How many times have you had a potential sale end up in the twilight zone, where your clients will ask endless questions, and request wave upon wave of illustrations and scenarios? It happens way too often, I am sure.
Some of this analysis is legitimate. There are people who are extremely analytical and require a lot of information to make a purchasing decision. They need to compare and contrast a number of options. However, at some point, this analysis reaches a point of no return. What can you do to help them pull themselves out of this rut of indecisiveness?
In times like this, I like to remind people that I have a business to run.
I have many people working for me. Whether they are employed by my firm, or by my GA or MGA, is irrelevant. The point is that their time is worth money, and I can’t take unfair advantage of that time. I owe them business. We salespeople can get so caught up in doing everything possible to get a sale, that we forget that our support people at the wholesale level also have a business to run. We can’t constantly place high demands on their resources without delivering the goods.
To drive this point home to my client, I say something like this:
“At this point, Mr. Client, I’ve asked my general agency to work overtime on providing you with all the information you requested. I can’t ask them to allocate any more time and resources until they know where they stand with regards to getting compensated for all their effort. With this last round of consultation, I need to ask you to move forward with submitting an application. If you are not ready, that is fine; we will just put our support on hold until you feel comfortable making a decision.”
In an optimum situation, my client gets it and agrees to buy a policy. In the worst case, they still can’t make a decision – but I am ahead of the game anyway because I haven’t allocated any more of my time, or my wholesaler’s time, on a case that is going nowhere.
