What’s Your Hook? How do you open doors as an insurance sales producer?

Hello world!  I hope that all of you are doing well.  Things are great here in the Hawkeye State!  Fall is here and we are having the best weather of the year!  This week I want to touch on something that I feel is really important to producers.  I call it the hook.  I’m sure that there are a lot of other terms out there for it.  Simply put, the hook is what you use as a producer to differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd and to open doors with potential clients.  Here’s why the hook is so important.

Years and years ago when cavemen started selling the prevailing thought was that there were two ways to be a successful salesperson.  First you could have a winning personality.  Secondly, you could cold call, pound the pavement, and press the flesh as much as possible under the understanding that if you call 100 – 200 people a week you can get ten appointments that will yield 1 – 2 wins.  Combining this strategy with a winning personality, good looks and  a couple of books by Zig Ziglar and you were good to go.  

Is this the type of sales producer you want to be like?

This strategy worked and still works to a degree today.  However, the problem here is twofold:

·         If all you do is call 100 random people each week for the rest of your life you will get burnt out. 

·         You have no real power as a salesperson – ultimately this is left to chance as “playing the odds” means you are hunting for people that will talk to you

This is where the hook comes in.  If the volume approach is focused finding people that will talk to you, the hook is a way to get the people you want to talk to to listen to you.  This solves two problems.  First you don’t have to call 100 people a week because you are increasing the likelihood of success and secondly you are getting people to talk to you because they want to hear from you about something, not because they have some ulterior motive like being mad at their broker.

When I talk to producers, one of the first questions I ask is “How do you build your business?”  It seems like a simple question but you would be amazed by the amount of top flight producers that can’t answer the question.  Some people share how they prospect – this is good.  However, what you need to know is why people talk to you.  I talked to a producer yesterday that writes large contractors.  He shared with me that he has become a workers compensation specialist and what he does is comes in and talks to potential clients about comp and then flips the conversation into a sales call.  This is the hook. 

The good thing is that most of you are doing this.  However, many of you are doing it unconsciously.  If you identify what your hook is and then actively try to replicate it you will have more success.  So… What’s you hook?

That’s all I've got for today.  Have a great week!

As always please let me know if you have any questions or comments.  I can be reached by email at sthompson@insurance-csg.com.  I’ll see you then!

Check out some of my recent articles on the blog here:

Does your Commission Split Really Matter

The Six Biggest Challenges Faced by Insurance Producers

How Insurance Producers Can Use Social Networking to Increase Sales

Texas A&M Leaving the Big 12 and What Lessons You Can Learn From it for Your Career

Four Skills that Every Account Manager Needs to Succeed