One of the problems in growing an insurance agency is once we run out of friends, family and our Christmas card list, where do we find new customers?
This problem also tends to show up about the time we are getting really busy dealing with all the other issues of running a business. But, if we don’t keep adding new customers we stop growing and then you know what happens!
So, what to do? I’m a pilot and it’s a lot of fun to fly an airplane. When the weather’s nice, there’s no traffic and I’m not headed anywhere in particular I like to “hand fly” (read be actively, constantly, involved). But when it’s really busy, having another set of hands is pretty darned useful. That’s when I turn to the autopilot.
Getting new customers for our agency is very similar. Once we get busy this is the thing that gets forgotten about until we are spiraling down through the clouds headed for a very bad landing. Let’s put this part of the agency’s operations on autopilot.
This starts with a plan of what you want to do and how you’ll do it. Direct mail? Telemarketing? Social media? One day a week reserved for cold calling? Decide. Then decide how much. I’ve covered how much and knowing your numbers elsewhere, so I won’t repeat that. But if I know what and how much I also can now decide when.
Knowing what, when and how much I can either set an inviolate schedule for personal out of office activity (Wednesday’s for cold call drop ins, for example) and organize my business around that. Or, I can prepare all the direct mail for one year, buy my lists, take it all to a mail house and forget it for a year. Or, I can buy my list, hire a telemarketer and forget it for a year.
Regardless of method, I plan it out, set aside the resources (money or time), put it on autopilot and go back to the other things I need to focus on.
Really simple isn’t it? Well, I know what you’re thinking, “If it were that easy everyone would do it, so it must not work”. Well, it is that easy! And it does work! Most people don’t do it because it does involve some work and takes planning. And probably because when you’re really busy fighting fires it’s hard to make yourself stop long enough to do it. Don’t let that happen to you!
One last thing. Autopilots can kill you. So, you have to monitor their performance in an airplane to make sure that doesn’t happen. The same thing is true about autopilot marketing. You need to monitor how it’s going and tweak if necessary. In aviation we call the autopilot “George” and George is just another set of hands. Let George go to work for you and see what another “free” employee can accomplish!