|
Some of your clients don't have e-mail or don't use it enough to make it an effective method of interaction. There are others who prefer phone conversation to e-mail communication and still others who enjoy both. For these folks, the old-fashioned phone call is a meaningful and effective way to maintain a consistent level of contact.
The easiest way to get these calls done, the way that I do mine, is to set a weekly objective. My objective is five outbound check-in calls per week, all made on the same day, one right after the other--and I do so without interruption. In other words, I block out the time (usually an hour), set an appointment with myself, and "do the dials." Three out of five calls end with a voice mail message, which is fine (and often desirable)--mission still accomplished.
After years of practicing this discipline, I can't begin to count the number of questions, invalid assumptions, and simmering issues that I've stumbled upon that could have been a crisis further down the road. A crisis that would require much more time and energy to resolve than it took to make one call.
Here we have a dilemma. Let's suppose for a moment that you're completely re-energized and determined to establish a personal connection with every client in your book. You've decided to schedule an appointment with each client to review that client's program, update the client's information, conduct a needs assessment, and describe your proactive service plan for the years ahead. Though you realize that it might take you a year or more to complete the circuit while you continue to juggle competing priorities and responsibilities, you plan on three of these appointments each week and you hit the phone. Bravo!
Then it happens. Client reaction to your crusade is, at best, mixed. Sure, some are welcoming and enthusiastic; but many are cool, aloof, suspicious, or downright negative. Some avoid you and your call altogether. You, my friend, are beginning to feel like a telemarketer with laryngitis. Do you abandon your strategy or do you forge ahead? The answer is…both.
So be it. You owe it to yourself and to your clients to offer everyone the opportunity to redefine your relationship for the better; however, don't get caught up in trying to sell the idea.This doesn't mean that we drop all contact with those who don't respond favorably to the initial contact. We need to move as far away as we can from the reactive "no-news-is-good-news, quiet-clients-are-happy-clients" service mentality that's become our legacy. Instead, we keep ourselves efficiently visible and available using the other strategies presented. We invite them to our seminars; we e-mail them the same information that we send to our more active clients; and every now and again we make a check-in call. In short, we do our part and we do our job.
There's an old rule of thumb in our industry that clients leave you for the same reasons that they came to you. So, if they came to you in search of cheaper price, they'll leave you for a better price and there's not much that can be done to prevent their departure. However, if they came to you for service and value and they trusted you to deliver it, now is the time for you to start providing it.
Scott M. Primiano is the president and founder of Polestar Performance Programs, Inc. (www.goPolestar.com), a premier consulting and sales management company in the insurance industry. Primiano is the author of Hard Market Selling--Thriving in the New Insurance Era.
|
