How to Motivate Yourself and Increase Sales Success

Getting motivated can sometimes be one of the biggest barriers between you and the success that you want to experience. And while motivation comes easily for some sales agents, it may not come as easy for others. That's why you might have to work a little harder to motivate yourself to increase the number of sales you have under your belt. If motivation doesn't come naturally to you, here are a few effective strategies you can employ in your daily life to get past those things that are standing between you and increased sales success.

Get your family and friends involved. One of the biggest motivators is telling others about your goals and your plans for achieving those goals. This is for a couple reasons. For one thing, telling others about your goals helps you visualize those goals and helps you get excited about them. But telling your family and friends about your sales goals keeps you accountable. Make sure you keep them updated about your progress and tell them to ask you about your progress regularly to help keep you focused and motivated on achieving those goals. Make plans for celebration after achieving your sales goals. You can stay motivated by planning a big celebration that you can enjoy with your family and friends after reaching your goal. Do you have a plan of hitting $10,000 in sales each month? Or do you have a goal of obtaining 10 new clients? Plan to take your family on a special vacation or something else that you like to do together. Then think about the celebration and visualize it every day to help you stay motivated to attaining your goals. Create a CD or playlist of inspirational quotes. It's one thing to be inspired to reach your goals by reading motivational quotes and listening to motivational speeches by others, but it's even better if you record a CD or a playlist of your reading your favorite inspirational and motivational quotes. Hearing yourself say these inspiring things over and over again will help you visualize yourself moving along toward your goal. Make a list of the things that you don't like about your personal life and your work life. Then look over the list and find ways to eliminate those negative things from your life. This will help you take control of both your work life and your personal life so you can get rid of those negatives and focus on the positives. Spend time with the best in the business. There is an adage that states that you become the company that you keep. So if you make it a habit to spend time with some of the best sales agents in your industry, you are more likely to perform on a level closer to theirs. On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time with sales agents who are unmotivated, you could be doing yourself a disservice because you may pick up some of their habits and practices without even knowing it.

Staying motivated is one of the most difficult things for some people to do. And when you are a sales agent, it is even more important to stay motivated so you can reach a level of success that you want to reach. Using these tips will help you stay motivated to help remove those obstacles along the road to sales success.

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Insurance Lead Generation - Attitudes for Success

It is actually a tough challenge for insurance agents to come up with a huge number of insurance leads right away especially if the agent is a beginner and does not have enough experience when it comes to insurance lead generation. That is why it is important for the agents to be a keen observer when it comes to lead generation so that they can be able to gather enough information upon helping them with gathering insurance leads.

Being one of the most essential things that every individual needs today, the insurance is truly a big area for competition. This is one of the main factors which make lead generation a tough job to insurance agents. Of course, each company has to come up with a unique and attractive way in order to market their sales. Some insurance companies offer freebies while some attract customers by extremely low rates. Whatever strategy they use, it is still at the hands of the insurance agent on how to successfully convince prospects to sign the papers. Upon lead generation, here are some of the key attitudes that each agent or broker must have in order to be successful upon his profession.

Patience - This is most likely one of the most important things that every insurance agent or broker must possess. Collecting insurance leads could be hard because you are going to experience a lot of rejections. However, with patience and endurance, you can be able to handle this challenge without any troubles. Skilled - Of course, for you to be able to be a successful and effective insurance agent, you should possess unique skills and characteristics. Your skills will be your main weapon upon collecting leads because it includes your strategy on how to convince prospects and how to market your company. It also contains your ability of handling different situations wherein you have to make a wise decision. Honest - One of the characters that every individual is looking forward upon an insurance agent is honesty. They have to make sure that you won't manipulate issues just to juice them up for money. So, for you to be able to get the trust of people, you should show them that you are honest and never smear your career with bad records. Resourceful - If you want to be an effective insurance agent, you should know how to make the most of what you have. Make use of all your resources and connections when it comes to advertising your company. By doing that, you will find it easy to advertise your provider. There are a lot of things that you can make us of such as referrals, and also the different tools that you can use in order to market your insurance. Insurance Industry Associations - Seven Reasons Why You Should Become a Member   How to Sell Life Insurance Effectively - By Email   Insurance Brokers Ease the Way to Successful Coverage   7 Ways to Find a Reputable Insurance Agent in Florida   Useful Tips for Selling Insurance   

Identifying Insurance Fraud

Due to the constant expansion of our world, more and more people are searching for different ways on how to earn money. Surely, the majority of these people land on looking for a job, or even establishing their own businesses. Unfortunately, there are also some who considers cheating on others just to earn a living. These scammers have a lot of techniques when it comes to victimizing innocent people and ending up stealing their hard-earned money. One of the most popular ways is by company frauds.

