Strategic Planning: What does Strategic Planning have to do with Sales?

If you enjoy working hard, and struggling day in and day out to hit your targets then strategic planning has nothing to do with sales. But if you'd like to make more and work less then strategic planning has everything to do with sales. There are two distinct approaches to sales, and the choice is yours to make.

The approach that most sales people take is to focus on being incredibly active hoping that all that activity will result in sales. The problem with that approach is that you and I both know people who tried that approach, worked nearly night and day yet they still failed. And that contradicts what you’re constantly being told by sales managers, broker dealers, underwriters, and others.

Why does that approach fail, or at best provide not much more than a very meager living? It fails because just being highly active is never enough. You have to be focused on the right activities.

The right activities are those that position you with the right people so when you meet you’re meeting: for the right reasons, people who are highly likely to do business with you, and people who’ve preselected themselves as being ideal customers for you. Now that’s very different from the approach that just focuses on activity because with that approach you’re meeting: anyone who can fog a mirror, people who aren’t likely to do business with you, and people you have to try and coerce into doing business with you. It’s pretty obvious when you see it laid out like this that the activity based approach just isn’t a very good business model for you, or anyone.

The second approach is based on limiting your activities to those that are highly productive for you. Now you’re focused on learning and doing the right things that put money in the bank for you. You have a whole lot more time and money because you aren’t running around like a starving wolf trying to find some fresh game each day.

Ok, you get there is definitely a difference and that one approach produces better results than the other, but you may not get how strategic planning fits in. You probably think strategic planning is something that only large corporations and international conglomerates do, but it’s something you need to do too on a much smaller and much more focused scale. The strategic planning process helps you to develop the clarity about your business that you need to effectively attract customers.

Strategic planning helps you to determine the potential you see for your business, and through that clarity you can begin to develop a plan for how you’ll get that potential. Ultimately you end up with a dash board that serves as a working document for you, so you know exactly what you need to do when. And you can track, measure, and adapt so you don’t miss your targets.

Instead of starting each day wondering what you’re going to do and what you should do, you know exactly what you need to do to get the results you want. You know who you want to do it with, and you have a clear plan for how to attract those people. Instead of constantly hunting for appointments you develop plans and systems that filter out the people who aren’t right for you and gather in the people who are.

Sales Strategy: But They Told Me They Wanted It!

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 purchase. 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.

Buyers are highly emotional in their decision making process. Somehow you’ve gotten their attention or entered their radar, and they’re all excited about buying. And you get all excited because this probably doesn’t happen just all that often to you, and you’re thinking this is going to be one of the easiest sales you’ve ever made.

So how does it all fall apart? In your excitement to fulfill their perceived need you fell into a deadly sales trap. You fell into the trap of thinking the reason they told you they wanted to buy was the real reason or an important reason to them.

The truth is these buyers aren’t really clear about their need or what they want. They get caught up in an idea and think they want to buy, but then they start thinking about it and they realize that they really don’t need what your offering or they really don’t want what they thought they wanted. A recent commercial depicts a young man in a store looking at a big screen TV all excited and engaged in the purchase ready to pull the trigger and buy when a pig, representing savings, slaps the guy on the hand and tells him he doesn’t need that and the poor salesperson is left holding the bag just like you.

So how do you circumvent and avoid this? Until or unless you help the prospect to clearly understand that there is a need and that the need is important you have a window shopper on your hands. Your prospect has to have a light bulb go off solidifying for them exactly what they want to do, why that’s important, and why it’s important to take action now.

The easiest way for you to help the prospect through this thought process is to ask good questions. When you have an over eager buyer you need to get them to take a step back to help you understand why they need what you have. In most cases, the quickest way toward a sale is to step back.

Through your gentle probing questions you’re helping the prospect to build their own case for purchase. Now the great thing about that is people hate to be wrong, so if they wanted to back away from the sale later they’d have to disagree with their own argument and that’s highly unlikely. Through this sales discussion both you and the prospect have the same information at the same time, and when that happens you reach the same conclusion and that means a sale for you if you’re a match.

Time Strategies: Want to Work with Customers Who'll Get You the Greatest Return on Your Time Investment?

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.

Once you know who you’re looking to attract the next step is to understand these people better than the competition. That means that rather than wasting your time and their time sending them information or calling them to tell them about you and what you have to offer, you’re going to prepare a message that resonates with them about what they want and what they need and why they aren’t getting that now. You can’t do that unless you do your homework.

Your homework requires that you do a little research until you know the top 3 concerns they’re actively thinking and perhaps worrying about. This will take more than going to their website and reading about them, although if they have one you should certainly do that. You’ll have to read, listen, and pay attention to what they do.

Armed with this knowledge your ready to figure out the message you want to send them. Your message has to speak to them about what they want or need and why it’s difficult to get it or why they’re struggling to get it. You have to make it clear to them that you understand them, and that you have something they want.

Even when you have all that you usually mess things up by having either no offer, or an offer they’re unlikely to take you up on. Just throwing your message out there and hoping someone will contact you is hopeless. You might get one or two responses on a rare occasion, but nothing consistent and nothing predictable.

When you’ve done all the work to this point, don’t throw it away by hoping for an action. Make sure there will be an action by extending an offer they’ll have to take you up on. You can think of this offer as the bait.

Make sure you have the right bait for the right people then offer that bait to them. An offer to call you or have a free insurance evaluation is a poor choice because everyone knows that’s an offer for a sales pitch, and people aren’t likely to volunteer to be sold to. A better choice is an offer that educates them about something they want or want to avoid, and provides a low risk way to get it so they don’t have to talk to you to get it. While this may seem like a lot of work on the upfront it will save you time and increase your results in the long run so you can consistently and predictably get the customers you want.

Are Your Insurance Sales Hot like a Bowl of Chili?

If your sales aren't hot you may be frustrated and confused. You know the sales and marketing systems you're using are working for others, but they aren't working for you. How or why can that be?

Because you’re reading this article I’m pretty confident that you have at least some experience and knowledge with eating. And that’s why I think you’ll be able to relate to the examples I’m going to use to convey my point even if you’ve never personally eaten chili. In case you don’t know what chili is, it’s a hot spicy soup.

Have you ever noticed that both you and your mother can follow the same recipe using the same ingredients and the same tools yet your chili doesn’t taste as good as her chili? Theoretically your soups should taste exactly the same, so why is it they don’t? Given the same recipe, the same ingredients, and the same tools to cook with the difference has to be in your techniques.

The same is true when you try to follow a sales or marketing system provided by someone else. You have the exact same systems as everyone else yet when you use these systems you don’t get the same results. There are subtle differences in your application of these systems that you aren’t aware of.

These differences exist and will always exist for scientific reasons. You see, your born with natural behaviors and motivators. You don’t see things, think about things, or respond to things the exact same way as the person or persons who created the systems your following.

That doesn’t make you wrong or the systems wrong. It does mean that you need to make adaptations in how you apply those systems so they better fit who you are naturally. When you do the application of those systems feels more comfortable for you, and they work much more effectively for you.

Have you ever been to a chili cook off? Now in this case everyone is conceptually cooking the same thing, chili. But everyone at the cook off has their own unique interpretation and presentation of the same dish. One entrant’s version of the soup is selected as being the best version and they win. There is a direct analogy to your insurance sales success.

To your customers you look like just another chili cook off entrant. The problem with your cook off recipe is that it looks like, smells like, and tastes like most of the other cook off entrant’s chili. The winner is the agent who knows how to present a chili recipe that stands out among all the other chili entries. And that happens for you when you’re able to create a core marketing message and unique market position that attracts the interest and attention of the right people.

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