Each prospect is unique… but that doesn’t mean you have to reinvent your sales process for each individual. If you’re writing emails and preparing presentations from scratch every time, you could be undermining your own success. A systemized approach can fuel your business growth but cutting down on the work required.
Why a Fully Customized Approach Isn’t Practical
Successful bakers don’t invent a new recipe every time they want to make a cake. That would be a waste of time, and the results would probably be horribly inconsistent. They may change the icing and adornments to match the occasion. They may even try new recipes occasionally. However, most of the time, they’re relying on proven recipes and refining them over time.
Insurance agents can learn from this.
If you want to achieve consistent success, you need a consistent process. Failing to have a systemized approach isn’t just a waste of time. It can also produce poor results.
To become more systemized about your approach to sales, take the following four steps.
Step 1: Map the buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey is the path that a buyer takes before becoming a client or customer of a company. It’s closely related to the concept of a sales funnel. However, while a sales funnel focuses on how you move an individual toward a sale, the buyer’s journey focuses on the process from the customer’s perspective.
Every company, every product and every service has a buyer’s journey. Some journeys are short, while others long – customers are going to put a lot more thought and research into buying a boat than they will into buying a candy bar – but the journey still exists.
According to HubSpot, the buyer’s journey can be broken down into three stages.
- The first stage is the awareness stage. This is when the buyer becomes aware of a problem.
- The second stage is the consideration stage. This is when the buyer researches and tries to understand their options.
- The last stage is the decision stage. This is when the buyer implements a process to make a decision.
For example, if you were trying to map the buyer’s journey for a candy bar, the first stage might be when the buyer craves something sweet. The second stage could be when the buyer walks into a store and looks at the food options. The third stage would be when the buyer decides to buy the candy bar.
By mapping out your buyer’s journey, you can make it more effective. In the candy bar example, you could create marketing materials to appeal to buyers who are craving something sweet and position your candy bar as the logical choice.
Map out your buyer’s journey by identifying the typical touchpoints. Think about these touchpoints from the buyer’s perspective and determine how you can help guide them.
Step 2: Create templates for the core conversations that occur over and over.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re starting from scratch each time, your process is inefficient. You also run the risk of leaving out key points or fumbling your delivery. By using templates, you can put your best foot forward each and every time. You’ll also save time on correspondence, which will give you more time for prospecting and enable even more business growth.
This doesn’t mean you have to be completely robotic. Once you have a template, you can quickly customize conversations. However, the core of your conversation will come from your template.
Step 3: Set up your templates in your CRM.
Most CRM systems have correspondence template capabilities. Setting up your templates will take a little work, but once it’s done, you can send emails quickly.
Even better, the correspondence is attached to that contact in the CRM, so you can easily look back to see what happened last. This will help you follow up with the contact effectively. It will also make it easier for you to analyze your efforts so you can finetune your strategy. That brings us to the last step…
Step 4: Replicate success.
If you want to achieve consistent results, you can’t just celebrate your successes. You also need to analyze them.
When a sales process goes right and you make a sale, look closer at the steps that led up to the sale. Which templates did you use? How frequently did you follow up? How many total touchpoints were needed? What seemed to be the deciding factor for the client? Once you’ve identified exactly what’s working, you can build these steps into future interactions.
Let DIS Help You
A systematic approach can help you achieve business growth and DIS can help you put together a winning system. Our disability insurance presentation kit includes a pre-approach sales letter, a step-by-step sales script, a sales presentation worksheet, disability statistics and a waiver of liability form. Download your copy today.
