Thursday, October 4, 2007

Kicked out another Aetna


I know I'm busy when I'm didn't even update this blog yesterday - literally all day on the phone, wrote an Aetna app which literally took half of my day. We went back and forth between Aetna and Blue Cross since she wanted maternity. Then my son had soccer practice at 6pm, get home at 7pm, dinner, etc...

Let me spend some time on the difference between people choosing coverage and you having to sell it. If you try to sell health insurance you will find yourself frustrated. Why aren't all those people getting back to you? Why aren't they answering their phone after that great converstion you had? The answer? Who knows.

Not a lot of people are natural buyers; meaning they're simply at the stage where they want to make a change. Most people, even serious ones, are in the research phase and are not in the right frame of mind to pull the trigger. Those are the people you'll call twice a day, day after day and get nowhere.

The bottom line is you need a lot of prospects. How do you know if you have enough? Here's a test: If you're gonna spend today calling all the people who haven't answered their phone before and haven't responded to your emails then you don't have enough prospects.

How many times do I call someone? Twice. The 1st time I leave a nice message, the second time I simply call at a different time of day. Then I'm done. Nothing spells "loser" more then a client seeing your caller ID on their machine 8 times over 3 days. Oh...you're blocking your caller ID? Go form an "L" with your thumb and index finger and put it up to your head. This is not how professionals conduct business.

Without a lot of prospects you're doomed to be a pest. You have to call people incessantly so you can squeeze those 2 or 3 clients out of the 20 prospects you got that week. That's also when you start second-guessing everything. The bottom line is you need to generate enough prospects so you naturally find those 3 to 5 clients per week who simply want what you're selling.






No comments: