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3 Things That Keep You From Sales Success You may be shocked to learn the three things you should never do are exactly what you're told to do by your sales manager/mentor. But when you do these three things you're setting yourself up for an arduous struggle and, in all likelihood, failure. And that's exactly why over 90% of the people entering the industry will fail in less than three years. The first thing you never want to do that you're told you have to do is cold call. It's time to put that dog to bed. Cold calling has never been a high pay-off activity and now with the legal ramifications and people's increased intolerance it's an even worse thing to do. Top Producers Sales Success You want to be a top producer, but you're stuck where you are and you don't know how to get any better. You've done what you were supposed to do, but you aren't moving up. You're frustrated and exhausted and you realize you don't know what you don't know. As long as you continue to do what you're doing now you'll stay stuck and frustrated. The very success that got you where you are today now has you trapped at that level. Sales Coaching Through a Poor Sales Conversation A poor sales conversation can get you off tracking. Even though you may not be aware you're doing it, after a bad appointment you shut down and don't function at your best. You're calling a time out. I encourage you to take a time out. Just make sure you spend that time in a way that provides value for you. Selling Insurance Begins with Your Focus 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. Increase Insurance Sales in Spite of Money Objections When a prospect tells you they don't have any money do you accept it? How about when they tell you they want more money? Both are a sales trap that result in "no sale" for you. When a prospect tells you these things is sounds very logical. Your natural reaction is to move on or wait until the will have money if they don't have money now. In nearly all cases you're missing an opportunity, but you don't realize it. Sales Coaching for Your Questions Techniques You understand that questions are a critical part of the sales process. Yet, questions aren't producing the results you want. That's because the way you structure the questions you ask, and the intent behind them have a dramatic impact on the prospect. Questions serve as a means to establish rapport with the prospect. Through questions you can put the prospect at ease, get them to open up to you, and feel comfortable with you. To make that happen though your questions must demonstrate your sincere interest in the prospect. Insurance Sales: Do You Hate to Prospect? You may be surprised to learn that even MDRT members don't like prospecting, but they know it's something they have to do. Instead of dreading prospecting you should be looking forward to it with excited because you have to have prospects to sell. You don't look forward to prospecting because you want to be told "no". A system for prospecting will help you to get good at it. Of course, a system is worthless if you won't consistently implement it. Why you don't like prospecting now, and how you could like prospecting? Strategic Planning is an Effective Sales Technique There isn't a connection between strategic planning and sales for you if you enjoy working hard, and struggling day in and day out to hit your sales goals. Yet, if you'd rather make more and work less then strategic planning has everything to do with sales and your sales success. There are two distinct approaches to sales, and the choice is yours to make. Unfortunately most sales people take the approach of being incredibly active hoping that all that activity will result in at least some sales for you. Even though that approach sounds logical both and I know people who've tried that approach, worked themselves beyond the point of frustration and still failed. You're constantly being told by sales managers, broker dealers, underwriters, and others that if you're just active enough you'll succeed but the facts don't support that logic. Sales Coaching to Avoid Cold Feet Has a prospect ever told you they wanted to buy, and then changed their mind? Or they bought and then almost immediately backed out of the deal, wanted a refund, or canceled their premium. Were you left wondering how that could happen when they seemed so excited and on board? If you've never experienced this you've got to be green. Every beginner and many seasoned professionals experience this and they don't understand why it happens. The explanation is actually pretty simple, and you have yourself to thank for the result you got. Time Management Skills Improve Customer Focus & Time Value It's as easy as 1-2-3. First, you have to identify who those customers are. Second, you have to know what they're actively looking for. Third, you have to develop a message and the right bait to get their attention and interest. The customers with the greatest potential for you represent your target market. You need to have enough clarity about this specific group of customers that you know their names. In fact, you want to list the top 10-100 prospects that you want to convert into customers. Hot Sales Techniques You may be frustrated and confused because your sales aren't hot. The sales and marketing systems you're using work for others, but they don't work for you. How is that possible? I'm pretty confident you have at least some experience with eating. So, I think you'll be able to understand the examples I'm going to use to make my point. If you've never eaten chili, it's a hot spicy soup. Sales Coaching to Make Your Training Stick Have you read, studied, perhaps even trained on the sales techniques offered by the best salespeople out there yet they just don't seem to work when you do them? Are you frustrated and confused as to why and how that could happen? Whether you've studied Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jeffrey Gitomer, Neil Rackham, or any other of the biggest names in sales training there is one thing you know beyond a doubt, and that is that there is unequivocal evidence that what they're saying works; but somehow it isn't working for you. And the fact that it isn't working for you has you in an emotional frenzy because you need sales and you need sales now. First, calm down and accept that it isn't your fault and it isn't their fault that it isn't working for you. I'm going to help you to understand that there is a perfectly logical reason this is happening to you, and that there is a way for you to overcome your challenges. Sales Techniques to Overcome Closing Anxiety Thinking about asking someone for the sale causes perfectly normal people break out in a sweat. The reason these apparently normal people have closing anxiety is because they haven't properly handled the sales process. If they had closing would be nothing more than a natural conclusion to a selling conversation. You're anxiety is due to one of four reasons. You didn't have agreement from the prospect to have a selling conversation in the first place. You've confused the prospect by presenting too many options. You didn't take the buyer through a thought process that helped them to buy. You didn't evoke the emotional reason the prospect should act and act now. Time Management Techniques for Sales Professionals If you aren't focused on doing the right things at the right time you lose financially. To make up for your inefficiencies you have to work yourself to death to hit your targets. But, you can avoid that with a little planning. You want the majority of your actions to be focused on those that result in a sale. You fill your sales funnel by prospecting, yet all too often you have a poor approach to prospecting. Develop a list of your most dream future customers. It's easier to develop effective ways to approach them when you know who you're focusing on and why. Sales Coaching: You Can't Sell to People who Don't Want to Buy But don't you waste a lot of time and energy doing just that? You could be selling more insurance in less time with less work if you just knew how. Focus your efforts on people who already know they want what you have. You feel rejected when suspects continually turn you down, but they aren't rejecting you personally they'd reject anyone because they don't want what you're offering. When you try to sell to these people it's foolish and self-destructive. The reason you do it is because you're focusing on trying to fill your appointment book instead of focusing on only meeting with people who want to talk to you about what you have to offer. Sales Coaching if You have to Cold Call I wouldn't recommend cold calling, but there are times when you may to do it. When you're in that situation why not learn how to do it well? You can do to do it better and have greater success if you'll just do a few simple things. When you're fairly new in the industry your sales manager will force you to do it, and if you've been in the industry awhile but you don't know how to market yourself you may have to do it. 84% of all sales people have call reluctance so you are far from alone. When you do it you hate it because it takes a ton of time and you get poor results plus it damages your ego. Insurance Sales: Are You Recession Proof? If the forecasted recession becomes a reality you have three choices. You can watch it happen and do nothing to prevent its impact on you, you can tighten your belt hoping to survive it, or you can develop a plan to thrive because of the recession. The choice and the result you'll get is all yours. Allowing external circumstances to determine your future is never a good idea and certainly not something a top producer will do. Start formulating your plan by identifying how you'll be impacted by a recession if you do nothing and what you can do to protect yourself. Identify how a recession will impact your customers and potential customers if they do nothing to protect themselves, and what you can do to help them to avoid that impact. Success is Based on Speed of Implementation You can pinpoint successful people because they are the people who immediately take action to implement their plans and ideas. Unsuccessful people rarely ever implement anything they learn. These people get caught in the learning and analysis cycle and just can't seem to move forward and take action. Quite often unsuccessful people can't take action because they have to ask everyone around them for their opinion and they get confused and frightened by everyone else's opinions. The really ridiculous thing is that usually the people around unsuccessful people aren't successful. Does it makes sense to ask someone who can't succeed themselves if you should do something that would help you to succeed? Use Time Management Skills to Get More Sales with Less Work If you're a sales professional/business owner this time management tip will help you to be more time effective and increase your sales. It's no secret sales people like you like lots of activity. You think lots of activity means more sales but your thinking is actually counter productive. Your greatest potential for immediate sales is in your current customers. Customers are more likely to buy from you again and again and again than most prospects. Some of your customers are responsive in that they buy from you occasionally and some of your customers are highly responsive and will buy nearly everything you show them. Insurance Sales: How to Get Referrals & Never be Pushy You've been trained to ask for referrals in a pushy, obnoxious, and downright embarrassing manner. When you use the tactics you've been trained to use it's very harmful to your relationship with your customer. Don't try asking ever so clever questions like, who do you golf with. Choke, puke, gag. These tactics are manipulative and you should stop using