Posts Tagged ‘qualified prospects’

Insurance Marketing – Does Your Method Make Sense?

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

financial advisor scratching headYou don’t have to find a guru to get answers for increasing your insurance marketing results. You just need to concentrate on the three critical factors that determine sales prosperity:

1) The caliber of the prospects you speak to
2) The variety of prospects you talk with
3) How good of a sales presentation you provide

Let’s take these in order over three posts. Today, let’s cover your insurance prospecting method–how you locate quality insurance prospects.

Your way of prospecting will be the main determinant of the number of prospects who purchase.

Make certain that your insurance marketing process only produces appointments with interested and qualified insurance leads. Here’s the contrast of two prospecting approaches. The initial approach produces results while the next alternative saps your spirit.

Cold-calling, a conventional way of insurance marketing, produces insurance prospects that must be persuaded. You could be “twisting his arm” to some degree to get the appointment. Is it any surprise that 30% of the time, your insurance lead is not present when he had scheduled to meet or they are not interested?

What would occur if rather, you took out an advertisement offering a free pamphlet about a specific topic in which you had expertise, such as annuities as a source of retirement income? Those people that respond to the advertisement for that pamphlet would be self-motivated annuity leads and have an interest in your topic. And isn’t this the sort of prospect you want from your insurance prospecting, a prospect that takes action?

A young lady who a short time ago entered the occupations of real estate asked me about the best way to gain clients. I had her create a pamphlet, “Ten Mistakes to Avoid When you Sell Your Million Dollar Home.” We ran the ad within the food section of the Wednesday newspaper, the day that has all of the food discount promotions. The ad was $250. The agent received 62 orders for her pamphlet.

If she had cold called, how long would it have taken her to identify 62 qualified prospects? This prospecting system we have just described allows you to make much better use of your time because your initial call is a warm call to her receptive motivated prospect.

Now you can see the difference and how you’re insurance marketing method determines the caliber of prospects you attract. Therefore, to make your life easy, use the model of offering an item to your targeted prospect (e.g. by age, revenue, profession, zip code, phase of life,etc) and you ONLY contact those individuals who want your package. The supplied item can be:

a) a pamphlet or totally free report
2) an offer to attend a seminar presentation
3) a free quotation
4) a free analysis

Then, once you contact the insurance prospect, you get in touch with them simply because they requested something of you. You are not asking for their business and you are not making the initial approach.  You are getting in touch with them to figure out how you can serve them. This places you in the position of a professional, the control position, and starts the relationship on the proper foot with an appropriate and valuable prospect.

Now that you have an insight into insurance prospecting that is effective,  I’ll talk about how to acquire high numbers of inquiries from these high quality prospects in the next post.

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Cold Calling — The Worst Way to Prospect

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Some financial advisors and insurance agents use prospecting methods that produce the wrong prospects. I define a wrong prospect as someone who is not really interested, not qualified or hard to deal with. In essence, someone who wastes your precious time and if they do become a client, they consume so much of your time that you wish they weren’t a client.

You generate these types of annuity prospects by using unfocused mass marketing models. For example, if you cold call a list of people over age 65 attempting to obtain annuity leads, you are generating the wrong prospects. You have no idea if these people are interested or qualified. So you waste a lot of time cold calling and then meeting people who are not qualified or interested. Wouldn’t it be smarter if you only met with the interested qualified annuity buyers?

If you have been cold calling, please face the truth–cold calling is a substitution of your labor for capital. In other words, you got into the financial services business undercapitalized (you came in with no money to invest) so instead, you trade your time for capital. This is purely insane. You cannot grow a business without capital. Did Microsoft? Did Intel? You must not devalue your time or you will settle into that rut and struggle your entire career, always cold calling. If you work for a large firm, they are happy to have you do this as they pay you commissions. Having you waste your time is okay with them.

The central focus in efficient prospecting is this: you offer something of value to masses so that the few people who are interested identify themselves. Then, you only talk to the interested and qualified prospects. There’s not problem if you want to use the phone for prospecting, but get a $10/hour telemarketer to do it, not you! Then, when the telemarketer makes 100 calls and finally finds one interested person, you get on the phone and close the appointment or make the sale. If you want to be closing sales all day, get 5 telemarketers.

Here’s another alternative. Rather than cold call, send a well written mailer (more on writing great direct mail in another article). Even if you get a 1% response to 1,000 mailed, that’s 10 interested annuity leads who took action. When you call them, you qualify them and eliminate half. You get five appointments. These are the same five appointments you would have gotten with the cold calling, but look how much easier this was. Instead of talking with 1,000 people, you talked to 10 people. Instead of meeting with 10 people, you met with five. You saved maybe 25 hours of your time and spent $500 on postage and mailing. (In other words, had you cold called, you valued your time at $20 an hour for the mailing cost you saved–is that all you’re worth?).

