"I have all these prospects that I'm following up on" - Lies we tell ourselves?

| 28 Feb 2018

You keep calling the same people, who keep putting you off or who keep saying "Call me back next week". You feel good because you are making the calls, you are doing your activities, and you have an answer for your agency leader - "Look, I have all these prospects that I'm following up on." Whether consciously or subconsciously, is this a lie that you are telling yourself?

Perhaps you are afraid to face the truth? That your prospecting funnel is dry.

It is not surprising as even though prospecting is the life blood of the insurance business, it is also one of the toughest parts for most people. Experienced advisers will know that the “selling” or planning and convincing when you can sit down with a prospect is the easy part. Hence, advisers fall into the trap of being willing parties to be stringed along by non-quality and non-sincere prospects.

This is why the sharing by Tommy Archer on MDRT Blog is so apt: “A quick no is better than a slow maybe”.

When he was just starting out in the financial services profession, Tommy Archer, heard this reply far too often, “I can’t talk right now; call me back next week.”

Then the 16-year MDRT member from New York, read a book that told him the importance and efficiency of motivating prospects into a decision.

So he called 50 of these people to tell them today would be the last day he was calling. “I know you want me to call you back, but this is it,” he said. “Do you want to move forward or not? I respect your time, but I will not be calling you back.”

Though 47 people declined to buy, three purchased a policy from Archer, who was grateful for the freedom of getting rid of the people who kept saying “call me back, call me back” with no intention of working with him. “In the back of your mind, you think you have all these prospects, but you really don’t,” he said. “People are just keeping you on the line. I’d much rather have a quick no than a slow maybe. At the end of the day, I want to move on.”

Perhaps it is time you do the same for prospects who keep telling you to “Call me back.”

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