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(see also: Prospecting:
Critical to Success)
For
the past 35 years, I have been a highly successful
agent, and for the last 15 years, I have been traveling
the country presenting seminars on developing habits
focused on prospecting. How to get
adequate numbers of appointments to meet our production
goals. Agents have provided me with helpful
feedback and information that caused me to realize
that there is what I call the Agents Prospecting Profile
(APP). This profile speaks squarely to the issue of
how we treat prospecting—making calls. As you
review this profile, ask if you see yourself with
these characteristics and feelings? Are these issues
the real reasons why we don't
meet our production goals and hence may not stay in
business? Are these characteristics the real reason
why we too often wander around knowing what we should
do in a business that offers so much? Do you Wander
in Wonderland?
- Most agents do not have adequate self-discipline
to stay with prospecting until the job is finished.
- Most agents do not have the ability to focus
on prospecting. Seeing it clearly, dealing with
it head-on, and staying with it without allowing
for interruptions.
- We have a need to feel worthy or a need for
measured success. Before coming into the
business, we were in children/parent; student/teacher;
and employee/employer relationships—we operated
by other's discipline, but learned that we felt
good when we successfully completed tasks. We crave
the need to feel good!
- But now in the Insurance business, we have too
many options—over 200 options (mail,
service, training, computer time, personal commitments,
etc.) that are tasks providing us with self-satisfaction-measured
success—a “feel good.”
- And last, one of our options is something we don't
like to do—prospecting. Plain
and simple, agents tell me that they would rather
do anything but make the calls. The author Anthony
Robbers says it well: "We do more to avoid
pain than we do to gain pleasure!"
If
you see yourself in this APP—low self-discipline,
inability to focus, need to feel good, too many options,
and I don't like to prospect—what can you do
to improve? First, I am going to suggest that you
can't do much about it on your own, because if self-discipline is necessary to improve and
you see yourself in the APP then there is no more
self-discipline to work with. But don't fret! You
reach out to someone else and create an interdependent
relationship with a manager, agent, or even your spouse
to hook up their discipline to your prospecting system.
What prospecting system? If you don't have a daily
prospecting system which includes a fixed block of
time, uninterrupted, in which you precisely measure
an activity like so many phone calls, or two new appointments
each day, then your disciplinarian won't know what
to manage any more than you know what to do. The author,
Coonradt, says, "If you can't measure it—you can't
manage it!"
Our
industry for too long has believed that agents coming
into the business want to be their own boss and have
independence and freedom. Yes, it works for 5% of
all agents who enter the business, but what about
the 95% who don't succeed to their level of production?
I never met an agent who said he/she came into the
business to fail, yet look at the industry's retention
rate. Look at the agent's case rate today! What is
wrong? I suggest that agents need to be placed into
a prospecting system, highly defined with no option
and firmly fixed in the agent's daily schedule. This
daily routine provides the repetition and focus necessary
to create a habit and in time, the habit
becomes the disciplined force that drives the agent
to successfully complete his/her routine prospecting
task. Covey, in his book "The Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People," says that we should
not strive to be independent people because the most
effective form of production is an interdependent
relationship! I lean on you and you lean on me. What
you don't have I can provide, and what I don't have,
you can provide to me. Typically, we do not have interdependent
relationships when it comes to prospecting. It is
a unilateral activity, (the lonely part of our business)
done behind closed doors, unmeasured, and without
discipline and focus.
Home
offices and managers should unite to build a new form
of work relationship recognizing the APP as it reflects
on agent case rate and retention. By recruiting agents
directly into a required prospecting system which
includes daily measured activity, a specific period
of time built into the agents schedule to perform
the prospecting tasks, and most importantly an interdependent
relationship, the manager (boss) is providing the
discipline to assure that the prospecting task is
completed daily. I believe it is a myth that agents
want to be their own boss with independence and freedom.
I have asked hundreds of times, and each time agents
say they would give up being their own boss for success.
Agents are willing to give up
independence and freedom for success! The main reason
agents don't become successful is that our business
does not offer the discipline to the prospecting part
of our business. Prospecting is the work of our business
and we should look at it as it is—difficult,
frustrating and painful. By performing in small, routine,
and daily parcels, the job becomes easier. Repetition
begins to form a prospecting habit,
and the habit is a form of self-discipline that begins
to serve the agent. "I feel guilty if I don't
prospect and I feet so good when it is over!"
"I can measure a victory or win today and each
day!" If agents reach out to a prospecting coach
for discipline, then they will triple their retention
rate and double their production. Your choice: Wander
through Wonderland or join the parade and March through
Wonderland!
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