The Pre-Need Seller and Drop-Bys

There’s sort of an ebb and flow to sales and many times we institute systems and changes and expect immediate results when if we’ll just continue to work our system the results will happen and a snowball of new business begins.

I know we like immediate results when it comes to sales and sometimes you get a quick sale from your new system but it really does take several days maybe even a few weeks to really see the fruits of your labor.

I recently began doing drop-bys on some old files from the vault. These are folks the cemetery had done business with some 15 – 45 years ago.

That’s a long time ago.

I did this research in a way that I wasn’t noticed by my fellow sales associates but one associate found out and immediately laughed because those folks had moved, died, or were a complete waste of time.

There’s a lesson I could talk about just from her response but that’s for another time.

All told I came up with 289 leads that I managed to cross reference with the on-line white pages and used map-qwest to make a few notes at the bottom of each page and lumped them geographically together to save time dropping by.

Next, I used the Post Office to mail a postcard to those people with an offer.

One week later I began my drop-bys.

By the way, I received one response to the postcard and met that couple at the cemetery.

So, arguable, you could say I got an immediate result from the mailing.

There are many strategies for dropping in on families.

I dedicated two solid weeks to nothing but dropping by those 289 folks.  I only managed to drop-by 100 total in those two weeks. So, there are still 189 to go.

The goal?

Review the file with the prospect, warm the lead, and set an appointment or better time to drop by in the future.

Or you could say, warm the lead up or toast the lead.

Here are the results of this 2-week test. 4 appointments (not counting the postcard mailing appointment), 3 future “ok” to drop by, 12 warmed-up leads (no commitments), 6 “no”, and 4 contracts written.

And, a side note, several remembered my postcard mailing.

Here’s the point.

You can combine more than one strategy to create new business out of thin air.

Don’t rely on one strategy to generate new business.

Utilize several strategies and begin to merge completely different forms of in-person and non-in-person techniques.

Next time I’ll elaborate on the lessons learned from “drop-bys”.

Click  below for part one.

http://howtosellpreneed.com/prospecting/the-pre-need-seller-and-drop-bys-part-2

Happy Selling!

David…

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