Services and Support

Equipping Expertise Productivity

"At MarTech we are dedicated to your success. Listening to you, together we will progressively work toward reaching your destination."
- Deborah Miller, President

 

Equipping Leaders

Let's face it -- to make a decent living in the insurance industry, producers must sell and close good accounts. While some producers have the wonderful fortune of working within an agency with some type of established support structure, most agencies give the producer full charge of their own destiny believing they either have fortitude or they don't have it! This is the old "Throw It Up Against a Wall and See What Sticks" method of producing salespeople.

Yet, how many producers truly possess the organizational skills, time-management skills, communication skills and phone skills necessary to make a good living? Some develop them over time, but many don't, and either way translates into wasted time and dollars within your agency.

Ask yourself these seven questions . . .        How satisfied are you with the amount and quality of new business your producers bring into the agency?        How important is it to you that your producers get into enough doors to close enough sales to make a good living?        How would your agency benefit if your producers had so many open doors for appointments with new prospects that they turn prospects away?        How much more would your producers enjoy working with your agency if they had the luxury to pick and choose who they quoted while closing more sales?        How many of those "diamond producers" the consultants speak of would you be able to recruit if you had a warm pipeline ready for them to start with?        How much additional revenue would your agency generate if you would generate one or two of these improvements?

The true answers to these questions are evidenced by your agency's bottom-line profit!

MAPS^TMReduces New Producer Hiring Expense

One of the costliest endeavors an agency undertakes is the hiring and training of a new producer. We've designed MAPS^TM to help you save perhaps thousands of dollars when bringing in a new producer. How?

MAPS^TM can begin a new pipeline of prospects in advance of the producer accepting the position so your new producer is ready to hit the pavement running with warm prospects already aware of your agency's name. This simple process gives your new producer the means to validate in one-half the time, saving your agency potentially thousands of dollars. Plus, as your new producer is in training, MAPS^TM faithfully works in the background "staying in touch" with prospects. Even before they make their first phone call, your agent already has the reputation of being reliable.

MAPS^TM Help New Producers Cope with Rejection

Perhaps one of the most advantageous aspects of MAPS,^TM especially for the new producer, is the way it helps them cope with rejection. Even with strong ego strength and ego drive, it is difficult to train a new producer to enjoy being rejected. MAPS^TM can turn this around using the principle of reciprocity. Today's "no" can be turned into tomorrow's "yes" with a little persistence. If the producer hears a "no" and makes no contact during the following year, the prospect feels little or no obligation to say "yes" the second time. If the prospect only receives junk-type mail in the form of impersonal newsletters, there is still no relationship.

Yet when your agency uses MAPS,^TM and the prospect receives 12 personally signed, professional, relationship-developed letters from the producer, the law of reciprocity makes it very difficult for the prospect to say "no." It is easier to reward the producer's hard, persistent work with an appointment because the producer has honored the prospect in advance. A greater appointment- to-call ratio will create more sales no matter how experienced the producer might be.

Develop Producers & Monitor Their Results = Attainment!

Its clear MAPS^TM fills a producer's pipeline with qualified prospects interested in an appointment! Still, bringing a horse to water doesn't mean it will drink! In the vast majority of cases, a producer fails because of one of four reasons:

• the producer lacked the ability or motivation required for success in insurance sales;
• the producer was poorly trained;
• the producer was poorly managed; or
• the compensation system was defective.

Although it may seem unfair to place responsibility for the failure of unsuccessful producers entirely on management, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion the producer who fails should have been better trained or managed, or should not have been selected in the first place.

In the same way, your Marketing AutoPilot Sales^TM System can't make the sale for your producers. MAPS^TM will get producers in the door, yet they must qualify the prospect, close the sale and pick up the check!

Training vs. Sales Management

While training provides the basic knowledge and skills needed for success, coaching helps your producers perfect the application of these skills. Once the basic skills are taught, many sales managers consider the learning experience complete, and they leave the producer to survive or fail with little more in the way of assistance, except for the occasional, "You need to make more calls."

After analyzing numerous successes and failures, we are convinced the single most important factor in the success or failure of new producers in the agency business is the agency's effectiveness in sales management. You see, there is a great deal more to sales management than pumping up the enthusiasm of producers with pep talks, sales contests and trips to Bermuda!

The amount of coaching required is determined by several factors and experienced, competent sales personnel will usually require a minimum amount of assistance, while young, inexperienced personnel may require considerable help.

The National Sales Executive's Digest surveyed several thousand salespersons, from all fields, in an attempt to discover their most secret thoughts, feelings, and frustrations about their careers in selling. The results of the survey are good guidelines for you as the MAPS^TM Manager in your agency to follow in accomplishing your responsibilities.

The three most frequently stated needs of the salespersons surveyed were:

• specific methods for improving sales;
  
• a complete understanding of the techniques of selling, and how to apply them in day-to-day selling;
  
• training in capsule and digest form.

Above all, the salesperson wants a coach in his or her manager, someone who can show them "how to do it," rather than a cheerleader on the sidelines. One of the reasons Teddy Roosevelt succeeded in leading the charge up San Juan Hill because he said, "Follow me!" and stormed up the hill instead of yelling "Charge!" and expecting his troops to fight up the hill.

Productive Sales Meetings!

Sales meetings are a fact of business life in the corporate world. Yet, few agencies take the time to make productive sales meetings a normal part of operations. An effective weekly sales meeting, one planned for in advance and lasting between 45 minutes to one hour, will provide a great platform for coaching producers through difficulties, solving real-life objections, reviewing results, giving recognition and discussing changes necessary to focus the team efforts toward greater results.

To advance results, MarTech's^SM master consultants coach managers on ways to increase the effectiveness of sales meetings by providing a clear, definable direction for the entire agency.