What is Your Prospecting List Doing for You?

Every day I see Producers biting off more than they can chew when it comes to their prospecting list. And with our unlimited access platform I've come to realize we might be partly to blame.  If we restricted access to 3,000 businesses/year it might force you to be a little more focused, but that's not what we're about.  So instead I'm going to blog about it and leave you to your devices.

List segmentation, a little prep work - painfully simple.  Using Insurance Xdate you have an arsenal of search/targeting criteria at your disposal – location, x-date, industry, size, and incumbent carrier.  Why dump it all into a single search?  The pitch you use for an auto repair shop is probably going to be different than what you’ll say for a machine shop (unless you’re just asking if you can quote, which is a no-no).  Part of cold calling is finding your groove and letting your momentum, enthusiasm, and confidence build call after call.

Based solely on the information available it is impossible to determine the real opportunity you have, but when combined with your personal market awareness there is enough information that you can perceive the opportunity.  Figure out a way to segment based on that perceived opportunity and start at the top.

For example, your market wants grocery stores.  Travelers writes a lot of them and they are very tough to beat.  But based on your previous experience you also know Travelers is a lot less aggressive when it comes to risks inside the city limits, they prefer more suburban to rural environments.  They’re all worth a call just to see what is going on but why group them together?  Split that list into 2 and start with the city dwellers.  Get through that list and start on the country mice, while diligently working in follow up calls to the first group.

Keep in mind that our analysis, based on a sample of 50 Producers religiously using Insurance Xdate, it takes an average of 3.8 calls to secure an appointment.  Also, less than 1 in 5 initial calls (16%) results in an appointment.  So is your time better spent cold calling 500 businesses once or 250 businesses and then making 250 follow up calls to your perceived top 50.  It is the same number of calls after all…