What is the value of one more?
In economics we know that there is the idea of “diminishing marginal returns”, which says that adding more of anything (money, workers, Legos) creates an increase of a desired output (widget production or happiness) but less than the increase in output from the last addition. Think about it: that first drink after a long workweek is awesome: the moment it hits your lips the mental sigh is almost audible. And the second sip is almost as good. Yet the third drink brings much less joy than that initial one. You have reached diminishing marginal returns after that first drink.
Now we can contrast this with sub-critical level increases. If you earn $1,000,000 a year an extra $50 is essentially nothing to you, yet for most struggling new sales Representatives an extra fifty bucks could be the difference between filling their gas tank to get to an appointment and make that critical sale or not. In this realm, more is not just more but could mean the difference between failure and success, a binary output. This could be considered “quantum return”, where a tiny increase in input creates a completely superior overall output.
In the middle ground between these extremes we have a fairly linear world where we can predict increases in output based upon input. You have probably had a sales manager talk about your ratios and increasing your activity so that you can sell more product, thus increasing your output and hit your (and their) goals. This is the realm we will focus on for this discussion.
Going back to that $50 number referenced above. That number (per a few different career companies in the insurance world) is the approximate value of an introduction for a relatively new financial Representative, so makes a good starting point for discussion. One additional introduction (or referral or prospect as many managers still call them) a month is $600 a year. This is de minimis and statistically insignificant both to cashflow and to survival statistics (long range remaining in the profession as opposed to leaving the industry).
One additional introduction a week is 52 x $50 or $2,600 a year. This is enough to keep those on the margins around, and the trailing production it generates through renewals, additional sales, and additional future introductions could be worth about 10x that. This should be enough to grab a newer Representative’s attention. Getting a single additional introduction a week is literally asking one more person a week “If we switched seats and you were the Financial Advisor, who is the first person you would call?” You should try it, it works.
But if you asked that one question every day, just once, and got one additional introduction a day? That is worth over $10,000 to you this year. $100k+ over time, probably much more due to compounding issues. It’s a big deal.
But this year?
Ten thousand dollars.
To ask one question, once a day.
THAT is the power of one more.
