Are You a Person of Interest?

A good friend of mine recently remarked to me; "To be interested in people is to be interesting to them." We were discussing at the time the subject of sales people and their treatment of customers; particularly we were talking about the conversations sales people have with potential customers. His summary of it all was in the aforementioned statement .

To be Interested...is Interesting

As a young man growing up with a father who was a sales professional, my friend often recalled how he was advised to always get into the other person's world when talking to them. Allow the people you are in contact with to talk about the things they want to talk about and not what you want to talk about. Don't give in to the urge to talk about yourself or your concerns as a sales professional. Rather, get into the habit of listening to what other people have on their mind; what their concerns and needs are instead of what is important to you at the time. Do this, his father would advise, and you will be a successful sales professional.

A Bore is Someone that Talks about What is Important to Them

Don't be a bore to your customers. Resist the urge to talk about products and services that you offer from a company-centered perspective. By company-centered, I am referring to the trap many sales professionals fall into when having a sales conversation with someone. Company-centered conversations are focused on what it is you have to sell. It is a conversation that revolves about product details, service contracts, costs & price, logistical support and other metrics to prove your product or your service is better than the competition.

A company-centered sales conversation ignores the needs of the customer...It assumes the customer will draw the natural conclusion that if the product being offered is bigger & better than anyone else's, it must be what the customer wants. That just isn't the case oftentimes.

If I ask You What Time it is...Don't Tell Me How to Build a Watch

The above cliche' rings eternally true in the world of sales. People are not interested in what it is that you have to sell...They are interested in what it does for them. That is what people buy. They don't care about the company, the agency, or you, for that matter. At least, customers don't care about those things as much as they care about themselves and their own particular needs. It's a natural part of the human condition. It is neither right nor wrong to be naturally interested in oneself. It simply is a fact of our nature.

And in knowing and understanding human nature, the prudent sales professional recognizes the necessity in being "interested" in the customers they speak with on a daily basis. To be interested is truly interesting to customers.

Interest Earned is Profit Made

Being interested in customers, or prospects, results in increased revenue and profits for the insurance professional. If you show interest in people, ask them questions about their lives and their concerns; and if you seek to understand them and their needs, they will be drawn to you and, in turn, will find you to be an interesting person. That just may be enough to persuade them to buy from you instead of some other, "boring" salesperson. Get interested in people, your agency's survival depends upon it.

Copyright © 2010 - Tony Cefalu

Your Money is Your Business...Literally

Expense Management is a Key to Survival for the Small Business Owner

It is a very competitive business landscape in virtually every sector of the market; particularly hard hit by rising costs in recent years has been the insurance and financial services industry. The slightest miscalculation in spending valuable agency resources can result in a tremendous amount of harm to vital cash-flow needs and deplete precious capital reserves needed to continue operating the agency and meeting payroll demands.

As commissions (revenues) steadily decrease among most insurance companies along with increasing operating expenses, agents are seeking new outlets to acquire customers and access new streams of prospects to drive growth, achieve policy count increases and offset the challenge of higher operating expenses.

It all Begins with a Simple Choice

Expense management is not as complicated a matter as is often made of it at the agency level. In fact, when considered against the backdrop of some simple questions related to sales & marketing, controlling expenses is not a difficult process.

It is not the choice between one thing to spend money on and another that presents difficulty for most agents. It is the actual follow through on that decision, or the execution of the choice to spend or not to spend, that causes the most problems for agents and other small business people.

Making the choice between good and bad, wise and foolish, smart and…not so smart, are easy choices to make. But acting on those choices; now that is a different challenge altogether.

Expense Management begins with the Two Questions

1. Is the money I am considering spending intended to drive prospects to my business?

2. If not, does the money I am considering spending go towards keeping the business entity viable and operating effectively and efficiently so I can drive customers to my storefront and keep the current ones that I have acquired?

-If the answer to both questions is, no; then don’t spend the money…Or, if you feel absolutely compelled to spend the money anyway, at least, spend the money very slowly, deliberately…and very reluctantly.

-If the answer to either is, yes, then spend it…And, yes, spend it carefully and wisely.

Recognize that the farther you deviate from this two question standard, the farther away the business drifts away from profitability and solvency.

Expense management has to do with the discipline of follow through.

