Increase Your Production By Building A Business

When you obtain introductions, you are piggybacking on the credibility your client has with your prospect. For example, telling someone who doesnt know you that you do great work is not very credible, but if someone he or she knows and trusts says that about you, thats a different story.

So if you get a name, rather than picking up the phone and calling that person, think about people that are acquainted with both you and your prospect.

Once you have a pipeline full of high-quality prospects, one of your other business systems kicks into gear–your relationship management system.

Relationship Management. Some people refer to it as a sales system or a sales and service system. But a relationship management system is much more than that–it comprises everything you do to upgrade your prospects into clients and to keep them for life.

One of the most important aspects of your business as an advisor is how you apply the third best practice–understand how people make decisions. Essentially this means mastering the three truths of decision-making: one, that all decisions are value-based; two, that all decisions are confidence-based; and three, that all decisions are risk-based.

This may mean changing how you interact with your clients. One clear indication of how well you apply this best practice is how you answer your prospects question about your competition.

When prospects ask you about other advisors in the community that may be competing for your business, dont be negative. Understand that people make decisions based on confidence. Negative comments about your competition may be more of a reflection of your fear of competition than an objective opinion.

Negative comments dont inspire confidence. They do nothing to help or encourage your prospects to work with you. In fact, these comments may even drive those prospects toward your competitors–who probably never said a bad word about you. Avoid putting down the competition and instead focus on inspiring confidence.

Apply best practice number four–help prospects buy. People love to buy but hate to be sold. One of the measures of how well you apply this best practice is the degree to which you focus on your clients agenda, their journey. Focus on building relationships, and creating urgency and action by discovering, developing and appealing to your clients own internal agendas.

Fulfill your relationship management system by applying the fifth best practice–create client capital. Client capital is the most important measure of the success of your business and it appears nowhere on your balance sheet or your income statement. Client capital is the sum of three elements–the depth and breadth of your client relationships, and the degree of loyalty your clients have with you. The most important measure of depth is the number of products and services they buy from you. The most important measure of breadth is the number of people who will willingly introduce you to others.

Resource Management. Weve talked about having more fun and more time, and making more money. To a large extent, your ability to do these things depends on how well you create a resource management system. For many advisors, the lack of a resource strategy is what holds them back from achieving the success they dream of.

Resource management is all about working at your optimal level, doing what you do best and doing it as often as possible.

For some advisors, the obstacle to optimizing is a mindset. A mindset that has them playing what I call a finite game. Its a mindset where they believe that there is only so much business, that they have to get it themselves and that they cannot depend upon others. Many advisors with this mindset tend to operate as a business of one, bumping up against a ceiling of complexity that limits how much they can produce. They think that in order to be more successful, they have to carve out more of the pie.

But the reality is its not about getting a bigger piece of the pie, its about creating a bigger pie. To break through your ceiling of complexity, you have to redefine the game, where your business in essence has the power of one, and that power is you, to a business that has the power of many. You need to begin harnessing the time, energy, creativity and intelligence of others.

Begin applying the seventh and eighth best practices–delegate and utilize resources. Look at the people currently working for you. Are they only capable of tasks that are in the $15 to $20/hour range? A lot of advisors tend to hire people who we would call low-stratum capable. These are the people who can work on $15-$20/hour tasks. The problem here is that if you want to work on $500/hour tasks and your employees are only capable of working on $15-$20 /hour tasks, then all the tasks that fall between $20/hour and $500/hour are done by you.

You need someone capable of overseeing and running complex marketing strategies. This doesnt mean you have to hire more people, you may just need a different mix of capabilities with the people you have. This may, however, involve changing your staff.

Leverage your staff and a team of external resources to ensure that you operate at your highest level as much as possible.

By following the best practices of the highest-performing insurance people and the highest-performing entrepreneurs, all of us will be able to create the momentum we need for continued success.

is founder and principal of The Covenant Group, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, June 30, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.