Learning from my Mistakes
Posted by newagentsolutions on June 9, 2008
I was regrouping from my first week of disappointing appointments but I was happy I had my first sale under my belt. I now knew my manager would start giving me new leads to work on and my business would be humming right along. Little did I know that all those people who were waiting on my call were being called by everyone and their brother…
In the space of two weeks the ten of us who started together had dwindled down to five. Three more new health insurance agents had given up during the past week. Only three of us had made sales the previous week, and one of those agents had been busy selling to his family members.(not that there is anything wrong with that, he happens to still be a good personal friend of mine: more about him later.)
I focused on my mistakes of the previous week and came to the conclusion that the “one size fits all” call script that the manager had given me just was not working, and that not giving quotes over the phone was going to lead to a lot of appointments of people wanting real health insurance for $50 a month. I also realized that I needed to know a little about a someones health so that I could look it up the underwriting guide and provide a suitable presentation beforehand.
Over the next several weeks I tried out several call scripts and quoting methods and here are some of the mistakes I made before having a call script that had it right:
1. Overqualified: Set way to few appointments and left out people who could have really used a discount, rx, or accident plan even though their health condition would have caused them to be declined for health insurance.
2. Gave one quote: This gave any competitor that could quote the prospect a lower rate an advantage over me.
3. Had me talking way to much instead of me listening to the prospect…
4. Giving way too much information: Prospects just started asking me to send information.
By the time I had put together a good way of making calls I was really getting worried. I was still running plenty of appointments but had made only a handful of sales. I was still only coming out ahead by $150 to $250 a week, and I knew I could do better working at McDonalds (or much better going back to my old job) but I had already put so much time and effort in so far I did not want to give up yet. I knew there had to be some way to make more sales and get better leads…
