods, monitoring strategies, sample scripts, and other tips you'll need should you decide not to invest in a fully automated system just yet. However, should you decide on an automated system, you can input these scripts and forms into that program.

DETERMINING TELEMARKETING NEEDS, COSTS

If you've decided to establish an in-house telemarketing program to aid your Sales Center, how do you determine how many telemarketers you'll need? The answer may range from zero to a dozen or more.

Zero? Yes, many businesses, and several insurance agents we interviewed, are conducting telemarketing for X-dates and appointment-setting without hiring any new employees. They are using automated telephone devices that dial either preprogrammed or randomly selected phone numbers (within a certain area), play a prerecorded message asking for an X-date or appointment, and then allow a slot of time on a tape for the client or prospect to leave a message.

Although at first thought, this may seem bothersome or ludicrous, in some cases these systems do work. One agent with whom we spoke had to disconnect such a machine after a few weeks because he had more Auto X-dates than his staff could handle.

But should you choose the more conventional approach and decide to hire human telemarketers to work in your Sales Center, here's one way you can calculate how many people you will need:

First, determine the size of your marketplace. For example, say you want to contact 50,000 clients or prospects. Now, figure that of the 260 average telemarketer's working days, 30 are taken off for sickness, vacation, or training. This leaves 230 actual working days. Telemarketers usually spend about six hours on the phone each day, which amounts to about 1,400 hours per telemarketer per year.

The average telemarketer can make approximately 15 contacts with decision-makers every hour, which equals about 21,000 contacts per year, per telemarketer. So to reach 50,000 contacts in one year, you would need at least two telemarketers.

Of course, when you're planning your telemarketing campaign, you must consider not only how many clients you'd like to contact at the outset, but how many you can afford to contact and how the campaign you launch will affect your other budgets and marketing efforts. Tally the costs of your projected campaign-promotional materials, equipment, phone charges, hiring costs, and so on-and divide it by the number of new clients you project will come out of this effort. The result will be your projected marketing cost per client.

Also, take a look at pour current costs (brochures, mailings, seminars, sponsorships, community events) and determine which of these will best jibe with your new telemarketing campaign and which you might want to suspend indefinitely. In this way, you can gear your marketing efforts to work most effectively with your telemarketing campaign.

In some agencies, it will be difficult to project the number of new clients that will result from the campaign. But this type of projection is vital; it is meant to be reviewed frequently, when you're determining the success of your efforts and planning for ever better future results. The "Telemarketing Campaign Projection/Review" form below will help you in this process.

To be sure, needs differ from agency to agency. Most telemarketing consultants will tell you to be conservative when first planning such an operation, and be prepared to expand your operation when needs and finances dictate.

TELEMARKETING CAMPAIGN PROJECTION/REVIEW

	Projected	Actual	Difference
PERSONNEL COSTS
Organization:
Hiring:
Training:
Management/Monitoring:
EQUIPMENT/SUPPLIES COSTS
Phone Equipment:
Office Furniture:
Other Supplies:
PROMOTIONAL COSTS
Brochures/Advertising:
Phone Bills:
Postage: Lists:
Seminars/Special Events:
TELEMARKETING STAFF COSTS
Salary/Commissions:
Bonuses:
INCOME
Contacts:
Prospects:
Clients:
Cost per Client: