Is the 10-3-1 sales funnel principle really workable ? Read more to break your myth

There are so many definitions of the traditional 10-3-1 formula. Some people think that 10-3-1 means that ten calls lead to three appointments and one sale.

The likely father of the formula was the late Al Granum. 10-3-1 is a strict formula. It means, starting with 10 qualified prospects (People you know have a need, appreciate it and can buy) can lead to 3 booked appointments. Those booked appointments will result in the acquisition of one “policy” , but over time, not immediately.

In today’s day and age the formula has boiled down to 20 – 5 – 1 due to the mis-selling of ULIP’s, closing old ULIP’s to sell new ULIP’s and such other things which has led to a trust deficit.

The age old idea of qualifying prospects based on MAANI – Money, approachability, authority, need & insurability again does not hold any water today and I will explain why it is so. Based on the MAANI, i feel we waste time meeting too many people whom we think need insurance – Yes we think they need insurance. Do they think they need insurance or for that matter they need planning ?. Yes that is the question. Trying to use the current formula of 20 – 5 – 1 and MAANI together results in a wastage of time, money and effort. I will come back to this question but let me divert your attention to something different.

15 years back i had read in a LIMRA book titled “This I believe” (Happen to be 8 small booklets but had a wealth of knowledge about insurance), i came across 2 statements

• All human beings are alike
• All human beings are different.

I could not really understand the real implication of these two seemingly contradicting statements. All human beings are alike means that all human beings have same physical characteristics, all human beings want to be loved, all human beings want to be part of society etc. All human beings are different means that all human beings have certain themes in life and their decisions on what they will do or not do depends on these themes. The themes are not right or wrong but just themes.

Let me explain with an example to make it simpler. There are these two persons ,Mr X and Mr Y who had very humble beginnings and came from very poor families struggling through life and have today a Net Worth of 50 Crores. If i go and speak to Mr X and tell him that if he had some support from his parents and if he had a good foundation in childhood he would have really gone places. Mr X will perfectly agree with you. You ask him to do some investment for creating a foundation for his son so that he does not have to suffer what he suffered. Mr X will agree with you and be ready to discuss a plan. When you go and explain the same thing to Mr Y, he will tell you that he does not believe in creating any foundation for his son as he wants his son to struggle through life and experience what he experienced else he will not know the real value of money. No however much you try to convince Mr Y he will not listen. What about Objection handling techniques ?  They will not work with Mr Y anyways.

We may have wasted trying to set up a meeting with Mr Y as whatever we say he will not be interested in any plan. Are we spending too much time running around the types of Mr Y.  Then it is only a waste of time.

But suppose I told you that you can identify who would be ready to discuss and also implement financial plan by just talking to them for 2 minutes and after than making just six 30 second calls.

What this means is that you need to talk to a large number of people and then be able to identify who are Mr X types immediately. Imagine the implication in terms of saving time, effort, energy and money.

The FR App is just a very simple tool which will help you to distinguish between the types of Mr X and Mr Y so that you don’t meet the Mr Y types and only take appointments with Mr X types.

Introducing the Tank Concept as a replacement to the sales Funnel concept

Idea : Create HOT leads from COLD CALLS in 2 minutes

The tank has to be filled with 1000 persons by using the “Not to Work” concept which is a 2 minutes script which can be used with anybody and everybody even if you don’t know them.

This script will help you qualify the prospect whether he is Mr X or Mr Y. If he is the kind of Mr X you should proceed further by taking an appointment and if he is the kind of Mr Y then you need not waste your time further and dump him

Our experiments have shown that out of a sample size group of 1000, you will have 20% of the types of Mr X and 80% of the types of Mr Y. Imagine spending time only with the Mr X types. You will save huge amount of time which was getting wasted as there was no method to identify Mr X types from Mr Y types. Imagine the increase in effectiveness both on time and effort.

The Process

• Go to Play Store and install the funding responsibility App (It is Free)
• Share with us either your cell no or mail id and we will share a document which shows a step by step screen shots for using the App easily. We will not use this information for any purpose other than sending the document which will make your job of understanding the App very easy.
• Go through the scripts given below but without screen shots to help you understand how to use the app appropriately
• An advisor in Guwahati collected 600 suspects in 15 days by doing this exercise manually (App was not developed)
• I have presented how to use the App to more than 2000 advisors across india at 20 different locations where I conducted training programs.

