All great advice, and I appreciate it. I'm just curious why it is frowned upon to use Salesgenie information to provide a preliminary quote? I've sold two BOP's using this technique; neither of which wanted to change any part of the initial quote. Maybe just luck?
I personally love cold calling and if done correctly it can be extremely effective; however, you need to set yourself up for success from the start. I made phone calls for the first 6 months when I was an agent and it was the foundation for a really nice pipeline going forward.
Very rarely are you going to get an appointment off the first call. In my opinion you need to come in armed with 2 things an "X Date" or "Decision Maker Name".
There are tons of FREE ways out there to get both of these pieces of information easily and I'm not going to turn this into a discussion on how to do this. Once you have the "X-Date" (all you need is the month) and you know the relevant time to reach out. You can find most decision makers names or at least a higher up's name on Manta, don't worry about being exact with the name.
When you call I would lead with something like "Hi, is (Decision Maker First Name) in." This will get you past the gatekeeper in most cases.
Next, when you get the decision maker on the phone I would say something like "Hi, (Decision Maker Name) this is (Your Name introduce yourself etc). we spoke earlier in the year about your insurance renewal in (MONTH)." They aren't going to remember if you spoke or not, and this will get their attention.
Then I would say something catchy about a program that you have for their industry and set an appointment to discuss further from there.
The whole point of this is if you can arm yourself with more information before you pick up the phone you will make more effective use of your time on the phone and set more appointments.
Totally agree with @DHK. It doesn't need to be fancy. It needs to DECREASE THEIR PAIN and communicate an elevated value for them (eg. "compete for their business")
One point to add is - the current script, yours and those others above, tend to focus the goal of the initial call to having them speak to you about their insurance, rather than simply introducing yourself as someone working in insurance that wants a future relationship. Would you date the girl/boy that flat out asked you out while also asking you personal information without any prior relationship? Maybe, if you just "happen to be" in the market for one.
I think it's totally reasonable to make the initial call focus on the introduction and if at all possible to get that x-date out of them. If the x-date is 6 months out, a good script can allow them to realize that they could get off the call quicker by giving you the x-date and not have you call until 6 weeks before the x-date. This way, if they don't want to talk now, it'll be easier to follow-up because there's no real "ask" so there's no "shut down" either.
