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Too Much Selling; Not Enough Sales

Several years ago, one of the largest insurance agencies in New York asked us to teach their agents how to sell better. They gave us a group of 20 life insurance agents who were considered to be hard workers and had a high potential for success. All of them had been selling insurance for between two and three years. We met in the training room of their building.

We asked the group, "What is your biggest sales problem?"

The agents called out some answers:

"Not enough appointments."
"Getting appointments with qualified prospects."
"More appointments with interested prospects."
"Getting the prospects to buy."

We asked, "Why do you want those appointments?"

More answers:

"I don't care what kind of appointments I get. I just want more."

"I care because interested, qualified prospects give you a better chance of making a sale."

"Just get me in front of them and I'll close them."

"Me too. Give me more appointments and then I'll make more sales."

Just about all of them agreed that if they had more appointments they would become very successful.

We asked them, "How many hours per week are you working?" They averaged almost 50 hours per week.

We asked, "What would happen if you were to increase the number of appointments you made by 25 percent?"

They generally concluded that their income would increase by 25 percent.

"Wouldn't it also mean that you would have to work 25 percent longer? In other words, you would work about 62 hours a week, instead of the 50 hours you are working now."

That simple question stunned them.

We asked them to go to their desks, get their appointment books and bring them back to the training room. When they came back, we instructed them to start at the first workday in January and write down the names of everyone they had made appointments with until now, in mid-September.

Then, we asked them to count the number of appointments so far, and how many had become clients.

Their results were:

They met with an average of 14 prospects per month. They closed 12 percent, which resulted in 1.65 new clients per month. Each sale they made required an average of three follow-up visits. This closing percentage is actually pretty close to the national average for life agents.

We posted their numbers in big bold print on a flip chart. Now they were really stunned!

They started to talk about what a lousy job they had taken on. They blamed the company that recruited them. They blamed their managers for not being straight with them; and they blamed themselves.

Then, they turned to us and asked, "What are we doing wrong?" and "How come we keep hearing about agents who are earning six figure incomes? Is it all a bunch of lies?" and "Can you really teach us how to sell insurance?"

We told them that they have already learned one very important lesson. "It's that you have to keep accurate
and meaningful statistics. That way you can tell whether what you are doing is actually working. Obviously, what you have been doing is not working well enough."

Then we offered them some choices. "Keep doing what you are already doing, but work a lot harder at it. Or you could quit. Another choice is to learn an entirely different way to think about selling."

We suggested that they think seriously about those choices and make a firm decision.

Before breaking for lunch, we offered them a key concept that is one of the foundations of this entirely different way of thinking about selling. When fully absorbed, this can increase sales without working harder:

Never pursue anyone who is interested. That person is not ready to buy, and is therefore not a prospect. Only meet with people who want what you're selling. This is easy to do, but can be difficult to accept.

That was only the first morning of our four-day workshop. We then taught them a new sales process, and they put it to work. Of the 20 agents in the course, 15 made dramatic changes in their results by the end of the next year.

Their results were:

They met with an average of 9.5 prospects per month. They closed 62 percent, which resulted in 5.8 new clients per month. Each sale they made required an average of 1.5 follow-up visits.

In summary, the agents who used this entirely different sales process:

· Found prospects that wanted insurance instead of being interested in insurance.
· Went on 31 percent less appointments.
· Sold more than 3 times as many policies.
· Reduced the number of follow up visits per sale by 50 percent.
· Reduced their working time from 50 to 45 hours per week.

Less selling, more sales.