do you remember?

My lunch appointment today cancelled so i find myself sitting at home on a gloomy, rainy Friday morning with absolutely nothing to do until tea time.

/insert "what are you complaining about!"

actually, i can't afford to sit on my ass today. i need to pull myself a good start to the new year. I'm actually on a basic scheme with AIA and I need to bring in a certain amount of business every month in order to receive my basic lest get kicked out of the scheme; or in other words, i have targets to meet.

i missed last months target and i'm really not happy about that. it means another month of scrimping and trying my best ot live off what i have now. chok and giam he. (porridge and salted fish) everyday.

UGH.

i need to really go out there and pull in some heavy sales.

ok, besides the point, i wanted to talk about my memory, because instead of sitting on my ass, ADMINISTRATION is what i'm going to do. administration in this sense is doing a review of meet-ups and looking at what we did and what we can do.

most agents actually make use of a software system to help them track their hundreds and hundreds of clients that they've "accumulated" over the years. me? just 2 months in the business, i had to come up with a sort of system in order to keep track of who i've met, who would i like to meet again, what we discussed the last time around, when can i actually call this person up again to do another review, etc etc etc. because definitely the amount of money i'd spend on this software isn't yet justified by the volume of my clients.

nowadays with Facebook, Outlook and all these social media websites, it makes it quite easy to manage your address book, birthdays, appointments and what not. in insurance, you still have to retain a large chunk of the process to do manually. you can't leave these details to some computer program to handle. you HAVE to be on top of your appointment lists, upcoming appointments and what you're going to do.

let me just quickly explain. Many people rely heavily on their ipads, iphones, smartphones, reminders, PDAs, etc, but if it were really something important, you would still remember it no matter whether you wrote it down or not. when it comes to your clients details, that's as important a matter as you can possible get.

Of course technology makes it easier, but it's still as manual as it gets - find info, input, REFER.

i never realised how difficult it was! ALL of it.

well, i guess that's what i need to learn i guess. responsibility to myself to make sure i have all this under control. nobody likes to be forgotten, especially on special days; i can't even describe how elated i am that i have friends remembering my happy birthday (even if it was a reminder sent by facebook). it's just nice to know that people are thinking about you.

by doing something so simple as remembering something about them: their birthday, their childs' name, what we talked about the last time that was of interest, what they like to drink or eat.. who can you make happy today?

i want to make sure that my clients know i'm thinking of them because as much as i'm around to help them, it takes no effort to make them smile too.

thinking of you! (yes you!)
Jessica