Are you challenging yourself to turn appointments into sales? Do you need a little help along the way? Here are five tips to help you grow your business.

FIVE THINGS YOU CAN TO DO TO CLOSE MORE SALES

Whether you’re a seasoned producer or someone new to the business, there’s always room to improve

Clients and prospects understand their world. Your goal is to make them understand how insurance makes their world possible.

By Michael Wayne

If you’ve been a producer for any appreciable amount of time, there’s a good chance you think you have a winning strategy when it comes to sales. Let’s face it, if you struggle with sales, the likelihood that you’ll remain a producer in this industry for very long is incredibly slim.

For you more seasoned producers, you have a tried and true course of action that has been in place and refined for years. For you younger producers, your systems are still under development, and you may need guidance.

Objectively, we may have cemented what we do when it comes to the customer experience, but we still need to take a step back on occasion and understand that there are ways for us to improve and close more sales.

Make the conversation about the client or prospect

While you want to close sales, you don’t want to be a salesman … and you definitely don’t want to be an insurance salesman. Clients want someone who they can rely on to be their consultant—someone with expertise. They keep you as a partner because you appropriately fulfil that role. Clients don’t want someone around who they don’t feel they have formed a connection with on a personal level. Listen to your client or prospect. You have one mouth and two ears. That’s a pretty good indicator that you are supposed to listen twice as much as you speak. Show that you are genuinely interested in the daily and long-term concerns of your client or prospect and let them communicate to you what they need. You may be surprised how much you can learn from having a conversation as opposed to giving a pitch.

Offer solutions instead of pushing products

Each of your competitors is calling your clients or prospects and telling them about the products that they have. For the most part, the products are the same as what you offer. What you do with them and how they fit as a part of your overall service plan makes all the difference. Before you even suggest a product, you have to understand your client’s pain points and then develop a solution for them that uses the products you have at your disposal to end those problems. Additionally, you have to be able to see down the road for your client or prospect to prevent problems by supplying them with appropriate products.

Explain the benefits you are offering

Clients and prospects understand their world. Your goal is to make them understand how insurance makes their world possible. Of course, it is crucial that your clients understand their policies in full, which is part of your role for sure, but the greater challenge that you have is to show them the ways that insurance will protect them or their loved ones if something catastrophic should happen—to their home, their business, or themselves. Above all else, this should be where you focus a client’s or prospect’s attention.

Make sure you are reachable

Never in the history of the world has it been easier for someone to be found or for information to be obtained. Seemingly everything is only a few clicks away. That doesn’t mean you should make it a scavenger hunt for clients and prospects to find the information they need to contact you when they need it. In most instances, you could simply send a follow-up email with your phone number and address and that would suffice for a client or prospect to have everything necessary to reach you.

Go the extra mile. Leave a cheat sheet with your information, even if it’s just an old-fashioned business card. Hopefully, in the case of discussing a product or service, you are leaving behind some literature or pointing your clients or prospects to online resources to explain in further detail. Be memorable, but also be reachable.

Stay focused and be specific about your goals

You are not going to close every sale. More than likely, you aren’t even going to see all of the people who took your calls and set up appointments with you. Be smart. Be realistic. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment with goals that aren’t attainable. You should have daily, weekly, monthly, and annual goals and deadlines. Determine how many calls you are going to make, how many visits you are going to make, and how many appointments those will result in for the week. Challenge yourself to turn a certain number of those appointments into sales and others into the start of a long-term dialogue with a future sale in mind by a certain deadline. Set incremental goals with hard deadlines and work to meet both. If you don’t succeed, evaluate your process and see what needs to be adjusted. If you are successful, set the bar higher.