Can you say, no, to one expense and, yes, to another after applying the two question standard…and then actively follow through with the decision?

I am not begrudging agents and other business owners the liberty to spend their money on what they want. The freedom to make choices and decisions is one of the great attractions of being a business owner; and being an American for that matter. What I am suggesting is that agents take the time to consider their expenditures, and impulses, through the filter of the two question standard.

Impulses and Careless Spending can Lead to Business Failure

Many times, I have observed the unnecessary spending of precious business funds on things that are not relevant to the business goal. Blackberry phones, expensive pens and office items, unneeded office furniture and decorations, unnecessary and frequent business meals and excessive spending on office supplies to name a few are examples of expense traps that many agents can fall prey to when making spending choices.

And as a matter of record, it is oftentimes the small and seemingly “harmless’ expenditures that cause big problems for the agent owner.

Inevitably, the day will come when money is needed for an expenditure that could actually drive prospects to your storefront, but the funds will not be there to spend. Why? Because satellite radio and that Monte Blanc pen you wanted for the office to impress clients was purchased instead.

Logic could be used to justify the purchasing of all of the aforementioned items. But if squarely applied to the two question standard, and critically assessed in regard to their benefit to the overall success of the agency, the answer would be to forego those expenses. It would be wiser to spend the money on marketing & sales processes within the office that will have a direct impact on revenues and in lowering expense ratios.

Then when the day comes where you have adequate disposable income and the liberty to spend your money more liberally, then do so; enjoy the fruits of your labor. But for the agent, particularly for the new agent with tight tolerances for spending capital resources, be disciplined and deliberate in what you spend your money.

Freedom can Kill You…And it can Kill the Business…

Again, I feel it necessary to remind readers that your money is your business, literally. The ability to spend money and to make choices is a relative matter and a highly personal one as well.

Some agents have the fortunate ability to spend more than others on a variety of different things. Some agents have a very narrow margin of discretionary money, and are thus; more sensitive to cash-flow issues. This causes them to keep expenses strictly centered on profit and growth spending more so than the individual with a greater capacity for spending outside the boundaries of necessity.

Agents operating under narrow margins, which are most common, have no latitude for deviation from the two question standard. Still, the wonderful part of business ownership is the ability to exercise personal authority over the spending of money as you see fit. After all, it is your business, and no one else’s, especially when it comes to what you spend your money on.

But with the wonderful privilege of business ownership and the freedom of choice that comes with it, there can also be a curse brought upon the business owner. Freedom without self-discipline is a curse…and a killer; a killer of profit.

It is also a killer of production excellence, personal achievement, and a killer of many small business ventures in the end. Freedom without discipline soon leads to bondage and enslavement financially.

In regard to expenses and managing them properly as a business owner, there’s a certain discipline necessary that every agent-owner must exercise in order to adhere to the two question standard.

The answer to expense management issues is not the solution to the problem of expense management. It is the active adherence to the answer that is the solution to the problem…

The questions, once again, are this:

1. Is the money I am considering spending intended to drive prospects to my business?

2. Does the money I am considering spending go towards keeping the business entity viable and operating effectively and efficiently so I can keep current customers or drive new customers to my storefront?

The answer is going to be either, yes or no to either question. But the solution is not in concluding on a yes or no answer. The solution is in the deliberate, disciplined act of not spending when it is so indicated, or desired.

That is the discipline of expense management. Sounds simple in its basic form; that's because it is simple. But simple doesn't mean it is easy. The hard work is in the application of the answers; the discipline and determination to execute on the answers is the challenge and the magic to effective expense management as an agency owner.

After all, your money is your business.

Copyright © 2010 - Tony Cefalu

The Closing Ratio is Queen

If cash flow is king, then selling, or the closing ratio, is queen. This is just one example of simplicity and the need for clarity in small business management. Stay focused on what matters to your agency and keep it as simple as possible. Don't complicate things; considering life is complicated enough, why would any small business owner want to make things worse for themselves?

Start first by resisting the urge to do everything. Keep to the basics and be flawless at the essentials when it comes to running an agency.

Football legend and National Football Hall of Fame coach, Vince Lombardi, is reported to have held up high a football saying the following to his recruits and returning veterans on the first day of football practice every year before the regular season opened; “Gentleman, this is a football.”

