The insurance industry is no different than any other industry when it comes to the fact that the hardest sale to make is the first sale. You can greatly increase your sales and reduce your efforts if you'll just focus on trying to gain sales from the right sources. And that means you have to treat your business like a business, and take control of how and where you invest your time. Yet, most agents erode away their valuable time responding to and chasing after the wrong sources. Consequently, you have little time to actually invest in the right sources and your earnings reflect this fact. But you think that because you're busy you're doing the right things with the right sources.

Focus on your existing customer base and their future potential because that's one of the easiest ways to increase your sales. But don't look at all existing customers as being equal. Recognize that the potential among these existing customers varies dramatically There are three ways this potential varies.

Your existing customers have a potential for: development of a highly profitable target market for you, repeat and expanded business, and referral to high potential prospects. One of the biggest mistakes even veteran agents make is failing to identify and recognize highly profitable potential target markets among their existing customers. Focusing on developing and expanding within a specific target market is one of the quickest ways to easily develop a highly profitable solid business for you. To discover the target market that exists within your existing customer base you have to look beyond product purchases to customer demographics. Among your customers there are some you like, but they are low value. There are others you really enjoy working with and they have a high potential value. Among this later group you want to begin to pinpoint the commonalities so you can find more people just like them.

The purpose of the annual review is to identify opportunities for business expansion. Even though all your existing customers can and will eventually buy more from you they won't all do so this year. If you've done a good job of taking notes in past reviews and developing good questions to ask existing customers, you'll be able to develop a list of the customers who are most likely to do additional business this year. It seems like a no brainer that you want to invest more time with these customers than with customers who aren't likely to have additional needs until next year or three years from now, but most agents never take the time to make this evaluation so they invest equal time in both customer groups.

Never ignore or neglect customers who don't have an immediate potential for additional business. Doing so would result in low retention rates and dissatisfaction. Stay connected with every customer to maintain that relationship you've started, but develop ways to make this process automatic. A referral system shores up your insurance sales success by ensuring you properly take care of your customer relationships.

You know you're supposed to ask for referrals, but you hate doing it because you feel like you're either pressuring your customers to cough up a referral or you're begging for them. That's because your current approach isn't a very good one. And because you don't know what to really ask for. When you gain clarity about the target market you want to focus on and who within that target market has the greatest potential for you it will be easier for your customers to help you to make connections and they won't feel pressured to do so or like you're begging because you approach it differently.