Originally Posted by HoosierLife
“First week cold calling I got 20 leads off of 8 hours of calling. Now I have a background in telesales, but as long as you dont get discouraged, dont take things personally and smile and dial you'll be fine. I would highly recommend a dialer though. It really increases your performance from manually dialing.“
I think this is awesome, and really solves the mystery of door-to-door vs. Telemarketing. The fact that you are relatively new means that you have not been allowed to succumb to what many veteran agents do. They'll look for the easier method, cheaper method, least amount of work method.. and stop doing what WORKED.
Telemarketing, with a predictive dialer specifically, allows you to be reaching out to 3 or 4 people at one time until you find someone able to hear you out. Door knocking involves not only the travel from door to door, but also the limitation of a best case scenario that one person at a time will be there to hear you out.
With telemarketing, you go from one “no” to the next “no” in record time, thus sorting those out from the eventual “yes” and you will find the yes more efficiently.
In order to continue to do something that, at first, appears painful, you must have a consistent set of rewards along the way. Otherwise that painful behavior will not be continued.
When calling folks about Medicare Supplements, in particular, I know that the sale that eventually happens has done two things.
One, it has put more money into the house of a senior who usually desperately needs it, as they're on a fixed income. I've not take anything from them, I've provided money back to them. This is a much easier transaction.
Two, it has provided an on-going income stream to my business and reduces the amount of future calls I'll have to make as I proceed toward my target number of clients. If you're on a constant rat wheel of having to find the next sale in order to continue your flow of income, you'll eventually fall off from fatigue or old age. Or worse, if you're prospecting for final expense, the minute you stop prospecting and going on sales calls, the chargebacks come slap you from behind on that 15% to 20% that cancel in the first 9 months.
Or you could make every sale turn into a stream of residual income so that your one effort turns into a walk-away income from your existing clients and the phone ringing with referrals all the time. This is a big motivator for me as I continue to smile and dial.
UPDATE: July 31, 2013
See the interview with a successful door-to-door agent who sells 8-12 Medicare Supplement policies with zero lead cost.
See the interview here: http://medicareagenttraining.com/getting-started-without-leads/
