Advanced Sales Areas Face Challenges Of Quantifying Efforts

At the direction of senior management, Hanna built an advanced marketing unit from scratch. Now, she faces the challenge of justifying the expense of her unit as she attempts to tie it to production results.

"We have no way to track our impact on production," she said. So instead, Hanna tracks every call into her department–where it comes from and what its about. "Everything is tracked and put into a monthly report," she continued. "If we cant link it directly to product, we can at least link it back to the productivity of the unit," she said.

But adding to the difficulty of tracking every call into a unit, is the increased number of distribution channels serviced by these areas.

"All of us are confronted with supporting multiple distribution channels," he said. LIMRA statistics reveal that the average number of distribution channels a company supports today is four, according to Edinger.

Peter Dorr feels the pressure of supporting multiple channels. The assistant vice president of advanced marketing for Ameritas Life Insurance Company, Lincoln, Neb., is never sure who will be on the other end of his continuously ringing telephone. "When I pick up the phone, I never know [which channel] Ill be talking to," he said.

Dorr noted that when working with several distribution channels, he gets questions of "every gambit," ranging from the most technical reverse split-dollar case to the agent "who doesnt know what an ILIT is."

"And, were not just supporting multiple distribution channels, were supporting multiple companies," added Edinger.

One of the problems Dorr continues to face is the fact that since he is supporting so many different producers, he never knows whether the agent he is assisting is a producing agent or not. "I may be spending 45 minutes on a call with an inactive producer, while a top producer is trying to get through and keeps getting my voicemail," he said.

According to Dorr, tracking calls into the department is not a possibility for Ameritas Life. As part of a unit that consists of three people–another attorney and a professional he described as a "Super CLU"–his small area supports about 4,000 producers. "I personally take about 1,000 calls every six months," he said.

And with so many channels from different companies within the same organization, collecting the data and turning it into a meaningful report "would be an administrative nightmare."

Dorr noted that his method for proving the effectiveness of his area is to follow his "one basic rule: Once a month, I want to get an e-mail or a voicemail from a producer that I can send up to management. Something that says Thanks for helping me place that case."

"Its an imperfect system," he said. "But if they want us to justify our time, theyve got to give us the tools to measure it–otherwise its hit or miss."

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, December 2, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.