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Cheryl A. Clausen's Articles

  • Time Management Tips: It's Not about Doing More
    Time management tips are more than just ideas to help you cram more into your day. When you try to cram too much into your day you feel stressed out, exhausted, and irritable because you're working harder than you need to. Stop and take a time out. Unfortunately your thinking is misguided and you're focusing on the wrong things. You don't need to figure out how to cram more in your day. Your current focus on efficiency and that isn't necessarily what you need.
  • Time Management Tips: Do You Break it Down into Actions?
    Use this one simple idea to feel less stressed. And make better use of the time you have. You can do this by analyzing the whole project to break it down into individual actions. Realize that a project isn't necessarily some large undertaking that you're involved in at work. Anything that requires more than one action on your part is a project.
  • Time Management Tips: Do You Act before You Think?
    Does your day start with you running to your first appointment? When you get there how often do you find that you don't have what you need? Both are clear signs that it's time for you to slow down, and plan what you're going to do before you take action. You'll get more done faster with less stress if you set aside proper planning time. Even though sales people love action and they would rather be doing than thinking you need to discipline yourself to plan before you act. You think as long as you're doing something you're making progress.
  • Time Management Techniques: Mistakes that Cost You Time
    Time management is basically a goals and integrity issue. Do you ever find yourself going off on wild goose chases, reacting to the daily fires rather than proactively planning your day, and spending hours on activities that no one pays you to do? When you make these mistakes they are costing you precious time and keeping you from getting the results you want. You don't get side tracked because you want to waste a lot of time and energy and increase your level of frustration and tension. You do it because you don't have a clear direction for yourself for where you're going and what you want to accomplish. You probably have a ball park idea, but it isn't specific enough for you to actually know what you should be doing when.
  • Time Management Techniques: Are You a Time Strategy Victim?
    Do you find yourself complaining that you never have enough time? Are other people and things keeping you from getting things done? Perhaps you are a time management strategy victim. Perhaps your own negativity and passiveness are the real source of your time management issues. Blaming others and responding to every distraction or crisis that hits your radar screen are the easy things to do. But when you choose to respond that way you're allowing other people and other things to control your time and your destiny. You're allowing hap-in-stance to determine how you will invest your time, and keeping yourself from the achievements that would make you successful. The only way to stop being a victim is to take control of your time by taking responsibility for how you will use your time at every moment of every day.
  • Time Management Techniques to Stop Chasing Customers
    If you're a sales professional/business owner this time management tip will help you to be more time effective and increase your sales. It's no secret sales people like you like lots of activity. You think lots of activity means more sales but your thinking is actually counter productive. Your greatest potential for immediate sales is in your current customers. Customers are more likely to buy from you again and again and again than most prospects. Some of your customers are responsive in that they buy from you occasionally and some of your customers are highly responsive and will buy nearly everything you show them.
  • Time Management Slills help You to know What to Do Next
    Just thinking about everything you need to do may leave you feeling overwhelmed, and unsure about where to start. You may also worry that you aren't even sure if you know everything you have to do. Here are some time management techniques you can use to get unstuck and going again. The best way to get yourself out of this mess is to identify where you really are. Start with a blank piece of paper and list all the actions you've committed to taking. Don't list things that involve more than one action or ideas.
  • Time Management Skills: A Key to Your Success
    When you're the only one responsible for all the functions required to run your business it's easy to become overwhelmed by the details. All the daily interruptions take your focus off the important and at the end of the day you aren't sure where the day went. With so many demands on you each day your time management skills will either make you or break you, so it's time to develop good time management skills now. It's much harder to stay focused on the important and productive things you should be doing rather than the onslaught of interruptions. Firefighting and micro-management are terrible time management techniques. These are success killing habits that you'll want to break now.
  • Strategic Planning is an Effective Sales Technique
    Strategic planning has nothing to do with sales if you enjoy working hard, and struggling day in and day out to hit your sales targets. If you'd rather make more and work less then strategic planning has everything to do with sales. There are two distinct approaches to sales, and the choice is yours to make. Most sales people follow an approach that focuses on high levels of activity hoping that all that activity will result in sales. Both you and I know people who tried that approach, worked nearly night and day yet they still failed. That contradicts what you're constantly being told by sales managers, broker dealers, underwriters, and others.
  • Sales Techniques to Overcome Closing Anxiety
    Perfectly normal people break out in a sweat when it comes time to close the deal. They're afraid to close because they haven't properly handled the earlier steps in the sales process. When it comes time to close it should be nothing more than a natural conclusion to a selling conversation. There are four reasons you're suffering from closing anxiety. The prospect didn't agree to having a selling conversation with you in the first place. The buyer is confused because you presented too many choices. You didn't help the buyer through a thought process that made it easy for them to buy. Or you never got to the emotional reason the prospect should act and act now.
  • Sales Coaching:Are You Getting Leads from Your Business Cards?
