I’m a pilot and I love to fly! Give a chance to slip the surly bonds of earth and I’m outa here. But as fun as flying is, there is a lot of work and drudgery involved. There is also a lot of preparation required.
Before you can go fly safely, it’s important to do a careful, thorough and thoughtful preflight. As pilots, we start with the environment we’re going to be flying in (i.e. the weather), then we spend time carefully planning the flight itself. Where are we going? How high? What route? What about contingency planning if something goes wrong or something changes? After all that planning we then preflight the airplane, carefully checking to make sure it is in condition to fly safely.
Whew! That’s a lot of stuff to do just to go fly an airplane. I don’t really want to add it up but I’ll bet I spend 2 or 3 hours of preparation for every hour I fly!
If you think about it, the professional insurance agent needs to go through a similar process when seeing a customer for renewal, or a prospect on a sales call.
If you’re like me you love being in front of a prospect, or meeting with a customer! It’s why I’m in the business. But I have found that to really enjoy that time, and to do what I need to do successfully, and at a high level, takes a lot of preparation.
Just like when I fly, I find that most appointments are smooth because I’m prepared. And if something unexpected comes up it’s easily handled with no stress because I’ve already been through the flight, …er interview, in my mind and am ready for unexpected contingencies.
How about you? Do you preflight? Or do you just “wing it”?