More than ever, many owners and managers look at a weekly report from a marketer and assume that if they have visited 15-20 prospects and clients each day that week, they are killing it. Sadly, those numbers are usually misleading at best, and often fail to tell what’s really going on. There are very important metrics that you should consider when evaluating that report. Remember – it’s all about relationships that get referrals!
NOT ABOUT QUANTITY
If you are focused on quantity of visits and connections by your marketer with clients, it’s like being stuck in the sand, but revving the engine and spinning your wheels. You aren’t going anywhere. There are marketers that call on the same 250 insurance agents every month, doing the same ole same ole. The apparent strategy is “one day, if I keep visiting enough, dropping of donuts regularly, they’ll send us a job.” Reality check: It’s time to lose about 65-70% of those agents.
BE SMART
The smartest marketers concentrate on the “A’s” first, then the “B’s” and finally eliminate the “C’s” from their route. One marketer I talked with this week said she was calling on the same agents for 3 years and yet only had two of them refer jobs (claims) to her! It’s time to qualify and delete many of those agents!
QUALIFY THEM
Every marketer should be evaluating, investigating, and interviewing each prospect to determine if they have the means, interest, or the willingness to refer a job to you. Many of them will never (80-90%) refer a job to you. They may simply: refuse to be involved with claims, not interested in directing their policyholder to a good vendor or are following the rules from their corporate office. Regardless, you are not going to get work from them. Stop calling on them. Quit wasting your time, their time, and your company marketing funds.
Statistics have proven over a ten-year period that only about 10% of potential insurance agents or plumbers (maximum) in your market will ever send you work. Get good at asking the right questions to determine if you should remove them from your visit list. Failing to be blunt and direct will get you a “maybe” which is worthless.
APPLIES TO ALL PROSPECTS
One of the key responsibilities is to be effective and productive. Having said that, every prospect a marketer approaches should be qualified as soon as is possible after meeting them. This qualifying process may take two or three visits, phone calls, and emails, but it’s certainly necessary. Otherwise, you just end up with too many prospects on your list, no valid way to determine if they are credible, and you burn yourself out trying to keep all those prospects moving down the funnel!
As a marketer, you are doing yourself, your prospect, and your employer a terrible disservice if you don’t take the time with each prospect to evaluate and qualify them. Establishing a ranking of “A” “B” or “C” is crucial to making the best use of everyone’s time and money. (“A” for Awesome, “B” for Basic (and Boring), “C” for Crap) Or some other designation you feel comfortable with!
As of 2022, a new survey by Yale University has found… when marketing to your typical disaster restoration prospects:
12 percent of clients make up 85 percent of sales = A
42 percent of clients make up 19 percent of sales = B
46 percent of clients make up 1 percent of sales = C
Properly qualifying your prospects and eliminating those that will never send you a referral is critical to not wasting your marketers valuable time!
SOLUTION?
Teach your marketers how to make the absolute best, most efficient, and effective use of their valuable and limited marketing time.
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