I knew that in order to cope in insurance business, I had to do everything, literally everything, differently from my other colleagues. I wanted to reach customers by avoiding getting hit just for flipping a yellow A-4 card and calling the advertising company there.
In the fall of 1999, we lived in Ursus.
I listened attentively to my friend’s suggestion about visiting the blocks in the rich Ursynów, but I modified the idea a lot. I felt that visiting distant places and writing down the names of residents from apartment blocks would be too much time consuming. I ran into something else. I started calling the inhabitants of Ursus. I wanted to move around the neighborhood where I lived. My goal was to have as many meetings as possible with people from one area. I didn’t want to waste time commuting to places scattered all over Warsaw, at least at the beginning.
Ursus was my first base in the city. The local landline numbers were what the tigers liked best! I found a solution and overcame the barrier faced by anyone who starts or works for several years in the insurance industry. To this day, it is a problem for the vast majority of agents. More about it in my audiobook: “Namolni, self-imposed insurance agents”.
I was glad that I jumped over the wall and did not stand still. I didn’t open the pages of phone books, which were the silent killer of anyone who picked them up. I listened to myself, my inner voice. I took my thought and brought it to life. The way I came up with motivated me to continue constructive work. I had a starting point. Looking at an empty calendar did not fill me with optimism. Every day of unproductive looking out of the branch window while waiting for a client to enter it had a destructive effect on every agent.
What was my idea? Well, I started calling landline numbers. I called them one by one; I didn’t want to miss anyone. It would be my mistake to select them. One of the old Ursus numbers started with the number 662. I sat down and called the first of my would-be clients on the number 662 00 01. The next one was in line 662 00 02, then ended 03, 04 etc. I called every day from 9.00 to 20.00, and on Saturdays until 2 p.m. I booked Sundays for meetings with people who were very busy during the week.
There were times when the audience raised their tones and asked me:
“Where did you get THIS phone number from? It’s proprietary! ”
I explained the method I introduced. And how do you think they believed? Of course not. It turned out to be too complicated. People can make simple issues very complex. Angrily they hung up, and I kept calling. Working systematically, I quickly filled my calendar with meetings.