Neil Sedaka once said (well, sang), “Breaking up is hard to do”. While this may be true, breaking up with a prospect is one of the most efficient and effective methods of terminating or continuing the sales process.
Efficiency
We can drive efficiency by terminating dead leads sooner. I often say “Don’t take ‘maybe’ for an answer”. Getting to a “no” is actually a very healthy aspect of a solid sales process. We know that we are not going to close 100% of the leads that we come across or quote. While we want to do everything to close the leads that we wish to write, we have to give ourselves the leeway to move on from a lead we have been chasing too much. Most often when prospects are not returning our calls, they are simply trying to avoid having to tell us “no”. Additionally, when we leave dead leads in our pipeline we are distracted from following up on the more viable leads. It can also lead to a lack of prospecting as the volume of leads in our pipeline often drives our prospecting activities. If we are open about our pipeline and can remove the dead leads, it can drive us to do more prospecting activities, whether it is contacting existing clients for cross-sales or networking to drive direct or referral activity.
Effectiveness
Somewhat against intuition, breaking up with a lead can actually provide for some last minute saves to improve your close rate. For those leads that are actually interested, telling them that we are closing their file is a great way to motivate them to move contacting us back up to the top of their priority list. Everyone has a checklist of items that they are trying to accomplish. As time passes, dealing with their insurance slowly starts to fall towards the bottom even if they are still interested. By continuing to follow-up, we stay on life support on their list but we’ve failed to grab their attention enough to force them to take action. The break-up has to occur before the lead becomes truly dead, so it won’t work after weeks or months of follow up activity.
Breaking Up
The key is that we do not often know which category our lead falls into when they are not returning our calls and emails. How do we know if they are just avoiding us because they don’t want to say “no” versus just don’t have a high enough priority right now but do have interest. It’s simple, we ask them.
Before we get to a voicemail and email script you can use to drive action, the final step before implementing a break-up call and email is to build it into your sales process. As part of our AppX Sales training, we help define how many times you are going to try to reach someone before you provide a quote. This could be follow ups on website leads, referrals, or when someone calls but didn’t have enough information for you to build a quote. You should also have an idea of a follow-up process for after you have presented the quote. This may vary based on department or referral source, but it should be clearly defined. This prevents our own bias (“I have a good feeling about this one!”) from entering into the decision making process. Not that you can’t have exceptions, but defining the follow up process allows you to be more consistent.
Voicemail Example
I am a firm believer in scripts but I also think you need to speak in your own voice. So, I offer this as an example but encourage you to create your own.
Hi PROSPECT NAME. This is YOUR NAME from YOUR AGENCY NAME. I wanted to reach out to you one more time before I have to close your file. I have been trying to reach you and have left a few voicemails and emails. Typically when I don’t hear back from someone it’s either because you are no longer interested or simply haven’t had a moment to return my calls. I don’t want to continue to fill up your voicemail and email, so if you are interested, please let me know a good time to reach you. Otherwise I’ll close my file for you for this year and try to reach out next year. Call me anytime at PHONE NUMBER.
Email Example
Hi PROSPECT NAME,
I just tried to reach you again. At this point I’ve tried to reach you a few times with no luck. Typically when I don’t hear back from someone after a few attempts, it is one of two things.
- You aren’t interested.
- You are interested but have not had a chance to reach back out to me.
I’m going to close my file on you today. If you are in the first category, please reach out to me at any time in the future if I can be of assistance.
If you are in the second category, let me know a good time to reach out and we can work to get your policy in place this year.
So, figure out your timing and your language, get out there and break up with some leads! Then get to prospecting to fill that pipeline back up!
