Insurance Sales: If You have to Cold Call
Cheryl A. Clausen
Cold calling would never be my first recommendation for success, but there are times when you may have no alternative. So, why not learn how to do it well if you have to do it anyway. There are a few simple things you can do to do it better and have greater success. If 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've never learned how to market yourself you may have to do it. If you're like 84% of all sales people you have call reluctance. You hate doing it you get poor results and it damages your fragile ego.
Start getting results from your cold calls by doing these five things until you learn how to market yourself. You can't succeed at cold calling if you won't work on your self-confidence. The people you're calling are neither better than nor less than you, they're just people just like you who've made mistakes and have faults just like you no matter how successful they may be now. There isn't any logical reason they wouldn't want to be contacted by someone who can show them how to get what they want.
Have absolute confidence that you have what they want. If you don't, you're selling the wrong service. When you call them on the phone or drop in unexpectedly the reason they aren't excited to hear from you or see you, is that you haven't done your job and developed a 10 second core marketing message that conveys the emotional impact of getting what they want. Don't call me up to introduce yourself. Please, that's presuming I want to hear from you or see you and I don't. Have a clear objective that benefits the person you're contacting, or don't make the contact. And they shouldn't have to connect the dots or fill in any gaps to get that what you're asking them to do is a real win situation for them.
If you won't block time to make your calls and stick to it no matter what you'll quickly stop doing them. At the end of each week block out 1 hour at the same time each and every day in the upcoming week to make those calls. Allow no interruptions or excuses when that hour comes just make your calls. The best time to reach executives, professionals, or small business owners is very early in the morning before anyone else gets to work. They'll pick up the phone themselves thinking it's someone they know.
You will have to develop the habits that will make you succeed at cold calling. These habits are: self-confidence, a powerful core marketing message that matches the person you're contacting, a commitment to taking action, and doing all these things with enough frequency and conviction that they become a habit that leads to increased insurance sales success.
If you're in a situation where you think you have to cold call, then the only way to do it well is to be prepared and do it. Use ideas and techniques from other industries and adapt then to fit you. Develop a system that works for you and then use it every day making those calls. It's really important that you do it every day if you're going to have success at cold calling. The reason it's important to do it every day is that when you don't you'll procrastinate and talk yourself out of it the days you're supposed to do it. When you commit to doing it every day before you can do anything else you'll do it.
Author: Cheryl Clausen can help you get where you want to be. Check this out to see how your Sales Skills match up. You can succeed faster if you just had more time? Improve your Time Management Skills, check this out. Get your own completely
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