Turnover

At one time I was working in insurance and had set myself a particular challenge: Play 200 active business conversations, i.e. I would have to live 200 open opportunities on my agenda simultaneously.

Those were the rules:

  1. As soon as I knocked one down, another one would have to come in.
  2. To be considered a business, I would have to be in the lead in the interlocutions (not my team).
  3. It would have to involve the products we had on the shelf. Only 10 would be considered special projects.
  4. To be considered a live opportunity, I would have to maintain at least one active or receptive contact per week with my counterpart in each deal.

There were a few offenders on my agenda. The head office of the insurance company I worked for was in Porto Alegre and I was in São Paulo, working in a branch office. The president also dispatched from São Paulo, so for me this access was fundamental. But he demanded face-to-face meetings, almost weekly, at the head office.

My weekly flight left at 6:45 and arrived there at 9:00. So this was my weekly period that I would reconcile my numbers. It was the only time in my week that I could concentrate on papers.

The rest of the time I literally spent on my cell phone or in face-to-face meetings.

Another thing I did was to cut down on internal meetings. Unless the president called me, there were express orders for anyone to interrupt me at any time to talk, as long as the conversation did not go longer than 2 minutes.

I also eradicated: coffee shops, smoking rooms, and lunches with colleagues.

Another rule: My activities would be restricted to the phone talking to people on my business agenda or I would be answering emails from those people.

From the goal of 200, I made it to 150 and then it dropped to 80 and in the end 20. All this in a period of 8-9 months.

These 20 multiplied my financial gains by years.

I was young, impetuous, arrogant, and with energy bursting out of my ears. But I was living in a state of borderline stress. I was not at all happy with the life I was leading, and I knew something was wrong with it all. I was killing myself.

Today, looking back and writing this subject for you, I tell you that it was worth the learning, the financial gains, and mainly the self-confidence.

The main legacy is the belief that it doesn't matter the size of your company, your background, or the product you have in hand. If you put your face to the market, the result comes and comes strong.

Today, when I am faced with the challenge of increasing revenue or even replenishing, I have a single rule: Increase the volume of people from your market on your agenda.

It is the simplest thing there is.

You want to sell more, talk to more people.

The dose of it is them. I was able to overdo it and learn. I was young. Today I know how to dose.

In my book "The Best Client Prospecting Ever" I talk about the case of reinsurance for the construction of the Anchieta-Imigrantes downhill highway here in the state of SP.

It was a situation where I had to convince gringos to bail out our client in a business of great uncertainty that was the road concessions in a country that was starting this type of modality.

And I with my rough English had to talk to 20-30 different people around the world (Australia, USA, Germany, England and others) to convince them to analyze the risk.

I say this because if I didn't have my goal focused on talking to people I would have withdrawn and given in to the fear of making a fool of myself in front of this market.

And so it was for all five cases presented in the book. They all have one common denominator: Talk to the market. Put your fear in the bag, close the zipper, and talk to your market.

Speaking of my book and its arrogant title "The Best Client Prospecting Ever", I joke with my classes in courses that if someone shows me a better methodology I will call the printer right now to hold the cover because I will change it to "The Second Best Client Prospecting Ever".

But bring me cases, names of people, and dates. Theory and "I think" will do. Everyone laughs and the atmosphere is healthy and very good.

Well, this little statement of mine is to cheer you up. I am no better than you. Perhaps life circumstances led me early on to fall for the market and learn some of its rules very quickly.

And to this day, after three decades of being in business, I can assure you: The volume of business, the volume of your business depends only on you and no one else.

Stavros Frangoulidis
Stavros Frangoulidis
CEO of PaP Solutions ⚡ Let's connect on Linkedin too

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