them right now. Don't stoop to using these high pressure approaches to get the referrals you need. Sales Techniques to Win the Sale before the Sale Before you can ever sell anyone anything don't you have to sell them on having an appointment? If you're like most agents you find it difficult to fill your appointment book each week. If you could hold appointments each week with people who are genuinely interested in doing business with you wouldn't that make your life so much easier? The good news is you can. Realize that selling starts way before the appointment. So, you have to set yourself up to attract the people you want to work with so you can fill that appointment book. Breaking it Down into Actions Time Management Techniques This one simple idea will help you to feel less stressed. Plus you'll make better use of the time you have. And all it takes is analyzing the whole of any project to break it down into the individual actions you will take or delegate. Let's be clear about what constitutes a project. A project isn't necessarily some gigantic undertaking that you're involved in at work. A project is anything that requires more than one action on your part. Sales Techniques for Translating Concepts into Actions As you begin to learn how to sell you learn at a conceptual level. At that point everything you read and hear sounds pretty good. You know these ideas have worked for other people so they should work for you. That's only partially true. It is a fact that those ideas have worked for other people. It's also a fact that you aren't those other people and what worked like magic for someone else may not work at all for you. Sales Skills to Stop Doing what Isn't Working You don't want to persistently keep doing the wrong things. That's unproductive and highly frustrating. The only reason you do it because you allow yourself to be mislead into thinking that sales is a numbers game and that if you just keeping doing it you'll eventually get the sales success you want. That's baloney sales is a numbers game for sales people who haven't taken the time to set themselves up for success by figuring out what works for them. Stop getting rejected and walking away empty handed and set yourself up to succeed. Start thinking about sales as a scientific process revolving around your skill set that you need to develop so you get consistent success. Do You Know how to make Your Plans for Success Come to Life? You're just a dreamer unless you can turn your plans into reality. Don't be a dreamer be an achiever. Have a a plan, and then turn that plan into actions. To have that happen you will have to develop the power to turn plans into actions. You will have to have the ability, strength, and capacity to achieve the success you want. It's through your own actions and the help you get from others that will turn plans into actions. Law of Success is Easy Success is hard for you because you tell yourself it's hard. On top of that you make it hard for yourself because you avoid taking action. This deadly combination of your thoughts and your inaction are ruining any chance you have for success. Successful people think and act differently than unsuccessful people. But you can adopt that thinking and commitment to action and you can succeed too. Yet you probably won't. Increase Your Insurance Sales through Questions If you feel awkward asking questions it may be because you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reason. Effective questioning is definitely a skill and the best sales people are masters at. But most sales people ask questions that do little to help them with their sales success. It's a big mistake to ask questions that you could easily know the answer to if you'd just done your homework. Business owners and executives have zero patience for educating you. And when you ask questions that are generally known they view you as inept and you've lost the sale from the start. Thinking Before You Act will Improve Your Time Management Skills Does your day start with you running to your first appointment? When you get there how often do you find that you don't have what you need? Both are clear signs that it's time for you to slow down, and plan what you're going to do before you take action. You'll get more done faster with less stress if you set aside proper planning time. Even though sales people love action and they would rather be doing than thinking you need to discipline yourself to plan before you act. You think as long as you're doing something you're making progress. Goals are a Great Time Management Technique Goals can help you to make the most effective use of your time. Most people understand that goals are important but they aren't very good at setting and getting them. And that creates a lack of focus and that lack of focus causes you to make poor time related decisions. One reason people mess up with their goal setting is that they try to set way too many goals. You can't focus on or track too many goals so you're better off setting a few goals and really concentrating on getting those than trying to do everything at once. Plus when you only have a few goals it's much easier to plan the next actions you need to take to get them. Blaming & Complaining Violate the Laws of Success Unless you accept full responsibility for your current conditions you'll use excuses, blame others, and complain about your lack of success. These habits and behaviors move you away from success. And they take you away from success rapidly. You only have yourself to thank for your current current situation whether you like it or hate it. As you begin to realize that you created whatever your experiencing take responsibility for changing it. The future success you want can only happen through your plans and actions. Time Management Skills to Improve Results Sales is all about action. Sales people are usually high energy people who would rather be out shaking the bushes than sitting in the