There’s so many different things for solo agents to do it’s overwhelming. And most agents are not so analytical/detail oriented.
But you need to know if what you’re doing is working. So you can double down on what is doing well. And stop spending time or money doing things that aren’t paying off for you.
But how can you tell?
Sales is an easy answer. But it’s usually the last thing you know.
For example, let’s say I’m testing a lead program. I need to run those leads for 90 days. And then give it another 90 days to see what closes to get sales results. Because some marketing just has a longer sales cycle.
But if you stop after 30 days, you don’t have enough information to know if it’s actually working.
So you need to track something first that gives you a better idea.
- How many leads did you buy
- How many phone calls did you make
- How many appointments did you run
- How many sales did you get
- What’s your closing percentage?
- How long is your sales cycle?
- What’s your acquisition cost?
- What’s your lifetime value of your client.
Initial Appointments
For me, it’s initial appointments.
My focus is on people new to Medicare. For that reason, a majority of my sales are 2 appointments. One of those appointments might be when they are 8 months before their 65th birthday. Then the second appointment is to submit the application once they are within their window to enroll.
But I’ve been doing this long enough I know what the results will be for my initial appointments. For every 10 new appointments I run, I will get:
- 6 new clients
- 2 people delaying Medicare
- 2 people not signing up thru me
So I could focus on being better at sales. I could work on closing more so instead of closing 60% right away I sign up 70%. But does that really make a big difference to me? It’s only 1 extra sale.
But what if I focused on running 16 appointments each week instead of 8?
That would get me 5 extra sales each week. That’s an extra 250 new members each year. That’s more than most agents sell in a year.
This is why most agents should focus on initial appointments as their key performance indicator.
- Suck at closing? Run more appointments and you’ll learn how to lead people to buy.
- Don’t know your product well? Run more appointments and you’ll learn the nuances.
- Not getting enough business? Run more appointments and you will sell more.
The focus should also be on initial appointments.
If you take 2-3 appointments to make a sale then you are lying to yourself if you count each appointment.
Consider the agent that runs 10 new appointments each week. Compared to an agent that runs 10 total appointments each week but only 5 of them are new.
Both can say they ran 10 appointments that week. But the agent focused on running new appointments will probably sell twice as much as the agent only running 10 total. And it’s not double the time commitment to write twice as much business so you aren’t just outworking to sell more. You are focusing on what actually makes an impact to your business.
So every week I know was successful or not based on how many initial appointments I run. As long as I hit my goal, everything else falls into place.
I do track other things as well. The one for me long term is acquisition cost by marketing method and total marketing spend. But these are long term averages that I look at quarterly. But those are lagging indicators where the time and money have already been spent.
So I can’t change the results. Only change direction for the future.
But initial appointments gives me a chance to turn things around immediately by working harder or smarter.
