Sally sells insurance

And other problems with businesses

An unsolicited email arrived yesterday. Without reading the subject line it was easy to tell why this person was writing to me by simply reading who the email was from; sallysellsinsurance@****.com.

Whoever Sally is, we give her credit in creating this address on one of the most popular domains. Sally may have a store front office where I can go in and meet her staff. Reading through the email, surely I would have found out. However, Sally lost me with the email address.
Simply stated, insurance can be looked at as something for which you give someone money and they give you papers, or a link to download and print the papers yourself. Depending on the type of insurance, this paper can be quite expensive.

This is not a lesson in keywords and subject lines, but instead it is an examination of what we sell and what the customer wants to purchase.

Who wants to buy “insurance”? Know anyone that has read all those pages? Neither do I.

What I see with Sally is the same I see with a lot of businesses that are finding more and more competition from the Internet. You can buy most any product on the Internet. When it gets to the point of no differentiation in the product or how it is offered or presented, the customer is simply looking at an item and then looking for the best price.

This is what I see Sally selling; an item that she and many other sales people have caused to become a commodity.

A recent survey, and this experience with Sally’s email says there can be more to the experience of spending money. The survey from USA Today said that 50% of consumers want to see a minimum of three to five photos of a product before they consider making a purchase. There are 27% of consumers that want to see six or more photos.

The issue goes deeper than just a picture. After all, who wants to look at a picture of Sally (or anyone else selling insurance) or the logo for the insurance company she represents?

My interpretation of this is a customer wants more than to just see a picture of these. They want to see what they are really buying. With insurance they are buying comfort and security. The customer has worked hard for the items they own and are going to insure. They don’t want to lose these possessions. In the case of life insurance, a person buying the insurance on themselves if buying the comfort that their family will be taken care of if they are gone.

There are many things that Sally can be selling, but insurance should not be one of them. The insurance she has to offer is the tool to create what the customer is wanting to buy. That is a big difference in the two.

Let’s look at what we sell? Do you sell easels, brushes, canvases, markers, sculpting tools, clay, inks and the many other items you have in your business? If so, a few minutes on Google and any person can find each and every item you are selling on as many pages as they are willing to look at. This becomes a race to find who can sell it for the cheapest, deliver it the quickest or a combination of the two.

This is where the people working in your business come in; whether they see an individual customer, are calling on a commercial account, or talking to someone by phone or email.

We had a person named Bob that came to work in our business. The day we met him he explained, “I don’t need a job, but I love to work. I like the materials you sell as they are quality and I enjoy using them. I also understand the materials that customers may like that I do not like. I like the way your employees interact with each other and the customers they see or talk with. I don’t know if you are looking for anyone, but if you are I would like to put my hat in that ring”.

It did not take long to hire Bob. And with all of his customers, Bob explained how and why he worked where he did. Bob explained what a customer could expect from a product and how a product would get that customer to their desired results.

When Bob explained a product, customers would say, “Bob, which item do you think I should pick?” or, “Bob, if that is what you think is right for me, then that is what I will select”.

The lesson? Sally sells insurance; Bob sells Bob. What do you and your staff sell?

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