National Underwriter Sales Essentials (Property & Casualty): Breaking the Sales Barrier

Randy Schwantz

• Publisher: The National Underwriter Company
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781939829696
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Insurance
• Index: Business

An excellent resource for the sales leader, Breaking the Sales Barrier captures and explains the critical elements necessary to manage producers so that they can join the elite of the sales force. This "how to" book is filled with the tools that agency owners and sales managers need to develop a winning sales culture—and what producers need to embrace it.

Section 1

Go for the Solid Gold Goals

I wish every agency owner had the guts to tell their producers, “Hit the ground running or don’t let the door hit you in the rear. You’re a producer. Go produce.”

But many don’t.

There generally is one big reason why they don’t. Lack of VISION. What do I mean by vision? I mean a significant growth goal combined with definite ways to serve customers more effectively. Winners, producers, leaders—whatever you call them—envision a bigger, better future. When you are driven by vision, it excites you; it wakes you up in the morning; it makes you hit the ground running.

Try this test on yourself. Stop for a minute and let your mind imagine that it’s three years from now. What date would that be? Write it down here ___________________.

There we are—you and me—sitting at Starbucks® three years from today having coffee. You’re telling me, “Oh man, it’s been a great run!” What would have had to happen over those three years for you to tell me that?

I say this with respect: If you don’t have a clear answer to that question, it’s time to figure it out.

I’ve been fired from some of the best agencies in the country. I can give you lists of agencies in which we’ve succeeded and in which we’ve failed. In these cases, what we brought to the table was pretty much the same thing.

What was the difference? Some clients had the passion to grow, the will to change their sales culture, and the stamina to do it. They had commitment and direction from the beginning, from the top. They had leadership. And . . . they had vision.

Small, medium, and large agencies have doubled their new business commission in one year. They’ve gone from writing $250,000 to over $500,000. Or from $600,000 to $1,200,000. Recently, a firm we work with went from $3,600,000 to more than $7,600,000. This is new business commission. These are real numbers. And you can do it too.

What’s the secret? Three things—vision, commitment, and training.

If you know you really want to grow and grow big; if the revenue figure you’ve got in mind has at least six zeros at the end; if you’ve got some clear ideas on how you could serve your market better and gain market position; if you know how many million dollar producers you want on your team BUT . . . you don’t know how to get from here to there, it’s time to work on your execution.

Breaking the Sales Barrier is a blocking and tackling approach to growth. It gives practical, proven techniques that you can put to immediate, profitable use. I’m not saying it’s easy, but winning isn’t magic. Well-defined steps done over and over again lead to winning. In the next few pages, I’ll outline processes and techniques that you can use to create a sales culture that spits out money. All you need is the vision, the courage, and the will to turn the page.

Chapter 1

The Cult within the Culture

But it is not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

– Henry David Thoreau

There’s cultured yogurt, cultured pearls, and corporate culture. So what is culture?

When I was a boy in West Texas, one of my favorite treats was homemade ice cream topped with Mrs. Ford’s brandied-cultured fruits. In Lubbock, alcoholic spirits were not merely frowned upon, they were outlawed. Nevertheless, Mrs. Ford kept a huge salt-glazed crock filled with peaches, pears, pineapple, and maraschino cherries, all marinating in their sugary juices, slowly fermenting until the syrup turned to brandy. When those bright red cherries and that brandy syrup warmed my stomach, I’d get an adolescent buzz I can still remember! I also remember the sweet, fragrant taste. Bowl after bowl, year after year, the taste was always the same. The fruits may have varied, but the spiced culture in Mrs. Ford’s crock was so potent that no matter what she added to the mixture, the culture penetrated each new ingredient until it developed that familiar sweet brandied flavor.

That’s what a culture does. Cultured pearls develop with uniform shapes, colors, and sizes because the process and growth conditions are controlled. When you develop a strong company culture, the same thing happens. You can drop a new producer into your mix and, within a short time, she will be operating like the better producers on your team because the culture takes over. A sales-oriented culture motivates, initiates, and supports sales success. It sets the pace, integrates team members, and teaches everyone how to get things done. A strong sales culture almost guarantees steady, reproducible, consistent success.

I recently had conversations with the leaders of three very powerful agencies. One said, “We give producers a five-year time frame to develop a $1,000,000 book of business. If they don’t achieve that, they can’t work here.”

Another said, “Our minimal goal is $250,000 new business commission per year. If a producer doesn’t achieve that consistently, he can’t work here.”

Another CEO simply said, “Producers produce. If not, they can’t work here.” These gentlemen are the leaders of firms with phenomenal sales cultures. Although their goals may sound totally outrageous for your company today, their standards shouldn’t. All three are saying you must produce new business to work here. It takes courage, commitment, and vision.

Winning is not a natural phenomenon. Neither is losing. People have been trained to do one or the other. Both are cultural.

A sales culture is an integrated system that transfers knowledge, belief, and behavior that makes winning a predictable process. Moreover, if you can create a sales culture as powerful, as pervasive, as irresistible as Mrs. Ford’s brandied fruit, it will enable you to weather changes in personnel, carriers, economies, and customers. It will encourage and inspire when you aren’t there. It will communicate your vision and drive your business values. And you will WIN more often.

To create a successful sales culture, you first must understand what a business culture is and how it works. Each of the following elements contributes to the culture within your organization.

• Environment–The internal and external market factors that effect sales and your approach to sales

• Vision–The “big business picture” that defines success for you

• Goals and Priorities–The big picture, heartfelt, five-years-out goals that say what you want and where you are going, backed up by annual “stretch” goals

• Strategies–The overall strategy for achieving your goals

• Routines and Habits–The daily, weekly, and monthly activities that support and encourage sales

• Ceremonies–The ways performance is acknowledged and r...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Section 1
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Section 2
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Section 3
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Section 4
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Section 5
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Section 6
• About the Author