Are you the type of insurance agent who meets with 10 people a week just to make two sales? What happened to the other eight? If you’re like most busy professionals, the answer is, “nothing.”
Despite your best intentions, following up when someone decides not to buy can be awkward, and it’s easy to tell ourselves that a better use of time is simply moving on.
Sometimes moving on is undoubtably the right thing to do. But I suspect — and this is based on conversations with many agents and advisors — that by not following up, you are just paving the way for another agent to make the sale. Remember when you were brand-new to selling insurance and, despite your lack of sales skills or technical knowledge, you made sales? That proves the point.
You were selling to people who were now ready to buy and had probably been called on in the past by other agents who gave up.
A financial services sale is often not a result of our winning personality and overwhelming charm,
but a function of timing. In other words, in many cases, the non-buyer today will eventually buy what we’re selling.
The challenge is how to keep in touch without investing too much time or money — and, of course, this challenge also extends to our clients. When I began my insurance career in 1986, I was told that the biggest complaint from customers about their agents was this: “They sold me a policy and I never heard from them again.” It’s the industry’s equivalent of going on a date, saying you’ll call, and then not following through. Clients feel that they’ve been played and then dumped. What are you doing to keep your clients feeling wanted, instead?
In the old days, the one-card system ensured clients received plenty of attention, and agents were always in touch with clients and prospects. But that was many years before email, back in the stone ages, when people actually answered phones! Today, half the battle is obtaining email addresses for prospects, clients, and referral sources. The other half is making our snail mail and email so memorable and worthwhile that our prospects open it.
Following are some ideas for efficiently following up:
- Whenever you meet with someone, whether they’re a client, prospect, or referral source, ask their permission to add them to your email newsletter list. Tell them it’s easy to unsubscribe at any time. Within a few days, send them an email saying how nice it was to meet them, and say that you’ll be in touch on a monthly or quarterly basis. Then, follow through. I have never talked to an agent who said they didn’t receive new business whenever they sent a newsletter. Email is, without a doubt, the most cost-effective way to keep in touch with contacts.
- You will need a monthly or quarterly newsletter. This can be a simple paragraph you’ve written and a link to an interesting article posted online or, if you are using paper and snail mail, it can be a reprint of a relevant article along with your business card. Whether you write your own newsletter or purchase one, the goal is for the content to be relevant and interesting and for the design to reflect positively on you. Busy agents are going to outsource this function. Ask your sales manager what electronic and print newsletters are available.
- I hear time and time again that paper mailings combined with emails yield better results than email alone, especially if you are reaching out to referral sources.
- Identify your top 25 (for some, it may be top 10 or top 100) contacts. These are existing or prospective clients or referral sources. Send them something significant and memorable three to four times a year. In the fall, it may be a copy of a business book that you just read and enjoyed. In the winter, perhaps you could send a CD of holiday carols the week after Thanksgiving. In the summer, a gift certificate for two ice cream cones at the local ice cream shop could do the trick. And CPAs should always get a tax-time gift basket during tax preparation season.
A key component of following up is that it not require a Herculean effort. Enter your contacts once and let the service do the rest. Except when selling these “reheated” contacts — that’s your job.
Marilee Driscoll is a professional speaker and consultant, the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Long-term Care Planning,” and a principal in FollowUpSystems LLC. She can be reached at 508-830-9975 or through www.marileedriscoll.com.
