Insurance Salesmanship and Marketing.

Of salesmanship and marketing I wanted to add a comment that, in my belief that the two should not be separated. Instead, they should be one thing—one thing with many steps. 

The first step is to determine what it is you are selling. Most sales people I have known rarely take the time to “do it on purpose.”

The key as I see it is that when you “make a sale” you will “sell” what you “proposed to sell.” For example: If I want to sell auto insurance I will have sold auto insurance when I am successful.  If home insurance, then I will have sold home insurance. And so on. In this example I have made a very detailed decision on what it is I am going to sell, and built a complete proposal and sales system that sells the entire account.  Why? Because, in thirty years experience, I have proven to myself that the times that I make successful sales are when I have sold what I had proposed. So taking my own advice; I simply want to be the only broker they ever speak with.  No matter if it is a personal lines client or business owner!

So to define your offer by creating proposals that support your “sell” and “reasons why” a client must buy, and buy now.  I would not make “price” any part of this proposal.

Then and only then do I begin marketing for suspects to add to the built out sales system, and Yes Complete with Sales Scripts! For me there are 3 parts to marketing:

1. New Business: to deliver highest quality “suspects” to my sales system. 

2.  Pre-sell by warming all current and future prospects and clients, bonding them to the agency. 

3.  Client Retention.

I run marketing plans to deliver “suspects” to my sales process. Note the word “suspects,” because based on their demographic I “suspect” they maybe interested in what we have to offer, and they respond as “suspects.”

We then filter into one of three categories:

1. Current Prospects

2. Future Prospects

3. Not a Prospect.

I would also like to note that, in “Marketing: Part One,”new business also needs to be regulated based on the capacity of the agency to handle the leads. As an example, I have to be very careful how much “Marketing: Part One” I do, as I have many times produced more leads than my agency can handle.

That said, I think that is another reason why defining exactly what you are selling is very important. The value of the suspect to the agency is critical. I myself can only work on one or two new accounts efficiently in the span of a month, so it is important that the ones I work on are larger and either buy or reject all lines of business from me right now.  I can’t work with anything less than a ‘client’ or sell a single policy, so I had to create a sales system that supported that for me.

Now, for my office, I have other systems that deliver “suspects” in other lines: BOPs, Commercial Autos, Personal Lines, etc. Again, each “niche” started with defining the “sell” and then creating proposals to support the “sell” and scripting the process.

Lastly in Marketing: Part One—for some lines of business we lead with “save 37% or more” etc., but for other lines (the ones I work on) we never mention the word “insurance,” let alone mention “saving money” on it. I simply don’t have time to handle a lot of prospects, and I want the few that call me to be interested in what it is I offer, and am going to propose.  My proposal has six steps: the sixth step is insurance, and it is the least important. The first 5 have nothing to do with insurance, but instead deal with risk mitigation techniques.

Four Corners of Marketing even on the internet:

1. Get their attention
2. What’s the deal
3. Who says so besides you, “testimonials”
4. How do I get it.

Anyway, I hope this help clarify a bit what I am thinking.  Basically, “marketing” supports your “sell”. And I find it very easy to market for new business if I have a good definition of what it is I am trying to sell, create proposals, and give reasons to buy scripted presentations, etc. before I start trying to get “suspects” to respond.

GDBLU