In my first book I told the story of going on a call with my sales manager, Tom, who was obligated to observe each of the people on our crew every few weeks or so. Fortunately for me, the manager was pretty cool, even though he was a couple of years younger than myself. He had apparently gone to work for the insurance company not long after getting out of high school and had done well enough to get a small promotion.
With that being said, these "ride alongs" weren't as horrible as I expected them to be. We'd usually take his car, which saved me gas money, because driving around in the middle of nowhere doing door-to-door sales could rack up a lot of miles and waste fuel.
On our first stop Tom taught me an important lessons in sales. When making a sales call with a coworker, make sure that only one of you is doing the talking. The best way for this to succeed is to decide before going into through the door who will make the presentation.
If we decided that I was to give the talk, we would let the client know that Tom was a manager and leave it at that. I don't remember anyone objecting to having two agents instead of one. As I spoke, Tom would sit in silence, nodding approvingly when I brought up an important feature of the product. The only time Tom would jump in was if I made a huge gaffe or just got some information mixed up (I was still learning several products at the time).
About every third call I'd ask Tom to do the talking so I could see his presentation. After a couple of these trips I stole some of his better material.
Since those days I've been asked to work with other agents on several occasions, and deciding ahead of time who was going to talk and who was going to "sit down and shut up"* I had some success with a series of great sales working with a veteran agent who was a great closer. As I had no problem opening cases, our skill sets complemented each other. Again, we knew ahead of time who would do the talking.
There have been those times when another person lost us a sale. In the middle of my presentation one of my coworkers walked in unannounced. I had to stop and introduce her to the client, who was confused as to why she was there. Then she kept interrupting and adding information that wasn't relevant at all, like "My mother-in-law could have used this insurance policy."
A few hours later, I spoke to the client who more questions than ever before and eventually decided to go with someone else. The coworker's extra "banter" made the client feel uneasy and pissed me off because I had invested quite a bit of time and effort into getting that client to meet with me.
Deciding ahead of time who does the talking is a simple solution and help you avoid a disaster like the one above.
*The expression used by every parent in church.
Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. He's also the author of "You're Going To Be Great At This!", a humorous look at sales. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states.
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