Appointment Setting Skills
Tips and Techniques for using the telephone -103

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Appointment Setting Skills 
Tips and Techniques for using the telephone -103

your phone calling sessions and your appointment setting skills are really the substance to your insurance career and is only one part of your complete insurance marketing strategy. But it probably is the most important part.

This is where you convert those referrals and cold names you collected and turn them into selling interviews.   

You should follow the same phone calling format each and every time you plan on making phone calls. As time goes on, you will refine what you say and how you say it and eventually you will develop your own success formula. So lets go look at the process through a magnifying glass.
 
We all know that making that first phone call is the biggest problem with every phone calling session.

Lets first talk about a idea that can help get you fired up and provide you with a positive attitude, so that you can get into the proper phone calling mindset. This one idea below can help you with making as many phone calls in one session as possible.
                     

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Getting in the mood to make phone calls.

This idea worked wonders for me and my new agents, and eventually became a habit for all of our agents. It really is a simple idea. and is something I use to do to that would get me fired up prior to calling my first time contacts or cold names. Using this idea will help you with your attitude adjustment. it also helped me get into the mood and the proper mindset.

The first people I would call were a few of the people that told me to call back at a later date.  Since I talked to them already, it was an easy comfortable call to make and an ice breaker to get me working on the phone.  By doing this it let me transition comfortably into making more phone calls. 

Next I would also call the people that I had appointments set up with the following week. “Mr. prospect, just a courtesy call to remind you about our appointment next week”. I will be sending you a reminder card in the next few days”. I then mailed the reminder card about 3 days before the upcoming appointment day. (This process becomes part of the “double booking appointments” topic I will be publishing.)

Since I already talked to them and they knew me, it was a good icebreaker for me, it got me going, and then I would easily move into my referred lead names. By now, I already had several appointments set and I am fired up.

Now I moved into calling my cold call list of names. By the time I got to those cold call names, I was fired up and ready go. My enthusiasm was on the high side, my attitude is very positive. and the prospect could feel the excitement in my voice and this helped increase my appointment setting ratio.

As I grew in the business, and worked my way up the prospecting ladder, I usually was booking appointments 2 to 3 weeks in advance. (we will discuss this in one of our next "phone calling for appointment articles")

During the years that I worked with training new insurance agents and developing them, the toughest and hardest part of developing appointment setting skill with new agents was always getting them to establish a system, and develop good phone calling habits.

Hopefully these appointment setting skills we discussed will help you make more phone calls and set more insurance selling appointments.

Our next article will discuss - Setting up your work station for making phone calls effectively and efficiently - Appointment setting and phone calling - 104

Have a great day

Ted

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