If you have been in the life insurance and annuity business for any length of time, you’ve probably spent a lot of money buying prospect lists, sending out sales letters, postcards and /or running ads in the newspaper to generate qualified leads. Then you’ve followed up with those leads by calling them, sending them your newsletter, special reports, information booklets, product brochures, etc. And, for many of those leads nothing is happening. For whatever reason, these people still have not agreed to an appointment with you. Why?
Is it because they don’t know you and/or how they’ll benefit from seeing you?
How about if there was a non-threatening way for them to meet you, and see the type of work that you do?
Some states allow you to buy x-dates. In other states you have to get out the old yellow books and start calling. That’s how I started out: in a cubicle, pounding the phones for 6 to 7 hours a day. And let me tell you … it was horrible.
I am not too shabby on the phones nor do I mind rejection all that much. However, poor positioning made it horrible. I would call and catch some contractor pounding some nails into a board while I asked him if he wanted a quote on his insurance. Bad positioning.
Or I would call and work my way through the gatekeeper to catch a busy business owner who didn’t really want to talk to me. Bad positioning. Marketing for insurance was not fun. I don’t know many people who just love to cold call (even those who are good at it). I had to find another way to market, or I would go insane…
Did cold calling work for me? Yes. I made it work through hard work and trial and error. I worked the phones, improving my approach and my sales presentation. Soon I started setting up appointments and writing insurance. The first three years in business all I did was cold call. But then I started to study marketing. I picked up every book I could get my hands on I quickly found other ways to market. I found out how to get prospects to call me.
How To Experience Complete Joy
It’s the coolest feeling to have someone call you and say, “I want to give you my money.” It’s even more amazing to have it happen over and over again.
Obviously, we’ve all seen the effectiveness of Yellow Pages drop with the advent of the Internet. We don’t need to discuss that any further; it’s an indisputable fact that people go to the Internet now more than they go to the Yellow Pages to search for stuff. So paying for the expense of a full-page Yellow Page ad may not be as effective as it was five years ago. In fact, it won’t be.
But there are still some pros to full-page ads. First of all, you can look as big as all your competition. One of the greatest things about the Yellow Pages is that a full-page ad is a full-page ad. It doesn’t matter how “big” you really are. Maybe you buy the double truck ad and so you have two full-page ads to look even bigger, but the bottom line is you can look as big as all the competition because you can have a full-page ad that’s the same size as them. Sometimes bigger equals better in the prospects mind. So that can develop a sense of credibility, and, of course, you’re there when people seek you out.
Is everybody searching the Internet every time they go to look for something? No. People still access the Yellow Pages and you still want to be there.
Putting in a nice logo that says “Free quote on insurance” is the absolute worst thing you can do with your Yellow Page ad. I’m sorry if I am hurting your feelings because that’s what you’ve done in the past, but trust me, this is the way to do it from now on.
Remember to make sure your Yellow Page ads always have: a good headline, a compelling copy that makes you look different than the competition, and a call to action with an offer that’s going to help the prospect get what they’re looking for.
Also, always give an offer, something besides “call and get a free quote” which everybody else is doing. You can offer a free video, a checklist, an audio CD, a report, and an online evaluation, etc. These are all things that will really differentiate you from all the other Yellow Page ads out there.
Again, you should remember that if you are going to use a large ad, it should be a half page or a full page ad. And if you go with a full page ad, it is recommended that you elaborate some more with testimonials and guarantees, etc.
One of the biggest secrets to making money as an insurance professional and generating life insurance leads… is the most under used strategy out there.
It’s called Joint Ventures.
But don’t let that fool you.
Joint ventures is not just about talking to some buddies or partners about sending leads to you.
NO.
It’s not that at all. In fact most of us have had bad experiences with passive ‘joint venture’ partners.
What I’m talking about is ACTIVE joint venture lead generation.
The difference between generating life insurance sales leads with active joint venture partners and passive is this: Active works, passive doesn’t.
So what is Active joint venturing? It’s the system of creating joint venture relationships and then ACTIVELY marketing to their lists to generate leads for your own.
So here’s how you do it in a nutshell.
Step 1. Identify your joint venture partners
This means you need to make a list of potential “Non Competing” insurance agents, professionals, and basically anyone else who has a list of clients.
If you’re a captive, there is probably a lot of clients that you can’t write because your companies just don’t allow you to. So you need to be then finding another, maybe it’s a commercial agent… maybe you have a hard time writing the commercial business.
So find an independent commercial agent who you can refer the business to but then in reciprocity he will give you access to all of his commercial accounts for you to write their person. That’s the symbiotic relationship, obviously. Same goes for health. If you don’t sell health, you need to have a relationship with a health agent to get access to all his people and sell them the personal lines.
I am always amazed at how few agents really have solid relationships with other people
in the industry and they work those relationships.
Here are a few examples of Joint Venture Partners we could use.
P&C Commercial agent
High Risk P&C
Health agents
Financial planners
Life agents
Lawyers
CPA’s
Chiropractors
Dentists
Once you established this, you do step 2.
Step 2 is where you become active:
All that needs to be done is write an endorsed mailing letter. You get their permission to send it to their list and you may just start with the newsletter. That may be the easiest and most effective way to do this is start with sending your newsletter to his list and establish that you two work together and if there is any needs that they might have regarding XYZ coverages, you’re their endorsed agent for this and you’d be happy to talk to them about that.
This is the fastest, easiest and MOST effective way to generate life insurance leads.
Last night I was watching “Pursuit of Happyness” (with Will Smith) on the bed with my wife. It’s really an inspiring show.
He went through hell to achieve his dreams, and it shot me back to my time as a new insurance agent that was like Chinese Water Torture.
Luckily I never had to endure the types of difficulties he faced, but there were certainly times where the future was bleak.
When I started as an agent, I had nothing given to me.
Okay, okay… I take that back, I did get a phone book and telephone.
I had dropped out of college in order to start this job cuz I was getting married in about 6 weeks. The big boss painted a beautiful picture for me. He sold me on the lifestyle, the money, the freedom, the GOLF!
So I gave up college and took up cold calling and getting kicked in the shorts instead.
I worked 2 jobs just to pay the bills. (My night job just about killed me, not kidding. I smashed my thumb open and then cracked my skull on the concrete floor. I’ll tell you about it sometime.) Our first Christmas married my entire commission for the month was $349.
For Christmas dinner we ate hot-pockets from 7-11. My wife (living 2000 miles away from her parents) cried when she called them on the phone.
Not one of my favorite moments. HOWEVER, these experiences drove me to be better. To accept nothing less than complete financial success and the freedom and security that it brings with it.
I realized that I needed to be BETTER, more Valuable to the market to get paid BIG money.
So I studied everything I could about persuasion, sales, marketing, advertising, copywriting. That study led me to develop the Value For Life Newsletter.
This newsletter is one of the best ways on the planet to get new leads, referrals, and increase commissions by cross-selling. http://www.massretention.com
So at the end of the day, like Will Smith’s character in “Happyness”, I feel extremely blessed to be able to achieve my goals in life. And I know ANYONE can get what they desire, if they work SMART and hard.
To more leads and bigger commissions,
Beach Broker
PS. I know I’ve promised to offer the monthly newsletter to everyone on an ongoing basis. Things have been crazy around here. Big commission just had a new baby boy, and we’ve been working on a new AWESOME live internet TV show for our subscribers, so that’s been taking up all my time.