Lead Nurturing

You’ve just spoken with Bill Gormin, the controller of a 20 person architectural firm, and gotten the green light to circle back six months down the road and schedule a meeting to provide him with a cost and coverage insurance review before his next renewal period. Bill was open-minded, sincere, and willing to hear what your agency could do for him. But he was preoccupied and didn’t spend long on the phone.

Six months later, when you finally get Bill on the phone again (after several missed attempts) he tells you that he’s terribly busy and won’t be able to meet after all this year. As a friendly concession, he invites you to check back next year, but that sales opportunity has evaporated. Unfortunately, this is an all too common scenario.

You’re disappointed and frustrated. Six months ago, Bill sounded like a solid prospect. He was engaged and motivated to have you review his risk and coverage. Now he seems like a different person. Maybe his current agent circled the wagons and advised him against speaking with competitors. Maybe you just called back at the wrong time. Or maybe you didn’t do anything to rekindle his motivation?

Motivation is like a fire

Unless you continue to add fuel – it goes out.

Commercial insurance sales are often (but not always) subject to renewal buying cycles. As soon as you hang up the phone with a prospect who’s expressed interest and given you his x-date, he goes right back to what he was doing before your conversation, and forgets all about you, your agency, and, for the most part, any advantages (great markets, plenty of experience with his business class, etc.) you might have discussed during the call.

What’s missing is a process for incubating or nurturing that lead. Sometimes sales people talk about “touches.” It takes a number of touches or contacts to cultivate the trust and engagement to turn a prospect into a client. That’s why advertisers repeat their messages again and again.  

And that’s why marketers send continuing email messages, offer ongoing webinars, and keep in contact with prospects at all levels. If you’re spending time developing your own leads or working with a prospecting pipeline you’ve got to nurture prospects in a similar way.

Relevance, Repetition, and Trust

In order to draw prospect into your orbit and keep them there you’ve got to talk about their concerns, provide them with timely news and information that matters to them, and establish yourself as a trustworthy knowledge source. Sending messages is one thing, getting recipients to open and read your emails is another. 

To be effective, your marketing messages should reach your people with a reasonable frequency. Clearly, the more often businesses see your name, the better they’ll remember you. At the same time you don’t want to bombard people so much you annoy them. For most clients and prospects contacting them once a month is a good interval.  

Since prospects all want the same thing—they want to know what’s in it for them—you want your communications to talk about concerns and interests relevant to your target group. Instead of emphasizing your extensive markets, your professional credentials and your years in business, you want to write about current risk, compliance, safety and rating issues that may be impacting their operations. This way you’re offering something of value and at the same time you’re establishing yourself and your agency as a knowledgeable and generous resource.

 If you can do that, prospects will naturally want to stick around and be part of your marketing ecosystem. And later, when you call to schedule a meeting to review their insurance and risk, they’ll be much more likely to remember your agency and set that meeting.

Next month PMA will be launching our new B to B Advantage© newsletter, a complete turnkey service to help agents stay ahead of the competition and in the minds of your prospects and clients.

Body Language Part 2 - Pointing, Posing, and Power

 

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

                A dismissive shrug of the shoulders. An impatiently tapping finger. A child with crossed legs, squirming like a centipede. These more or less involuntary movements speak for themselves: I don’t care; hurry up already; I have to use the bathroom right now.

                If only all nonverbal cues lacked subtlety. Then you’d never be stuck trying to discern whether a prospect needs a little more handholding or more breathing room; whether a client has one foot out the door or is eager to deepen your working relationship. You’d win every Saturday night poker game.

                Last issue, we talked about the treasure trove of information hidden within facial expressions and head positioning. This time, we’ll take you by the shoulder and point your feet in the right direction. 

Hands and arms make excellent shields. Tightly crossed arms convey defensiveness, gripping a drink with two hands creates a barrier between us and the person we’re speaking with, and crossed arms with rigidly clamped hands shout “I am unsafe, unwilling, and uncomfortable.” Nervousness inspires in us a desire to protect our most tender parts, and so we clutch a briefcase to our chest, hunch forward when sitting, or quite literally cup our hands over our genitals. (Unsurprisingly, the latter is a distinctly male trait.) If you need a clearer picture of what hostile, defensive posturing looks like, just ask the late stage, sadly belabored Richard Nixon.

True North of Intention

                Think of legs and feet as the needle of a compass, swinging toward the true north of interest and authority. If you notice someone’s knees and toes aimed in your direction, chances are you’ve gotten their attention. If you’re standing in a circle with people who have one foot forward, chances are those feet are arrows pointed at the person perceived as the group leader. And if you’re sitting face-to-face with someone whose toes are trained on the door rather than on you, it might be time to rethink your strategy before you lose their interest completely.

Power Poses

                If your goal is to increase your confidence and others’ confidence in you, take two minutes and try a power pose. Power poses are stances that convey strength and ease—standing with legs spread, palms on a tabletop, arms straight; leaning back in a chair, hands behind head, feet up on the desk; or the classic Wonder Woman: legs spread, chin up, and arms akimbo.

             Dr. Amy Cuddy of Harvard business school measured the effects of holding a power pose for two minutes and discovered that, for both men and women, testosterone levels rose 20% (think increased confidence and assertiveness) and cortisol levels dropped almost 25% (think decreased anxiety). Furthermore, she says, “Power posing also increases people's tolerance for risk and pain, and their ability to think abstractly. This isn't about what your body language is communicating to others; it's about what your body language is communicating to you: your body language is changing your mind, which changes your behavior, which changes your outcomes.”          

                As part of her study, Dr. Cuddy had subjects hold power poses for those two minutes, then put them through simulated job interviews. The impartial judges, observing these scenarios from outside the room, uniformly recommended hiring those interviewees who had power posed over those who hadn’t. They cited, rather than anything the participants said or their work experience, each subject’s impressive presence.

Mirroring and Matching

Hopefully, none of your prospects want to take flight, but if they do you’ll be forewarned. Or, even better, take notice of their disquiet and turn the situation around. One useful technique is called mirroring, reflecting another person’s gestures and tone. Mirroring is an amazing process that can foster powerful attunement if it’s practiced with skill and awareness. (We’ll talk more about mirroring in future articles.) They take a sip of water, or lean forward, and you do the same. If they are speaking softly, or gesturing with their hands, so do you. And if they jump up and start dancing the fandango, pull out your castanets and play along. You might just close a deal.