Or what if you ran an advertisement in the local senior magazine “Annuity Owner Mistakes” You then have a few annuity leads to call who are interested and motivated. You have saved your time and limited the annuity prospects you deal with to those who take initiative. These are the types of people you want as clients. You do not want people who must always be convinced, which is the type of prospect that is generated with unfocused, mass marketing.

Or what about inserting a flyer in the daily newspaper for your next annuity seminar “How to Reduce Retirement Income Taxes.” In our tests, 20,000 inserted flyers (for about $1,000) generates about 50 annuity prospects to an annuity seminar. You give a presentation to 50 motivated people at one time and then have individual appointments. Annuity seminars make super efficient and super effective use of your time (you are speaking to motivated annuity prospects).

If you’re tired of prospecting, feel burned out and feel that good prospects are scarce, shift your prospecting methods to have qualified prospects contact you and renew your career.

Annuity Leads for Financial Advisor Marketing
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Attract the Right Prospects and Make More Sales

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Some financial professionals use prospecting methods that produce the wrong prospects (i.e.; bad sales leads). I define a wrong prospect as someone who is not really interested, not qualified or hard to deal with. In essence, someone who wastes your precious time and, if they do become a client, they consume so much of your time that you wish they weren’t a client.

You generate these prospects by using unfocused mass marketing models. For example, if you call a list of people over age 65 attempting to obtain long-term care appointments, you are generating the wrong prospects. You have no idea if these people are interested or qualified. So you waste a lot of time cold calling and then meeting people who are not qualified or interested. I call this being a “sales laborer.” You waste large amounts of time on non-revenue-generating activities.

With such prospecting, you begin the relationship by giving the power and control to the prospect. You asked them for an appointment. They can accept or decline and they have the control. You come after them. Wouldn’t you rather they come after you?

Wouldn’t it be smarter if you only met with the interested qualified prospects and spent more of your time in a sales presentation? Wouldn’t it be better if you attracted these interested people to you and practiced as a “sales professional.” Here’s the secret to attracting qualified prospects and interested prospects: set up your marketing so that prospects must indicate their interest before you ever make personal contact. Let them ask for your contact!

Rather than cold call your list, send a well-written, direct response mailer. Even if you get a 1% response to 1,000 items mailed, that’s 10 interested people who took action. They contacted you and requested something of you. You start off in control of the relationship.

When you call them, you qualify them and eliminate half. You get 5 appointments. These are the same 5 appointments you would have gotten with the cold calling, but look how much easier this was. Instead of talking with 1000 people, you talked to 10 people. Instead of meeting with 10 people, you met with 5. You saved maybe 25 hours of your time and spent $500 on postage and mailing. (In other words, had you cold called, you valued your time at $20 an hour for the mailing cost you saved. Is that all you’re worth–$20 an hour)?

Because you now know that you can get more appointments by sending more mailers, you will not be so desperate for every appointment. You can qualify people well and weed out those that have a low probability of becoming a client. You spend your time meeting with the most promising prospects and your close ratio rises because you meet with more qualified prospects.

Or what if you ran an advertisement in the local senior magazine or on the Internet, “Avoid Mistakes in Buying Long-Term Care–Get the Free Guide for Seniors.” You then have a few prospects to call who are interested and motivated. You have saved your time and limited the prospects you deal with to those who take initiative. These are the types of people you want as clients. You do not want people who must always be convinced, which is the type of prospect that is generated with unfocused, mass marketing. Sales laborers spend time with prospects that need convincing. Sales professionals spend time in sales presentations with interested, motivated prospects who take the first step.

Or what about inserting a flyer in the daily newspaper for your next LTC seminar “90% of Seniors Have Inadequate Health Protection.” In our tests, 10,000 inserted flyers (for about $500) generates 25 people to a seminar. You give a presentation to 25 motivated people at one time and then have individual appointments. Seminars make super-efficient use of your time (you give the same presentation at once to 25 or more people) and super effective use of your time (you are speaking to motivated prospects). People who attend seminars are very motivated as they need to place the activity on their schedule, get ready and drive to your location.

If cost is the hang-up to pursuing smart marketing as illustrated above, consider that you almost insure that your income will not increase because you waste your selling time on prospecting. Even if you have no money available for marketing, take a $500 loan from your credit card. Not only can you make a many-times return on your investment, but you’ll be motivated to earn and pay off this advance before your credit card statement arrives.

If you, in fact want to be a big producer, a fast method is to invest money into your business, not your time. Your time must be devoted to sales activities and nothing else. It’s the model used by the most successful companies in existence today—invest money up front and grow large and profitable quickly. Invest the money so that your time can be used for appointments with qualified prospects. As a great teacher once said, “You need to put wood in the fireplace first before it gives off any heat.”

If you’ve been tired of prospecting, got burnt out and feel that good prospects are scarce, see how the following principals can be easily applied at annuity sales.


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