Company or business fraud is one of the well-known scams nowadays because it is probably the most used strategy when it comes to deceiving people. Scammers, dressed in corporate or business-looking attire will come up to someone, offer something, get the money and never be seen again. This will then leave the victim in a very unfortunate situation. The insurance, being one of the largest types of businesses, is the most targeted by scammers. That is why, here are some of the most important things that you should do and observe in order to distinguish whether the insurance company or agent is a fraud or not.

Too eager to sign - Scammers are usually very eager to make you sign the contract and could not wait for another day. They will urge to sign right away so that there would be no turning back. Licensed insurance agents usually give you a day or so to think carefully about the offer. So if someone comes to you and forces you to sign right away, don't! Impossible benefits - Fake agents will usually use their "so-called" company's outstanding benefits in order to get you interested. These benefits may include extremely low rates and many more. However, be really careful upon giving your trust to these agents because this might be a blinding strategy. Check for backgrounds - Whenever an agent comes to you and offers you something, ask about the company his working for and always conduct a background search. The internet may come in very handy because you can use it to search for any bad records, and every information that you would need to know with regards to their company. Tricky answers - These "so-called" agents will not answer directly to what you're asking. In fact, they will try to trick you with very long answers which do not actually make any sense.

Well, these are the basic things for you to know whether the agent is a fraud or not. Always remember that the most important requirement is keen observance. You have to consider the agent's every single move so that you would know whether you should trust him or not.

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How Insurance Agents Can Guide Clients to Produce the Best Referrals

In our prior article, we told you about a Producer who got 10 referrals & quoted only 3 of them, selling 1. What went wrong? Bottom-line, he could have done some things a lot better at the time he asked for the referrals. Things, I call "guiding" to get the best referral, so you throw as few away as possible! Ideally, what we want are referrals that are:

1) in the right class, 2) of the right size, and 3) of the best quality.

So, how do you ask to accomplish all that?

I encourage Producers to use what I call the "Ideal Prospect Definition" sandwich.

* The Top Slice of Bread describes the quality we want * The Meat of the Sandwich is the Class we are seeking * The Bottom Slice of Bread describes the size parameters

Let me give you an example using the "Ideal Prospect Definition". Asking for the right class is the easiest part, and often, size is manageable too, but the example given in the story from last month explained the fact that 5 of the 10 referrals that Producer got had to be thrown away because he obtained referrals of poor quality. How do we deal with the quality of the referral? By really guiding, that's how! on" sandwich from above:

1. Who is a "Growing, Profitable, Well Run, Well-Managed" ("standard" to get quality) 2. Electrical Contractor (put the class or industry type in the middle as your "meat") 3. With 5 or more vehicles (specific criteria by class to get the right size at the end)

When you ask this way, and really guide...and get the introduction from your referral source, you will limit your "throw-aways". Referrals are too precious to bear the weight of many "casualties", so use the Sandwich concept to limit them. Further, you can also bring a list to show to your source that has screened this down so that you know you have the right size, the right class and perhaps, the good credit leading to a quality referral.

My personal belief is that better run businesses, ones that are profitable and growing, and are well-run and well-managed, will have fewer loss and credit issues common with other types of "throw-aways". Work to prevent those things from happening - YOUR time is too precious to throw many back.

My next article will expand on this idea further, and I will give you another reason why you want only quality, not just any, referrals.

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My First Big Insurance Sale As An Insurance Agency Producer

I can recall the first big sale I made as an agency producer. This occurred just after my first anniversary as an agent. This sale produced my first five figure commission - an exciting result for a young agent in the depressed Upstate NY market.

Today I wanted to share how this deal came to fruition, and why I think a more efficient sales and marketing process is needed for most agency producers.

