Winning Strategies

Why the fish — and buyers — aren't biting

Give them a reason to take the bait

By Larry G. Linne

The kayak was heavy as I loaded it onto my Jeep after five hours of fishing the back-bay area of Fort Myers, Florida. It felt especially heavy because I didn’t have any fish to take home for dinner.

I had brought two rods, live shrimp (should have just taken them home and cooked them), plenty of lures, and a stealth kayak. This was usually the foundation for a great day of fishing.

But there I was loading up the Jeep and I hadn’t even had a bite.

Now I know the old saying: “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.” But insult was added to injury when I called my good friend Patrick Sitkins. Pat had been fishing the same day, near the same area. I let him know of my woes. He let me know he had “slayed them.” (This meant he had caught a lot of fish.)

This news was frustrating to hear. I thought I had done everything right, and I was sure that the fish were just “not biting.” Now I hear that it was not the fish, it was me. Trying to put the blame somewhere else, I figured that Pat must have used some special kind of bait. That possibility was squashed when he informed me he had caught the fish with live shrimp and the same lures I was using. I think his words were: “The fish were hitting everything we threw at them.”

Being the competitor that I am, I wanted to understand why my experience was so different from Pat’s, besides the obvious fact that I hadn’t caught anything. So I asked him to give me details of what he had done.

It didn’t take long for me to understand the difference. Pat had looked at tide charts, which I had forgotten. He had a friend who had scouted a few good areas to prepare for the day. I had resources to do the same but figured I could skip that. Wrong. Pat had changed his fishing line to a type that was more appropriate for the conditions we were in. I hadn’t thought that was necessary. Okay, enough already; I just hadn’t taken the time to do everything I needed to bring in the fish.

Fishing for business

A couple of months later I was coaching a very successful producer, and he told me his 2009 closing percentage was the lowest in his career. I was shocked. He was a great salesperson. In fact, he was a much better salesman than I am a fisherman.

I asked him to go over his past few sales so we could figure out why he had gotten this poor result. We went through deal after deal, digging into every step of the sales process. It didn’t take long for him to feel just like I did when I was talking to Patrick and hearing about his successful day of fishing. Like me, the producer had skipped steps and diluted the critical elements of the sale in every case.

Just as I hadn’t scouted the area, he didn’t do his homework on some of the prospects. Just as I hadn’t looked at the tide charts, he didn’t prepare for the call by studying the prospect’s industry (such as The Rough Notes Company’s Producer Online program). We found numerous areas where he had skipped or skimped on steps, and it became clear why his results were poor.

My assessment opened his eyes, and it also made me think about why this highly successful producer had gotten this poor result. Many fishing days in my life had been fruitful even though I skipped steps and diluted my chances. Many producers have had great success without doing everything perfectly. So why was this guy having such a bad year and not just a bad day?

I began to do more research. I found that quite a few producers were having the same outcome. They were experiencing lower closing ratios, and they were skipping steps in the sales process.

I also found quite a few producers who were having great success during this same period. Surprise! They were just like Patrick: They had the discipline to do the right things, and they had not skipped steps.

Tough to get a bite

My research and analysis has led me to this conclusion: Buyers are busy. Most are busier today than they have been throughout their careers. They are overwhelmed with issues that will determine whether or not they will be able to stay in business. If they don’t think they have problems with risk management or benefits, they are not going to move their business to another broker. Unless they are presented with a great reason to change, they will not want to go through the hassle of moving their business.

In the past, buyers would change brokers over lesser issues because they had more time to deal with change and they didn’t have to scrutinize these decisions in as much detail. Now they are worried about staying in business. Your job is much tougher. The buyers are like those fish around my boat. They weren’t going to bite just because I had arrived with my great fishing history.

Price is not going to be good enough (unless it is substantial) to get you hired. A message that suggests you sell the same thing as a competitor (but yours is better) is not going to be good enough to get the prospect to move. Being ill-prepared, not being clear on your value proposition, not asking the right questions, not providing value, and skipping other critical steps are not the way to achieve a high closing ratio.

One of my favorite definitions of value comes from Adrian Slywotzky in the book The Profit Zone: How Strategic Business Design Will Lead You to Tomorrow’s Profits. He states that value means that someone is willing to pay more for something or is willing to make a change if he can’t get it with the current relationship. Based on this definition, we have to bring enough value to a buyer that he or she will be willing to change.

I am convinced that a producer has to do a few key things to make sure he or she brings this kind of value to a buyer and ends up with a high closing ratio.