office. That's a good quality as long as you're taking action on the right things. As a sales person you're responsible for your own results and you feel like you're getting pulled in multiple directions all day everyday. Time is money for you because if you aren't getting the most value from your time you aren't getting the money you could be. Yet still you have customers, staff, and sometimes sales managers all making demands of your time so you have to allocate your time in the best way. Insurance Sales: If You're in the Commodity Business Get Out! There's plenty of competition for the price shoppers, and you don't want to play that game. Price shoppers are the worst clients you could ever ask for, so why would you ever want to attract them? But that's exactly what you're doing when you offer to quote someone insurance. Let the price shoppers search the internet or bother your competition for quotes, but don't let them bother you. There is a very good reason for both you and the customer for not simply quoting a price. Isn't it true that when you quote a price you're making a quote based on the assumption that the customer knows exactly what they need and why? And how often is that really true? Time Management Tips: It's Not about Doing More Are you trying to cram more into your day? If you are you're probably stressed out, exhausted, and irritable because you're working too hard. If this sounds like you take a time out. You've got to stop focusing on the wrong things before you burn out. You probably think you just need to figure out how to cram more into your day, but that's the wrong approach. You're only focusing on efficiency. Time Management Slills help You to know What to Do Next When you look at everything you need to do are you feeling overwhelmed, and you don't know where to start? Are you even sure if you know everything you have to do? There are a few time management techniques you can use to get unstuck and going again. Begin by taking stock. Get out a blank piece of paper and list all the actions you've committed to taking. Don't make the mistake of listing things that involve more than one action or ideas. Insurance Sales: Reduce their Risk You Can't Earn the Sale There is a clear and simple reason prospects don't buy. They don't and won't buy when they feel buying is risky. Risk is a very real and valid concern. A wrong decision can leave them locked into a product that's completely wrong for them and too costly to walk away from. Your job is to help them to identify their risks and use the facts to make a good decision that's in their best interest. Many of their concerns are based on perceived risks and information rather than facts. They worry that the dollars they're spending today are less valuable than the investment they're making. The Keys to Success Require Caring Enough to Keep Trying There isn't an instant path to success. You want success and you want it now and you don't want any challenges or obstacles along the way. Common sense tells you there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't expect to have an idea and then have that idea instantly materialize into success. You need a valuable idea to succeed and to carry it out you have to have persistence. Sales Coaching for a Strategic Sales Action Plan How about shaking up your sales results? Now is the time to rethink you're approach and develop a plan that gets results. If your strategic sales action plan isn't implementable and quantifiable path it won't produce results. The key elements of a strategic sales action plan include: value, unique market position, marketing plan, sales plan, and a follow-up plan. It's best to approach these critical elements in a specific order. Law of Success Requires Continuous Action To succeed you must transform your dreams into actions. You must take those actions each and every day to achieve success. And that's why most people never succeed. Most people lack the persistence to take action each and every day. To succeed you must have a clear plan for what success means to you and how you'll get it. Then each and every day you must take at least one action that will move you closer to what you want. Sales Coaching to Make the Complicated Simple & Win Face it most people don't really understand insurance and they don't want to. When you make the complicated simple people will buy and they will buy from you. And there are two very good reasons for that. First, when you make it simple you remove a lot of the risk involved in a buying decision. People don't want to look stupid, feel foolish, waste their money on the wrong thing, spend more than they need to, or buy things that don't get them what they want. And when they don't really understand what you're offering or their choices all these risks prevent them from saying yes. Sales Coaching:Are You Getting Leads from Your Business Cards? Why not use your business cards to actually generate leads? If you don't already carry your business cards with you start. They probably haven't done you much good up to now, but you can change that. You aren't getting the maximum value from this low cost marketing tool because you don't know how to use them to your best advantage. Your business cards serve a marketing purpose. You give out your business card so people can contact you and remember you. Of course, that's presuming the people you give them to want to contact or remember you, and just handing someone your card isn't creating an incentive for them to contact you. Insurance Sales: Aren't You Selling Money at a Discount? You should be selling your services rather than a product. So why do you market your products? You can almost immediately increase your sales if you'll just stop doing that. Dan Kennedy talks about the technique of selling money at a discount. That's exactly what you you need to be doing. Yet you're approaching it all wrong. Most of you use the approach of asking to quote your prospects