Script for using the Funding Responsibility App

Sir I am Ramesh from XYZ Insurance company. A group of like minded finance professionals have taken a mission to reach out to 1 Lakh people across India to make them aware about the “Not to work Corpus”

Sir I need 3 minutes for this. Is it Ok.

1. Sir would you like to have a choice “not to work” any time in the future.
2. Sir at what age would you like to have this choice
3. To have this choice you would require a “Not to work Corpus”
4. Sir do know how much CORPUS you will require
5. Is it OK if I take 1 min to calculate this Corpus (Click New Client tab in

App)

6. Type Name.. Date of birth, . Retirement age, put end of life 80 years and Annual expenses.( Without Education , without EMI)

(Leave all other fields blank. Click Next, Next and Done. Page will open in view client list)

(Open the current client by Clicking on his name. Leave the present Corpus page and swipe to go to the next page. There are two figures. “Not to work expenses” which is the expenses needed with 7% inflation  at that time and Not to Corpus)

7. Sir your Not to work expenses with 7% inflation is _____ and Not to work

Corpus is ______

8. Sir if you have ________ Corpus at that time …how would you feel?
9. Sir do you think it is important to remember this figure?
10. Sir is it OK if i remind you every week about this figure and I promise

you that I will not sell you anything

11. Can I have your cell no please.  (Save the name of person starting with

RC like RC Mukesh Jain) . Go to app and share this page to this prospect)

12. Tell the prospect – Sir I have just shared the info with you. Thank you so much for your valuable time.

Telephone Script –   Call every week once.

Good morning Sir, I am Ramesh from XYZ Insurance company. I met you last week at ___________.

Sir do you remember how much Not to Work Corpus you will need?.           (Mostly prospect will not remember it). Say Sir please do not forget the Retirement Corpus which is __________.  Thank you Sir I will call next week.

Call every week for 6 weeks in a similar fashion. Call should not take more than 30 seconds only.Do not try to sell anything on the call. The call is just to remind him about the quantum of corpus needed by him and his family. before you take appointment for a meeting.

Within 6 calls 20% of the people you call will respond to your call by saying something like this “ Mr _______ I appreciate what you are doing but just reminding me will not do and you will have to help me to plan out this corpus. Would you be able to help?. There you go you have got a HOT LEAD.

This prospect will heed your advice as he considers you are an expert in this field.

I will share a Project which we did in Mumbai to validate whatever is mentioned above

I took 50 advisors to churchgate station one early morning in June last year. We all booked 1^st Class pass. Churchgate being the starting station we all entered the 1^st class compartment and sat down in the middle seat of both side rows. Obviously one passenger came and occupied the left seat and another occupied the right side seat. All advisors  had one person on either side of him. As the train started each of us started speaking to either the left side guy or the right side guy the same script as given above. We all sat on the same seat for the full day for 9 hours as the train went from churchgate to borivali at least 4 times. Each of us were able to get 35 to 40 leads on a single day. Being 1^st class compartment we had a very good quality prospect. The advisors did this exercise for 2 months and after the exercise we collated the results after 3 months and approx 20% conversion was reported.

Try this out with your teams and post me the results. I will be very happy to know how it works. There is a merit list in the App which shows on daily basis the top 25 users with number of leads generated.

Now you know why I was saying that trying to use the current formula of 20 – 5 – 1 and MAANI together results in a wastage of time, money and effort.

PS : WE DO NOT COLLECT ANY DATA OF THE CUSTOMERS AND THE SAME REMAINS IN THE MOBILE OF THE ADVISOR. WE ONLY COLLATE THE NUMBER OF TIMES THE SUBMIT BUTTON IS PRESSED BY EACH INDIVIDUAL TO GENERATE THE MERIT LIST. ALSO IF YOU SEE THE USER DOES NOT HAVE TO INPUT CELL NO OR ADDRESS OF THE PROSPECT IN THE APP. JUST NAME AND DATE OF BIRTH