Why knowing it is important

• It will help you to manage your focus and activity on your best relationships
• It will clarify how important your involvement in the sales process is to closing business
• It will help you to plan future policies and activity
• It will help you to clearly identify your best and worst referral sources
• It will assist with a clear and confident value statement with regard to your firms involvement in the sales process from start to finish
• Why would a potential referral source not want you to be involved once they know that you can dramatically increase their ability to close new business

Data to gather

• Garbage in garbage out – make sure that your database is in good order; that you capture all the data needed and it is accurately entered.
• Referral Source - including their name (obviously), firm name, address, contact information (phone and email) and broker dealer.
• Proposals requested – capture information on all proposals requested whether or not you generate a proposal, by referral source. This will help you with your analysis of your relationships, are they worthy of your time or not.
• Proposals generated – capture all information on the proposals you generate
  • Name of prospect
  • Plan type
  • Plan size – Participants and Assets
  • Anticipated revenue
  Involvement in the sales process – information on whether or not you were able to connect with the prospect in advance to gather your own data on their needs, meet and plan with the referral source in advance and if you were at the finals presentation.
  • Include who from your firm is involved as this will help with training, mentoring and management of staff.

Determine close ratios

Once you have enough data, you should be able to begin performing calculations even before the end of the year, you can determine your close ratios when you are involved and when you are not.

• You will notice which referral sources are successful with and without your presence, which will help you to focus your efforts where it counts.
• You can use that information when developing new relationships as you can confidently state that your involvement makes a difference.
• And most importantly you will stop wasting your time and resources on referral sources and proposals that have a very low probability of closing.