We've all heard of the wondrous salesperson who can sell sand in Arabia or refrigerators in Antarctica. But actually finding one for your business can be as hard to do as-well, selling sand in Arabia or refrigerators in Antarctica!
If you truly want to improve sales, you'll have to change your whole attitude toward your sales force, your customers, and your agency.
Many agents believe that selling insurance is the task of the sales force, with little marketing necessary. At office meetings, the CEO often turns to the sales manager with words such as, 'Why aren't your people selling more new business? With as much as we pay them, they ought to be out there in the field contacting new customers, and all I hear are excuses.' Then comes the threat, veiled or outright: 'If things don't pick up pretty soon... .'
All this kind of talk will get you is turnover, inconsistent sales, anger, and inaction. Here are tips that can dramatically change the selling atmosphere at your agency, improve the bottom line, and foster the development of your own group of wondrous salespeople:
Change focus. The focus of your company must change from selling insurance to active competition. Your mystical mission statement sounds great in print, but probably means nothing to your customer or your sales force. You must replace this antique with a reality statement such as, 'Our goal is to replace XYZ Agency as the No. 2 company in our marketing territory!'
Without this extremely narrow focus, you don't stand a chance of motivating your sales force to action. This change of view will probably engender a fight with your staff, but unless you make a decision to do something concrete-and let your sales force know the goal-your efforts are misguided.
Find your customer. Do you really know who your customer is? Are you assuming that Jane and Jim Doe are the buyers and ignoring the fact that your real buyers may be the wholesale, retail, or franchise establishments? Without a realistic analysis, your sales force is out there beating the bushes for squirrels when the real prey should be lion.
Target your customer. People are going to buy insurance. The question is: 'Who's going to sell the insurance contracts?' Find and target prospects that fit the appetites of the companies you represent. Then make it attractive and easy for them to buy from you. Survey your existing customers, determine your perceived strengths and weaknesses-and then accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Develop a sales force that concentrates on the account selling, not the onesies and twosies.
Supporting your sales force. Begin the change by giving your sales force a real target. Try something such as, 'Our goal is to become the highest producing Hartford agency in our branch by the end of December 2000.' Don't be ridiculous with your goal; if you're No. 10, shoot for replacing No. 7, not No. 1. Your sales people need attainable goals, not pies in the sky-and they know the difference!
Pay your sales force well for increasing product sales. Highly paid salespeople work very hard to maintain their affluent life style. Low pay begets low motivation, and that results in low sales, unprofitability, and stasis at No. 10.
Make it easy to buy. Get the nay-sayers out of the way of the sale! Set up a realistic service standards for a customer, write in the 'If this happens, we do this' clauses, help your sales force understand what these mean, and then stand back and count the sales. They will happen! Your goal is profitable sales. Don't ignore the nay-sayers, but do temper their skepticism with customer love-it pays!
Support your customers. Set up or modify the customer service department in your agency and assign an individual to be 100% dedicated to helping your customers. Let's call that person the 'customer satisfaction manager.' Give this person immense latitude for problem solving. His or her task is to keep customers happy with your product, your service, and especially your sales force. Also, give this new person the task of pursuing the disenchanted customers of your competition. There's always something wrong with your competition's service or product, and if you actively help potential customers to solve their problems, you can replace Agency X with your agency.
Maintain contact. It's important to keep your customers advised of the ever-changing arena of insurance companies and regulations that could affect their bottom line. Ask for and act on input. Feed problems back to your customers and ask for solutions and suggestions. If you don't have a customer Web site, get one started today, and keep it current daily. Anything less means will look like you don't really care.