insurance. There isn't a lot of interest in that approach and it's a low value approach. You would be much better served using the approach of selling money at a discount. Keys to Success: Wear Your Courage on Your Sleeve Success can't be yours unless you have the courage to succeed. Courage is the ability to deal with difficulty, uncertainty, and pain without getting side tracked from your chosen course of action. You'll need to make a heavy investment of your time, treasures, and emotion to achieve success. The deal breaker for you may be your emotion. It will take a lot of effort, time, and yourself to succeed. With such a heavy investment it's nearly impossible to distance your emotions from your experience and your decisions. Time Management Techniques to Improve What, When & How You struggle with time management each day because you aren't sure what you need to do, when to do it, or how to do it. You know how to focus, you write things down so you don't forget, and you understand the outcomes or results of your actions. You've reviewed your options yet you struggle to make choices. These stressful struggles come about because of the internal struggles you have going on. You don't know why it's so hard to manage your time or why you're so stressed and you can't begin to figure it out until you understand your natural behaviors and motivators. It's not uncommon to find a miss match between your natural behavioral styles and the environment you're trying to function in. Time Management Tips: Reduce Your Stress in 15 Minutes per Week Invest 15 minutes each week to reduce your stress and get more value from your time. Effective time management is a skill anyone can develop and this technique will help you to develop good skills faster. And it only requires about 15 minutes of your time. How do you wrap up your week now? Do you rush off from work leaving everything as is until you start the work week again on Monday? When you do that there are two negative things that happen. Time Management Techniques to Use the Power of Positive Change The way you handle time is based on your mindset. Dave Kahle defines a mindset as a group of beliefs that are so deep and firmly held that they are the source of many of your thoughts. So how do your thoughts relate to how you handle your time? Your thoughts determine your actions and your actions determine your results. If you're content with the way you handle your time now you aren't very likely to make any real changes. But if the pain of how you deal with time now is great enough you'll commit to making positive changes to get what you want. Sales Techniques: You aren't Born Creative You Become Creative You probably think creativity is something those artsy aesthetics types have. You may be surprised to know that creativity is a learned skill. And you may be ever more surprised to learn that creativity can be a skill that leads to improved sales techniques. Creativity is just a thought process that produces ideas. To become creative you need a positive attitude. And you need to be open to allowing yourself to be creative. Time Management Skills: A To Do List Should be a List of Actions The ability to unclutter your mind is an important time management skill. Your objective is simplification of your very busy hectic life. Storing information in your head and trying to remember it later only complicates things and increases your stress. Writing your thoughts down in more than one place just complicates your life. Record all these thoughts in one place. The best approach is to use a simple, portable, and easy to use system to record all the actions you need to take. An easy solution is a "to do" list. Sales Coaching: The Secret Weapon for Influencing People The secret to influence probably isn't what you expect. The way you listen is the big secret to powerful influence. To unlock this powerful influencing force you have to know how to listen. Listening isn't something you're naturally good at. You hamper your listening skills when you clutter your mind with other thoughts, you think about what you'll say next while the other person is still talking, you try to push your prospect to hurry up, and you lose your focus. These bad listening behaviors keep you from effective listening and powerful persuasion. Time Management Skills: Improving through Actions Your time management skills are directly proportional to your ability to take the right actions at the right time for the right reasons. Are your in boxes overflowing: physical "in" stack tray, email, and voice mail? Law of Success: Do I Need to Hire More People? If you doubled your revenue with your existing people resources do you really need to add more people? Hiring additional people when you don't really need more staff is a big and costly mistake. Employees cost you more than just the salary you pay them. Sales Coaching: The Solution to Turning Objections into Sales You don't have to hear "no" and "not now" any more when the answer should be "yes". You are responsible for getting "yes". You're being told "no" and "not now" for three main reasons. One main reason is you fail to prepare so you can earn the "yes". You've probably heard enough objections by now to know what to expect. Identify every question, concern, or objection the prospect could possibly throw at you and gather all those objections in one list. Time Management Techniques: A Key to Your Success When you're the only one responsible for all the functions required to run your business it's easy to become overwhelmed by the details. All the daily interruptions take your focus off the important and at the end of the day you aren't sure where the day went. With so many demands on you each day your time management skills will either make you or break you, so it's time to develop good time management skills now. It's much harder to stay focused on the important and productive things you should be doing rather than the onslaught of