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Industry veteran and Rainmaker Advisory founder David Estrada is one of the foremost experts on the mistakes that producers need to avoid.
Now he’s ready to share his insights in “The Top 10 Mistakes Producers Made in 2017—and how to avoid them”, an exclusive Insurance Business webinar on April 05.
We caught up with David prior to the webinar to get a sneak peek of the issues he’ll be covering …
Insurance Business: How did you collect, assess and rank the problems you list in the webinar?
David Estrada: Every year we poll our subscribers and ask them approximately 30 questions – some multiple choice, some ranking hierarchies, and some write-in questions, which probe specific areas that impact an insurance professional’s ability to grow a book of business sustainably over time. This year we received 1,432 responses to our survey request - the highest ever in our history of doing this survey since 2010. We evaluate both empirical and qualitative data when we synthesize the Top 10 Mistakes - which incorporates both the data results as well as a subjective judgement we make based on the impact a given mistake has on an insurance professional’s career given our coaching programs and sales team training verticals. So, there is a mix of empirical, qualitative, and ‘gut-check’ judgement applied as to how we rank the top 10.
IB: What would say is the biggest mistake/problem you’ll be covering in the webinar?
DE: There are 10 - and we are giving each more or less equal time. However, if I were to select just one … it is to manage the opportunity pipeline as that will successfully address so many issues that confront new business developers as they grow their practices
IB: How many of the mistakes you list in the webinar are easily avoidable?
DE: That’s a great question. Some, like #1: establishing an ideal target client definition and #6: insufficient use of resources and #9: inconsistent use of pipeline are relatively easy fixes. Others, such as #2: Drip Campaign construction and application, #4: center of influence development, #7 failure to promote work and provide a body of evidence, etc., are more challenging and lend themselves to successfully addressing by working with a coach/advisor/or outsourcing to a third party.
IB: Are there any mistakes that are relatively new to the industry, and others which never seem to go away?
DE: Another great question! Most are eternal and will not go away - however the challenge for all of us, in my opinion, is how to reconcile the ‘fundamental truths’ of our business with the most current and up to date way of doing so...so as an example, in terms of promoting one’s work as well as skillset gaps in prospecting - the ‘fundamental truth’ of showcasing our work and applying our efforts towards effective prospecting methods remains - but with social media and other channels we are all tasked with learning how to reconcile those fundamentals with the most modern methods of doing so - so much is available to us now that was not available in the past - so we must adapt and learn.