    Start using your business cards as a lead generation tool Always have your business cards with you. Right now you probably don't think much about them because you aren't getting the maximum value from these little marketing tools. Realize you get business cards for a reason. Currently you give out your business card so people can contact you and remember you. That approach is based on your presumption that at some point they'll want to contact or remember you, but you aren't providing them with a valid reason to do so.
  • Sales Coaching: The Secret Weapon for Influencing People
    The secret to influence probably isn't what you're expecting. Powerful influence is a result of the way you listen. You can be a master of influence if you know how to listen to unlock this powerful influencing force. Your current listening behaviors make it unnecessarily hard for yourself. The listening behaviors that reduce your effectiveness include: allowing other thoughts to clutter your mind, thinking about what you're going to say next while the other person is still talking, trying to rush the prospect, and you losing focus. These bad listening behaviors eliminate your persuasion potential.
  • Sales Coaching: Are You Asking the Right Questions?
    The right questions probably aren't the questions your using now. Do you and your prospects feel uncomfortable with the questions you're asking? When you ask a question and your prospect stutters and stammers around almost squirming in their chair you have a clear signal that you've asked a poor question. When you ask a good question the prospect will often comment, "that's a great question". The prospect will engage and actively think about the question before thoughtfully responding. They will not only answer the question, they'll tell you a little more.
  • Sales Coaching to Help You to Become a Skilled Questioner
    If you feel awkward asking questions it may be because you aren't asking the right questions in the right order for the right reason. Effective questioning is definitely a skill and the best sales people are masters at. But most sales people ask questions that do little to help them with their sales success. It's a big mistake to ask questions that you could easily know the answer to if you'd just done your homework. Business owners and executives have zero patience for educating you. And when you ask questions that are generally known they view you as inept and you've lost the sale from the start.
  • Sales Coaching to Get Referrals without being Pushy
    You've been trained to ask for referrals in a pushy, obnoxious, and downright embarrassing manner. When you use the tactics you've been trained to use it's very harmful to your relationship with your customer. Don't try asking ever so clever questions like, who do you golf with. Choke, puke, gag. These tactics are manipulative and you should stop using them right now. Don't stoop to using these high pressure approaches to get the referrals you need.
  • Sales Coaching Money Objections
    How do you respond when a prospect tells you they don't have any money? What do you do when a prospect tells you they want more money? Do you accept these statements as fact? If you do you're falling into a sales trap that means no sale for you. Even though their statements sound logical you're missing the critical information you need to make a sale. When you hear that someone doesn't have any money you think you should just remove them from your prospecting list or you should wait until they do have money. You're missing a real opportunity, and you aren't even aware of it.
  • Sales Coaching for Prospecting
    You may be surprised to learn that even MDRT members don't like prospecting, but they know it's something they have to do. Instead of dreading prospecting you should be looking forward to it with excited because you have to have prospects to sell. You don't look forward to prospecting because you want to be told "no". A system for prospecting will help you to get good at it. Of course, a system is worthless if you won't consistently implement it. Why you don't like prospecting now, and how you could like prospecting?
  • Law of Success: Don't Let Fear Drive Your Decisions
    If at some point you worked for others there was always someone else you could either blame or count on to bail you out, but now there's no one but you. Does it feel like the world is crumbling around you and that failure is one heartbeat away? You're trapped in the grips of fear and your fear will keep you from mastering success.
  • Keys to Success: You Can't Succeed if You Can't Make a Decision
    Do you procrastinate? Does it seem like everything you try ends in failure? There's a simple explanation for this. You can't make a decision. And because you can't make a decision you can't succeed. Develop the habit of making decisions quickly. You think it's hard to make decisions. The reason you find it so hard to make decisions is because you place too much focus on information over the facts, and you don't have a clear plan for what you want and how you're going to get there.
  • Keys to Success: Wear Your Courage on Your Sleeve
    Do you have the courage to succeed? Success can't be had unless you have the courage to succeed. Courage is the ability to deal with difficulty, uncertainty, and pain without getting side tracked from your chosen course of action. Success requires heavy investment of your time, treasures, and emotion. The emotion is often the hardest part to deal with. When you want to succeed you put so much effort, so much time, and so much of yourself into the quest that it's nearly impossible to have an impartial view of your experience on this journey.
  • Keys to Success: Do I Need to Hire More People?
    If you were able to double your revenue with your existing people resources why would you think you need to add more people? Wrongly hiring additional people can be a big mistake. Employees cost your business far more than the salary you pay them.
  • Insurance Sales: Tracking for Increased Sales
    When you struggle to track where prospects are in your sales funnel and how likely they are to do business with you it's easy to drop the ball and miss prime opportunities. Many tracking systems are complicated and unwieldy. You need a simple tracking system. You need to know at a glance exactly who your prospects and leads are, how likely they are to do business with you, their contact information, the commitments agreed upon during your last contact, and the next action you must take to close the business.