I called to prospect this husband and wife. They had large existing life insurance policies with my agency that had been dormant for years. I vaguely knew who they were, so I reached out to them. They were open to a meeting to review their coverage. I visited them for an initial meeting (on-site meeting #1 - one hour plus round trip in my car). We discussed their current policies and how the life market has changed. I shared several stories of how I had recently improved coverage or cut costs for similar families. They decided to think it over. I made several follow up calls and emails, and they eventually agreed to a second meeting where I could provide a comparison of their current coverages to what was likely achievable given quality ratings (on-site meeting #2 - another hour plus round trip via car). We met and spoke for about an hour regarding how changes in mortality and changes in policy design had made opportunities like this possible. I explained that as long as their health was excellent (it was) we should have no obstacles to a very positive result. They were interested, but again wanted to think it over. I made a couple follow up calls and was able to reach the wife, who explained they would like to apply for the new policies. I scheduled a meeting and requested that my staff prepare applications and the infinite forms required (on-site meeting # 3 - another hour plus round trip via car). We met to complete the applications, review the process of their medical exam, and several other details. I then went back to the office that night to review the applications and make sure everything was complete and correct, and left them for my staff to submit. My team submitted the applications and I moved on to other things as we waited for the medical exams to be completed and the long underwriting process to mature. Several weeks later, I received approval. I met with the client a last time to deliver the policies and collect the initial premium. I was very excited that I was able to provide them with a great service, while earning significant compensation (on-site meeting #4 - another hour plus in the car). I passed along the final delivery forms and check to my team and went back to work, checking weekly for the arrival of the commission check. My agency received the commission and I was finally paid.

This 10 step process took approximately 120 days start to finish. A dozen calls, four on-site meetings, infinite forms, and a great deal of patience. I was obviously busy chasing other prospects throughout this time, so the time passed quickly. However, in retrospect, this seems like a long sales cycle, massive time investment. and a lot of road time.

As you work to build your book of business, make sure that you clearly define your goals and the typical commission you will earn in your target market. If your typical sale is reflected above, then you must be earning five figure commissions to make each sale worth your time investment. And with today's technology and tools, many of these calls and on-site meetings could be done with Skype or GoToMeeting. These are effective, personal and efficient. If you can reduce your time in the field and increase your time with prospects, you can sell more insurance.

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Making a Good Customer Value Proposition Better

Introduction

The creators of the Balanced Scorecard, Robert Norton and David Kaplan, view the customer value proposition ("CVP") as the "heart of strategy". They very succinctly stated that: "Strategy is based on a differentiated customer value proposition. Satisfying [your] customers is the source of sustainable value creation."

A customer value proposition is an offering that helps customers do an important job more effectively, conveniently, or affordably than the alternatives. In addition to being "the heart of strategy" it is one of the 4 key components of a business model (which include: 1) customer value proposition, 2) revenue/profit formula, 3) resources and 4) processes such as manufacturing). In my opinion, successful customer value propositions have certain common characteristics, are inextricably linked to the offer(s) and need to be supported by the people, processes and technology geared towards delivering on the CVP in a manner that conveys an intimate understanding of the customer's requirements.

Successful businesses that exist in a competitive industry environment know all too well about the need to gain and maintain sustainable points of differentiation in the form of a superior customer value proposition. They also understand the nature of customer value proposition - that it is not a single undertaking as customer's experiences, preferences wants and needs, fluctuate, evolve and change over time. Furthermore, developing and maintaining a superior CVP is a "C" level activity, not to be pushed off to marketing and/or sales as an exercise in positioning. The traditional marketing exercise for developing a customer value proposition was to consider the following "tweaks" (i.e. improving, transforming or reinventing the CVP) to the generic product or service:

• Raising benefits.

• Reducing costs.

• Raising benefits while lowering costs.

• Raising benefits by more than the increase in costs.

• Lowering benefits by less than the reduction in costs.

While this is a start in the right direction, it is a bit too simplistic, geared narrowly towards an offer and is missing a few essential elements.

The 7 Essential Elements of a Customer Value Proposition

A truly effective customer value proposition has the following 7 essential elements:

1. The CVP is Created by Conducting a Thorough Needs Analysis - starting with a complete understanding of the customer, determining what their needs, preferences and requirements of an improved solution would be (that meets or exceeds these needs and/or preferences). Again, determining how these identified needs are currently being satisfied, and applying the litmus test to an improved product or service in the areas of: effectiveness, affordability and convenience (per the definition of CVP above). Ultimately, the CVP creators must determine the elements that deliver (and will continue to deliver) the greatest value (or "bang for the buck") amongst the alternatives that a customer has access to. A complete customer profile analysis can assist a busi