Time Consuming Tasks

 If you are in business, really in business for yourself, what is your number one priority? If you are not making money, is what you are doing a time consuming task?

What is a time consuming task? A time consuming task is anything that keeps you away from customers. Have you ever wondered what people do all day 7 days a week who manage to only write one or two apps a week? What is more mind blowing is if your office has about 80% of the sales staff who do this or less. Two areas I want to focus on are first what am I doing that is stealing my time. One good example to me is taking the time to do for a customer what they could do for themselves. Some call it customer service, but usually only your customer can provide the answers, work, etc. Let me explain. If you work from home, there are only certain things you can do for a customer. You cant fix their computer if that is what you do, without them being your eyes and hands. If you sell or provide financial services and if the customer has a policy issue the insurer wants to speak to that customer these days and not the agent. If you run a business you cant run the register, sweep the floor, stock the shelves, clean rooms, clean the pool, fix appliances, etc, by yourself. You hire someone and train them so that at any given moment while you are planning your vacation let's say, all these other things are being done.

Your goal is to get customers however you do it. If you sell things or provide services, you need leads. Is there a difference in leads? Take for example a match, that thing you use to start a fire, as your lead. If you put a little pressure on one end, the match catches fire. However, if you strike the other end, nothing happens. So there you are holding the match. It's still a lead but at the right time it is hot, hence a hot lead. Any other time, it's just a lead, a person to talk to. Obviously, when the match is lit, you can use it for whatever, boiling water, cooking food, lighting the room, etc. Any other time that match is worthless unless you are doing some kind of art construction. It takes another lit match to get it going again.

The second area I want to address is, what is my method of getting leads that is time consuming? How do you get more matches? Of course you could buy them. You could go to the isle where they keep the matches and talk to them. You could go door to door asking people for a match. You could send out a self addressed stamped envelope asking for spare unused matches. You could get on facebook and ask for matches. You could advertise for matches on Google or other sites for matches. I think by now you see where I am going with this.

So which of these are waisting your time, and also your money? Obviously going from one door to another with a purchased list is time consuming. You may have to go back also if the person wasn't home. Calling from this list is also time consuming. It takes about 28 seconds for the phone to ring 4 times. So if you can do one dial per minute allowing for any notes you take, and not talking to anyone, you could make about 60 dials in an hour. Thus in your 10 your day you could probably make 600 dials. Then you might make maybe 6 appointments.

Sending mailers means purchasing paper, stamps, envelopes, creating the mailer, stuffing envelopes and putting stamps on them. Then you have to wait in line at the post office. I don't know about you , but no thanks. To do it right you should probably send out 1000 mailers. Then what is your response rate? 2%. That's 20 leads. The rest you may want to call to see if they received your mailer at least a couple of times. Ideally, you want to do this weekly or at least bi-weekly to get enough money to pay your bills. Look for rapid burnout.

Having or going to events puts you in contact with more people but how many clients do you get? How many apps will you get? Talking to people is nice but if it isn't getting me to an appointment TODAY or putting money in my pocket, TODAY, it's waisting my time!

The last area I want to look at is advertising. Be it Googe, Facebook, the newspaper, television, radio, blog, podcast which one will get me the biggest audience and consequently the hottest customers. We know we can get 1000 or more leads by purchasing them. We can send out as many mailers. Remember the match? These are just leads. Since people don't answer their phone as often these days the chance of talking to someone makes these methods extremely time consuming. With the right advertising, the sky is the limit. If you want to work around your area then local advertising should work best. However with Covid, people were stuck in their homes. The phone and computer became the norm. So why not do more business outside of your area. What ever that means for your business. #10x it! For an insurance agent getting licensed in multiple states means much larger audiences. Plus with computers and the phone, business can be conducted without being around any people. So if you take that same money you used for mailers and put it into online advertising, you could reach many thousands. And guess what? You have now gotten into their homes without you having to beg and plead. Those who respond want to hear from you. Done correctly, it doesn't take a lot of time to put an ad together. Within minutes you could have people calling you so all you have to do is take phone calls and write business.
Don't get me wrong, if you like to stay busy doing nothing and getting paid nothing, go for it. As for me, I want to write more apps a day than most people write in a week or some a month.