Strictly Sales: A producer's ego overcomes rejection

There is one mistake you can never make about a successful producer’s ego: You cannot overestimate its size. No matter how much ego you think they have or how big you think it is–it’s bigger. Also, it’s fragile. I have often heard, “I could never be in sales. Rejection really bothers me.” Let me assure you, no one hates rejection more than a successful producer. Whenever a producer gets rejected, his or her personal income has just taken a hit. The reason it is perceived that salespeople do not care about rejection is because top producers seem to be able to move on quickly. People confuse the ability to recover quickly with not caring. As an agency owner or a sales manager, I would never want a producer that wasn’t bothered by rejection. Rejection affords a producer the opportunity to become better. We learn far more from failures that we do from successes. Top producers know this. They learn from failure, and then bounce back stronger and smarter than ever. Producers who truly do not mind rejection are just numbers game players. They are going to quote a lot and are all about getting the business based on price. They attach no significance to the needs of the client. After all, finding out what the client actually wants and needs just takes up time, and they could be using that time to go out and find more prospects to throw a number at. These producers are all about the commission. To them, the more calls, the more appointments; the more appointments, the more quotes; and the more quotes, the more sales. Their game is to quote as much as they can whenever they can. They are all about pushing quantity through their pipeline and do not care about wasting the prospect’s time, the marketing department’s time, or the account manager’s time. It is a game, not of quality or service, but of quantity. Top producers spend time trying to understand the prospects’ needs by determining if the prospect has enough issues, or severe enough issues that the producer can fix, that will push the prospect to move. When top producers do go forward with a presentation–not just a quote–they truly feel they have the advantage over the incumbent agent and should win the account. As a result, when they lose the account, it is shocking. The producers back off, review the process, try and figure out where they went wrong, make the necessary corrections and then move on. They also stay in touch with the prospect. After all, just because a prospect does not choose you does not mean it’s the right decision. If you make them pick up the phone to say they made a mistake, it may never happen. But if you remain in contact with them, it makes it easier for them to move to you in the future. Let me give you the sure-fire, 100 percent, cannot fail, lead-pipe cinch method to overcome the rejection of losing an account you thought you were going to book and building back positive energy and momentum. On the day you have the presentation, have at least two other new business appointments on your calendar for that same day. If the decision date follows the presentation date, have at least two new business appointments on your calendar for the decision day. Stewing in the juices of defeat is poisonous. Moving into the bright light of new business opportunities is energizing. So how do you make sure you avoid the stewpot of despair and defeat? Have a full pipeline. “Okay, they made a mistake and chose not to do business with me, but today I am going to give at least two other companies the opportunity to avoid the mistake that prospect just made.” One final thought on ego. When I came into the insurance business, I had been the vice president of operations of a manufacturing company. I had more than 160 personnel reporting under me and was in charge of sales, manufacturing and engineering. One of my big concerns was how my ego was going to handle me just being in charge of me–with no title, experience, and minimal risk management and insurance knowledge. I can tell you what worked: I decided to manage myself just as I had managed the operations at my previous career. I required that all education would take place before 9 a.m. and after 4 p.m. The only things that would happen during that time were prospect-sensitive issues. Those hours every day would be devoted to either being on prospect appointments (with no clients, client appointments were not an issue), going to business networking events or on the telephone getting appointments. I wouldn’t tolerate letter writing, evaluating policies, and internal company meetings during those hours. My rule was simple: If I was at my desk and I caught myself doing something that could be done just as effectively before 9 a.m. or after 4 p.m., I put it down and did things that should be done to get appointments and clients, things I could only do during business hours when the prospects were at work. As far as internal meetings, it did not take long for the support staff to realize that I was not going to accept an appointment during prime sales call time. So, back to the producer’s ego: o Top producers hate rejection, but we are too busy to dwell on it. We learn from the failure, correct the mistake, and then move on. There is too much new business to write to waste time in pity parties. oTop producers do not play the blame game. When we lose a prospect, we spend our time figuring out what we did wrong instead of blaming marketing, loss control, the claims department, or our agency’s management. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” o We manage ourselves far better than any sales manager could ever do the job. We hold ourselves accountable to a far stricter standard than any sales manager could ever demand. Because of that we are the lead dog–and our ego is plenty satisfied with that.