  • Insurance Sales: The Solution to Turning Objections into Sales
    You don't have to hear "no" and "not now" any more when the answer should be "yes". You are responsible for getting "yes". You're being told "no" and "not now" for three main reasons. One main reason is you fail to prepare so you can earn the "yes". You've probably heard enough objections by now to know what to expect. Identify every question, concern, or objection the prospect could possibly throw at you and gather all those objections in one list.
  • Insurance Sales: Reduce their Risk You Can't Earn the Sale
    Prospects don't buy whey they feel buying is too risky. Risk is a very valid concern that needs to be properly addressed. Wrong decisions can get then locked into products that are wrong for them and too costly to get out of. You need to help them to identify their risks and use the facts to make a good decision. Perceived risks and extraneous information rather than facts are the foundation of many of their concerns. Plus they worry that the money they're investing today is less valuable than the investment you're asking them to make.
  • Insurance Sales: Discovery or Interrogation
    You realize that questions are a critical part of the sales process, but the questions you ask aren't producing the results you want. The way you structure the questions you ask, and the intent behind them have a dramatic impact on the prospect and your results. Questions are an easy way to establish rapport with the prospect, put them at ease, get them to open up to you, and help them to feel comfortable with you. But your questions must demonstrate your sincere interest in the prospect, or they just don't have the desired impact.
  • Insurance Sales: Are You Winning the Sale before the Sale?
    Before you can ever sell anyone anything don't you have to sell them on having an appointment? If you're like most agents you find it difficult to fill your appointment book each week. If you could hold appointments each week with people who are genuinely interested in doing business with you wouldn't that make your life so much easier? The good news is you can. Realize that selling starts way before the appointment. So, you have to set yourself up to attract the people you want to work with so you can fill that appointment book.
  • Insurance Sales: Are You Recession Proof?
    You have three choices you can make if the forecasted recession becomes a reality. You can sit back and watch it, you can go into survival mode only thinking about how to lessen the impact, or you can develop a plan to grow your business because of the recession. The choice and the result you'll experience is all yours. A top producer will never allow external circumstances to determine their future and neither should you. Identify how you'll be impacted by a recession if you do nothing to protect yourself. Think about how a recession will impact your customers and potential customers if they do nothing to protect themselves, and what you can do to help them to avoid that.
  • Insurance Sales: Aren't You Selling Money at a Discount?
    You should be selling your services rather than a product. So why do you market your products? You can almost immediately increase your sales if you'll just stop doing that. Dan Kennedy talks about the technique of selling money at a discount. That's exactly what you you need to be doing. Yet you're approaching it all wrong. Most of you use the approach of asking to quote your prospects insurance. There isn't a lot of interest in that approach and it's a low value approach. You would be much better served using the approach of selling money at a discount.
  • Insurance Sales Success: What Top Producers Understand
    You're stuck being average but you want to be a top producer. Even though you do what you're supposed to be do according to industry experts it isn't working for you in a way that will get you to the top. You don't know what you don't know and you're frustrated and exhausted. If you keep doing what you've been doing you'll stay stuck and frustrated. The success you have now can be the very thing that stifles future growth because the very things that got you where you are will keep you trapped at your current level.
  • If You Do These 3 Things You're Doomed In Sales
    Don't be shocked when you learn the three things you should never do are exactly what you're told to do. These three things are setting you up for failure. It's no wonder over 90% of the people entering the insurance and financial services industries fail in less than three years. You never want to cold call even though that's exactly what you're told to do. Cold calling has never been productive activity, but rather a shot in the dark approach, and with the combination of the current legal ramifications and people's increased intolerance it's an even worse waste of your time.
  • Goals are a Time Management Skill
    Goals are a great time management tool. You understand that goals are important but you may not be very good at setting and getting them. This inefficiency in goal setting creates a lack of focus and that lack of focus causes you to make poor time related decisions. People mess up with their goal setting because they try to set too many goals at once. This creates confusion because you can't focus on or track too many goals so you're better off setting a few goals and really concentrating on getting those than trying to do everything at once. And when you only have a few goals it's much easier to plan the next actions you need to take to get them.
  • Blaming and Complaining are Success Killers
    Unless you accept full responsibility for your current conditions you'll use excuses, blame others, and complain about your lack of success. These habits and behaviors move you away from success. And they take you away from success rapidly. You only have yourself to thank for your current current situation whether you like it or hate it. As you begin to realize that you created whatever your experiencing take responsibility for changing it. The future success you want can only happen through your plans and actions.
  • Are Your Insurance Sales Hot like a Bowl of Chili?
    If your sales aren't hot you may be frustrated and confused. You know the sales and marketing systems you're using are working for others, but they aren't working for you. How or why can that be? Because you're reading this article I'm pretty confident that you have at least some experience and knowledge with eating. And that's why I think you'll be able to relate to the examples I'm going to use to convey my point even if you've never personally eaten chili. In case you don't know what chili is, it's a hot spicy soup.

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