What a strange thing to have said to these men; many of whom were living football legends in their own right, professionals who had dedicated their lives to the perfection of their craft, who had sacrificed their bodies and their hearts and minds for years in the pursuit of excellence and sporting greatness .

Of course, these men knew that what he held high in his hand was a football. But that wasn’t what Vince Lombardi was trying to say. What he was reminding them all, rookie and veteran alike, is that success is a simple matter.

He was reminding all of them, and you and me today, that the road to success and glory isn’t some secret or privilege reserved for the few or some special class of people. Success is about being great at the basics and in keeping things simple.

Football is about blocking, tackling, running and passing the ball. Beyond these basic principles, there isn’t much more to the game of football that the mind cannot overcome. His charge to his players was as genius as it was simple at the start of every season; keep it simple by being great at the basics.

We can take a lesson from his approach. In our profession, selling insurance and financial services products, our great need is to embrace simplicity, to keep things simple and resist the urge to do it all…right now.

Like football where the team that blocks best, tackles best, runs best and passes the football best is usually the winner; the agent, or agency, that runs an effective organization best, markets best, and sells best…wins.

It doesn’t get any more complicated than that.

Be great at the basics. Focus on what is important to success and don’t try to boil the ocean.


Copyright © 2010 - Tony Cefalu

Marketing Basics

As I define it, marketing is all those things we do to get and keep customers. It is an area of small business ownership that can often be the most difficult to do. Why is that true? Because marketing is about “getting and keeping” customers, it involves action, movement, execution and persistency…and a lot of patience at times.

It is the “block and tackle” part of the sales business; the foundational work from which all sales results are born. Without the hard work of marketing, nothing, absolutely nothing gets done for the insurance agent.

The following principles will help in building effective marketing processes within an agency.

1. Focus the majority of your daily energy on the execution of specific marketing activities. Compared with selling, marketing involves a greater degree of effort in order to be successful. Once a prospect is face-to-face with a sales professional, the great majority of them will buy. Insurance agencies never fail because of a weak sales force or poor individual salesmanship. Agencies fail because of inadequate or ineffective marketing execution. The secret to sales success is no secret at all; having enough opportunities to conduct a sales conversation with people is what creates sales success. The only way that can be accomplished is through executing a marketing plan. Don’t be distracted from the simple fact that marketing success is fueled by determined and consistent execution of a plan of marketing. Otherwise, it’s just a plan and nothing more.

2. A solid marketing plan has balance within and without. It has balance in terms of mining business opportunities from within the book of business and without the book of business. That is, there is oftentimes a “book within the book” when referring to additional sales to current customers. Take every opportunity available to you in order to cross sell and even “up-sell” your current customer list. A lopsided marketing approach common to agents is to market their current customers almost exclusively at the sacrifice of marketing outside the book towards new ones. That is a mistake in terms of missed opportunities for growth and stability.

3. A solid marketing plan has balance in creating awareness and in creating attraction. By marketing awareness, I am referring to broad based advertising such as billboards, radio and television ads, telephone book ads, fliers and posters, signs plus any other media designed more for market presence and identity rather than driving business to a specific storefront, website or phone number. Be discriminate with your marketing budget. Have a presence in both marketing realms. But use the bulk of your marketing dollars on processes that specifically attract and drive business to your transaction portals be it a brick and mortar storefront, an Internet site or a 1-800 number. The desire to feel good about buying billboard space or telephone book ads should be tempered by the reality that these marketing mediums do little in terms of creating an acceptable return on investment for the insurance agent trying to grow his/her business.

4. A solid marketing plan has balance between passive processes and active processes. The idea of passive and active processes fits well with our previous discussion about awareness and attraction. Many marketing awareness efforts are not “efforts” at all. They tend to be passive attempts at getting people in front of you. A billboard, for instance, is an extremely popular yet passive means of marketing. Many agents use billboards to market themselves. And sadly, many more use billboards and other passive methods are their primary means for marketing. These methods tend to be expensive, difficult to measure in terms of return on investment, and simply do not produce the predictable efforts of more active means of marketing. I will not discount the importance of billboard advertising and other passive-awareness methods in an overall, well balanced marketing strategy. What I will discount is the effectiveness of such advertising over more active methods such as cold calling and other telemarketing, leveraging centers of influence and other relationships, participating in civic and community events,

Copyright © 2010 - Tony Cefalu