You're Going To Be Great At This!

One of the biggest hurdles I've faced in my career has been finding prospects, moving them through the sales process, and turning them into clients, all while constantly being on the hunt for more prospects. It's an endless cycle. (In my industry, it can be even harder to sell something when people ultimately don't want to buy. If your client is a young couple with kids and a mortgage, do you think they would rather spend money on a vacation or a life insurance policy?) Having a good referral system and making networking effective are the best ways to start the process of keeping the pipeline full. Having a center of influence or creating a friendly relationship through networking can save a lot of time and be much less expensive than buying leads.   One of the most effective things you can accomplish is to establish a "referral network". This may take some time to get going but if you can find four or five good sources who are willing refer to each other, you can...

In the previous two posts I discussed a couple of company sponsored sales courses that I was required to take as part of my onboarding. One was focused on memorizing a sales pitch word for word with some extra emphasis on keeping a positive mental attitude. The other was nothing more than product training. Both of these companies had a lot of turnover, which meant that they needed to constantly hire new agents as the previous agents would quit just as quickly.  With this in mind, I would be remiss if I did not discuss one of the better sales courses. This sales class was with a very large life insurance company (I'll call them ABC) and was more comprehensive than the others. In my mind, the larger the class, the more turnover the company had. And as we have seen, more turnover means less successful sales people. Our class at ABC only had about a dozen of us, so that seemed promising.  One of the first things they mentioned was that only about 15% of the applicants had made it ...

A few weeks back I touched on the subject of coworkers who were trouble in a post titled " What Can I Do To Succeed? " This time I thought I would give a few more true stories of these toxic people and how they operate. First off, let me say that I have probably been one of these people at some point in my career in sales. It's a hard job and especially tough when one is not succeeding. As I have said many times, people who do not do well in sales are, in many cases, not given an honest assessment of the job when they are brought on board. Too many hiring managers and recruiters will only tell new hires the good parts of the job and leave out the bad.  For instance, a few years ago I interviewed with a very large life insurance agency in Charleston, SC. The manager showed me a leaderboard with all of the top producers' names and production. There were about a dozen names on the list. I had seen this kind of pitch before, so I asked how many agents were in the agency. ...

There are too many times when we meet a client, get some information from them and, for a myriad of reasons, never bother to give them another call. Maybe they didn't seem interested in what you were offering or they didn't fit into your target market. Or maybe you thought they said "no" when they really wanted to think it over. Whatever the reason is, you need to pick up the phone and give them a call back. When I meet a client for the first time, I do a "fact finder" questionnaire, which sounds formal but really is just a track to run on to get a conversation started. Open ended questions help get the client talking.  When they talk, I listen and ask follow up questions. It sounds easy, but our human nature makes us want to sell our product instead of hearing about someone else's issues. By listening to the client and getting them to open up, we build trust. People love it when others laugh at their jokes and are genuinely interested in their lives.  B...

For anyone who is a business owner, entrepreneur or otherwise in sales, you need to know people. Even if you haven't gotten your business going yet or if you are still in school, networking can pay off for you in spades. Getting your name out there and building relationships is one of the best ways to grow your business. How you do it is up to you, but making it part of your daily routine is of utmost importance. There are several reasons why you should be networking. The most obvious one is to get referrals. Word of mouth recommendations don't cost a penny but are so much more effective than paid advertising. Having someone in your corner as an advocate for you lets others know that you are trusted and good at your job.   Of course, it's important to make sure that the person speaking on your behalf has a good network to refer you to. Sure, it's great to meet the new person in town, but if they don't know anyone their recommendations of you will be limited.  Then t...

As a member of several sales groups on Facebook and LinkedIn I have noticed that the question that is asked the most is "Where do I find clients?" When it comes to selling, this is the proverbial conundrum wrapped in an enigma inside a puzzle. If you haven't read my book , one of the themes is that many companies are offering full commission sales jobs, which means that they can hire anyone and everyone at minimal risk because if these new recruits don't sell anything, the company doesn't have to pay anything. That puts a lot of the responsibility for finding prospects on the shoulders of the new hire.  As I state in my book, my first real sales job was selling insurance door-to-door in rural North Carolina. In the hiring process we were told that we would pick up renewals from people who had the policy and "they will give you the names of people to see". The implication was that when I showed up to get a renewal check there would be several names on a s...

As an insurance agent, I've always been concerned that my industry has a reputation for having pushy salespeople. In many ways we are compared to those who sell used cars. When I originally went into the business I was fully aware of this and was resistant to even get into the industry. To be honest, the first company I worked with was guilty of feeding into this stereotype. The reason for this was that instead of trying to be a consultant and helping the client structure a plan with a group of good policies we had to work with, we only had one product. We were product pushers instead of facilitators.  We were trained to be aggressive and to get out of someone's home or business with a check in hand. As my coworker would say, "Your income is in their wallet and you need to do everything possible to get it out of there." We dubbed this "guerilla selling", since we would rush in, try to make a few bucks and get out.  Unfortunately this left me with the impress...

In the previous post I discussed a few aspects of transactional selling as opposed to relationship selling. The "get in and get out" aspect of a quick transaction means that one doesn't necessarily have to build a rapport with a client at all. But is that a good thing? When I worked for a large insurance company a years ago it was instilled into our brains that we had to build a relationship with our clients. That does not mean we had to be their friend or their confidant, but instead we were to learn about some of the client's interests, family issues and other information that we could draw sales from in the future, as relationship selling has shown to garner more repeat business from the client. Not only will people buy from you if they like and trust you, but they will continue to buy from you if you keep the rapport going. But meaningful relationships are a two-way street, which means that you have to pull back the curtain and allow the client to see your world ...