interruptions. Firefighting and micro-management are terrible time management techniques. These are success killing habits that you'll want to break now. Law of Success: Don't Let Fear Drive Your Decisions If at some point you worked for others there was always someone else you could either blame or count on to bail you out, but now there's no one but you. Does it feel like the world is crumbling around you and that failure is one heartbeat away? You're trapped in the grips of fear and your fear will keep you from mastering success. Success: You Can't Succeed if You Can't Make a Decision Are you a procrastinator? Do you fail more often than you succeed? You have trouble making decisions and that's why you find it so hard to succeed. You can turn this around by developing the habit of making decisions quickly. Right now you think it's hard to make decisions. You find it hard to make decisions because you're focused on information rather than the facts, plus you don't have a specific plan for what you want and how you're going to get it. Time Management Skills: Are You a Time Management Strategy Victim Do you feel like you never have enough time? Do you allow other people to interrupt you and keep you from getting things done? Your negativity and passiveness may be the source of your poor time management skills. It's easy to place the blame on others and responding to every distraction or crisis that hits your radar screen. Yet when you choose to respond to every distraction you're allowing other people to control your time and your outcomes. You aren't choosing how you will invest your time, and you're keeping yourself from having time for the things you want. Stop behaving like a victim and take control of your time. It's your responsibility to decide how you will use your time every moment of every day. Sales Techniques: Are You Asking the Right Questions? Frequently the questions you ask are either way too general or way to personal to get a good response. You can tell you're asking the wrong questions when you and your prospects feel uncomfortable with the questions you're asking. When you ask the wrong questions the prospect withdraws and you have a very stilted conversation leading to either a "no" or "not now". In contrast, when you ask a good question the prospect acts interested and responds with a well thought out genuine answer. Plus they relax and open up willing to tell you more. Time Management Techniques: Mistakes that Cost You Time Time management is basically a goals and integrity issue. Do you ever find yourself going off on wild goose chases, reacting to the daily fires rather than proactively planning your day, and spending hours on activities that no one pays you to do? When you make these mistakes they are costing you precious time and keeping you from getting the results you want. You don't get side tracked because you want to waste a lot of time and energy and increase your level of frustration and tension. You do it because you don't have a clear direction for yourself for where you're going and what you want to accomplish. You probably have a ball park idea, but it isn't specific enough for you to actually know what you should be doing when. Sales Techniques: Are You Tracking for Increased Sales? How you track your sales funnel and sales cycle can significantly impact your career sales success. All too often the way you track now is complicated and cumbersome when a simple system would be more efficient and effective. You need to know at a glance exactly who is in your sales funnel, where they are in your sales cycle, their contact information, the result of your last contact, and the next action on your part. Insurance Sales: Turn Trade Shows into Premium Lead Events Identify the trade shows that your best prospects attend and make sure that'll you'll be there and have a clear plan to use this opportunity to increase your insurance sales. You don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars renting a space at the event, in fact that's one of the last things you want to do. You can get numerous great leads without having to rent a booth. Renting a booth actually inhibits your potential for the event because when you have to man a booth you can't mingle and meet with the other vendors. It's no secret that most trade shows are annual events so it's easy for you to plan and prepare for the event. Don't go unless you have your sales strategy developed for increasing your insurance sales success. In most cases the event will be held at a hotel or a convention center connected to a hotel. In addition to walking the trade show you may also want to rent a meeting room during the event and use a pre-event direct mail campaign to invite prospects to visit you and get a special valuable gift. You may also want to host an invitation only cocktail hour at the end of the day just for your best prospects. Insurance Sales: Could You be Responsible If you don't take full responsibility for your own actions you can't expect to obtain the sales success you want? As a sales coach I strongly urge you to always take full responsibility for your outcomes. Your actions and your decisions produce the outcomes you experience. Blaming yourself or anyone else, using excuses, and denial are all futile. Yes, you may have people who are supposed to support you who just make things more difficult, and they may not do what they say they will; but if you know this to be true you have to devise a plan to keep these people from inhibiting your success. Even if that means taking the action to get it done yourself. Sales Techniques: Are You Accidentally Successful? Have you ever looked at the results of another sales person, and thought to yourself that person sure is lucky? I'll bet you have. The fact is that top producers are never lucky. Top producers don't fall into long-term success they earn it. Sales Techniques: Are You Tracking for Increased Sales? When you struggle to