Preparation. Okay, Sales 101: Do your homework on a prospect. I want to kick a salesperson out of my office when he tells me: “I want to learn about your business.” I frequently tell these people to go do their homework and I will fill in the details later. As a buyer, I don’t consider it my job to teach a salesperson about my industry or my business. I don’t mind helping them understand some of the differences between me and my competitors, or giving details beyond the basics, but don’t start with nothing.

You should know about the business, the industry, key people in the company, industry trends, and anything else you can learn. The Internet is teeming with information about your prospect’s business, its people, and its competitors. You are wasting your time if you don’t do your homework.

Give quick perceived value. The world has changed. If you are over 40, you learned to sell relationship first and information second. That train has not only left the station, it is in the junkyard. In 2000, a leading real estate broker told me that 5% of homebuyers went to the Internet before engaging a broker. In 2009, he said that 85% of buyers find the houses they are interested in and research brokers online prior to making any phone calls.

We have moved to an information first, relationship second, world. People don’t have time for another relationship if it isn’t going to be fruitful. They will do research and learn everything they can and then decide if they want to pursue a relationship with you. The next generation is coming into the workforce, and many of them have never been in a bank, a record shop, or other stores that you frequent. They know how to find information long before they buy.

In the insurance industry, younger buyers are not only getting information about you; they are also expanding their knowledge about risk management, benefits costs, and other issues on which you are supposed to be the expert.

In high school I learned the concept that people will spend the first 30 seconds making a judgment and decision about you, then will spend the rest of their relationship with you trying to prove they were right. Combine this concept with the relationship-second concept mentioned above, and I believe it means that we have the first few minutes of meeting someone to give perceived value or we are DONE. Those fish must have thought I was a pretty poor fisherman, and they proved that right!

A producer told me recently that he was stopped three minutes into a presentation with a prospect. The prospect said, “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you had a value statement, vision, mission, and logos of companies who are your clients. I don’t care about that stuff; I want to know what you can do to bring value to me and my business.”

The world is changing. Are you on that train?

Ask great questions. This is Old School, and it’s critical. You can’t know what the prospect needs or create pain they didn’t know existed if you don’t ask great questions. If you are not asking questions and are just telling them what you do, you are going to struggle in this business environment. If you are reading and only asking questions that go on an insurance application, you had better hope your price is low.

Asking great questions means asking questions that show you have strong business acumen and understand the prospect’s industry. Strong questions will make you look like a trusted advisor. Great questions will uncover issues that will go beyond insurance and will make the prospect believe he has to have you around to help him stay in business.

Go beyond price and service. Can you say “commodity”? If you are still selling price and presenting a big proposal about all your really cool services, get ready for a decline in your closing percentage. Giving your prospects plans to improve their business, clarity of custom services, and risk management strategies that go beyond insurable risks are all on another train that left the station a long time ago.

It isn’t too late, but agencies risk going out of business if they don’t provide these answers.

Show business acumen. Let’s use the definition of business acumen as having good business judgment. To become a true trusted advisor, you must understand the impact of what you do on your prospect’s business. How will the balance sheet be affected by loss or lack of loss? How do your services affect the productivity of a business? How will your suggestions for risk management or benefits programs affect the goals of the company? No answers = low closing ratio.

Twitter your Facebook to LinkedIn YouTube. Okay, that was a bit of a modern business run-on sentence. But buyers are sick of being marketed to. In today’s world, people are looking for information and are finding the easiest methods to get it. The concept of inbound marketing is a train you can see from the station. It has left, but you can still see it.

Inbound marketing is a way to get people you do business with and people you want to do business with to come to you for information and value. Are you writing a blog? Twittering information to the market? Communicating information of value to your marketplace? If you are not, someone else will. Those who get people to come to them will be the winners in the future. It is going to become part of the psychology of sales.

People want to do business with people who are ahead of them in information and value. Companies that are helping companies stay in business during these difficult economic times are becoming the most attractive. Your Web site, your blogs, your Tweets, Facebook communications, YouTube messages, and other techniques will give prospects confidence in you before you ever start the sales process.

Using these marketing techniques sets the stage for the buyer long before you meet. Your brand and your reputation will be established before you shake the buyer’s hand. The buyer will feel like he or she already knows you and will want to tap into your potential value.

Are you ready to catch more fish? I can assure you that the next time I went fishing on the kayak I had everything in order. I even created a checklist of what I had to do to guarantee my success. All boxes were checked and I caught a lot of fish.

Oh, I took Patrick with me, and of course he caught more than I. He had his iPhone on his kayak. As part of the next generation, I wonder if he was using a new app and “friending” the fish!

The author
Larry G. Linne is president of Sitkins International, a consulting firm bringing vertical growth strategies to the insurance industry. He is also the author of Make the Noise Go Away—The Power of an Effective Second in Command and is a principal in a new benefits consulting firm, Benefits Growth Network.