Tacos, Burritos & The Importance of Listening to Prospects
Say you walk into a Mexican restaurant to order lunch. You get to the front of the line and order the chicken tacos, easy on the guac. In turn, they hand you a veggie burrito.
“I didn’t order a burrito,” you would likely say. “I ordered the chicken tacos.”
Instead of amending your order, the employee says, “Yeah, we heard what you said. But the burrito is actually easier for us to make and we earn $.50 more. We’re pretty sure you want the burrito anyway.”
I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and say if this happened to you, you’d be pretty miffed. In fact, you probably wouldn't be keen on buying anything from that establishment again, regardless of how tasty the veggie burrito was.
And yet, some of you insurance professionals do this to prospects every day: they request one thing; you give them another and call it good.
As most of the agents on the InsureMe service are aware, we’ve been working in the last year-plus to create a lead generation form that’s more consumer-friendly while still providing agents with the information they need to form an accurate quote.
Last year, we stopped asking for SSN and driver’s license number. That’s because we found that consumers jump ship when asked for personally identifiable information online. Therefore, by removing it, we were able to improve lead quality and convert more visitors.
Along with a more consumer-friendly form, we also allow consumers to leave notes for agents as to how and when they’d like to be contacted with a rate quote. Not surprisingly, a lot of people request to be contacted with a preliminary quote via email. Because let’s be honest—if you were comparing quotes, the last thing you’d want is a dozen or more phone calls during dinner or those two hours you get with Jr. before bedtime.
Despite these requests, many insurance professionals skip the email and pick up the phone instead. When I shopped my auto insurance three months ago with InsureMe, I specifically asked that agents email me with preliminary quotes and said that I'd contact them from there.
Two agents called me right away. And it ticked me off. If they can’t read, I thought, I sure don’t want them to insure my car.
The other four agents I requested quotes from respectfully emailed me with their preliminary rates. That made me feel good. It made me feel like they respected my wishes, my time, and the demands on it. In the end I bought a policy from one of these four agents.
Trust me—I know the importance of being one of the first agents to contact a lead. It’s a selling tip that we’ve given here on the blog, as well as in our Agent Resource Center articles. But not once have we advised anyone to ignore a prospect’s requests in order to make first contact.
In fact, in the present consumer-driven, “Get it your way” market, blatantly handing someone a veggie burrito instead of the requested chicken tacos is pretty much the sales kiss of death.
Until next time, what are your prospects saying?