track where prospects are in your sales funnel and how likely they are to do business with you it's easy to drop the ball and miss prime opportunities. Many tracking systems are complicated and unwieldy. You need a simple tracking system. You need to know at a glance exactly who your prospects and leads are, how likely they are to do business with you, their contact information, the commitments agreed upon during your last contact, and the next action you must take to close the business. Sales Coaching: Increase Your Sales through Better Tracking The way you track your sales funnel and sales cycle can significantly impact your insurance sales success. Is the way you track now complicated and cumbersome? Could a simple system be more efficient and effective? Yes. You need to know at a glance exactly who is in your sales funnel, where they are in your sales process, their preferred contact information, the outcome and commitment from your last contact, and the next action you need to take to keep your prospect on track for closing. Insurance Sales: Don't be Accidentally Successful Are those top performers just lucky? Haven't you ever thought to yourself that salesperson sure is lucky? To you it just seems like they can't help but tripping into more business than you can beat the bushes tracking down each day. In reality top performers aren't lucky, but they sure know how to set up systems that produce their luck. You don't accidentally stumble into long-term sales success you develop systems that produce long-term sales success. Sales Techniques: Are You Accidentally Successful? Are those top performers just lucky? Haven't you ever thought to yourself that salesperson sure is lucky? To you it just seems like they can't help but tripping into more business than you can beat the bushes tracking down each day. In reality top performers aren't lucky, but they sure know how to set up systems that produce their luck. You don't accidentally stumble into long-term sales success you develop systems that produce long-term sales success. Insurance Sales: Could You be Responsible As a sales professional, do you take full responsibility for your actions? Do you take full responsibility for what happens to you? You are responsible for your actions, your decisions, and what happens to you. Blaming yourself or anyone else, using excuses, and denial only hurt you and keep you from being able to succeed. But the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. Ok, so you know this to be true. That just means you're responsible and as a responsible person you take action to get it done yourself. Sales Techniques: Don't Quit too Soon Your sales are down, your self-confidence is gone, you feel like you're beating your head against a brick wall maybe you should just quit. Maybe you should and maybe you're on the verge of a major breakthrough, but if you quit now you'll never know. How will you feel when you find out that the next call, the next appointment, the next referral, or the next chunk of repeat business would have been life changing for you? What exactly are you quitting? Are you quitting a company because it doesn't match your values? Are you quitting a boss because they lack integrity? Are you quitting a product or service because it just doesn't meet expectations? If you're quitting these things you should and you should feel good about it and hold your head high as you move on to the next thing that does support your values, standards, and integrity. Sales Coaching: Be Intentionally Successful Are those top performers just lucky? Haven't you ever thought to yourself that salesperson sure is lucky? To you it just seems like they can't help but tripping into more business than you can beat the bushes tracking down each day. In reality top performers aren't lucky, but they sure know how to set up systems that produce their luck. You don't accidentally stumble into long-term sales success you develop systems that produce long-term sales success. Insurance Sales: Turn Trade Shows into Premium Lead Events Trade shows for your best prospects are a great way to generate leads if you know how to take advantage of the opportunity. You can reap the benefits without having to rent a booth. The down side to renting a booth in addition to the cost is the fact that you're tied to the booth unless you have enough help to man your booth so that you can be free to roam the event. Most trade shows are recurring and you can know the date of the next one a year in advance, so you have plenty of time to plan your strategy for using this sales technique. When the event is held at a hotel or a convention center connected to a hotel you could rent a room during the event and send post cards to prospects inviting them to visit you to get something they would value. You could also host an after the event cocktail hour in your own private room. Sales Coaching: You are Responsible No one but you is responsible for your actions. But are you taking responsibility for what happens to you? You decide the actions you will or won't take. You make your own decisions. And the things that happens to you are a direct result of those actions or inactions and decisions. Placing blame, making excuses, and denying the facts hurts you and keeps you from the sales success you want. Yet, you may find that the people who are supposed to support you just make things more difficult, and they don't do what they say they will. When you know this to be true it just means that you have to take on the responsibility and take action to get it done. Sales Techniques: Do You have a Selling Attitude? Don't confuse a positive attitude with a selling attitude if you want to improve your sales techniques. You can have the most positive attitude of anyone in your field and absolutely stink when it comes to results. Don't try to talk yourself into a positive attitude get a positive attitude.

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