There’s a huge fallacy that creates much of the frustration and shattered expectations of advisors in this industry.
That fallacy is that there is — ’somewhere out there’ — a group of highly qualified people hiding in some cramped corner of the universe who are ready and wanting to buy what you sell. And all you have to do is “get in front of them” and you’ll close deals easier than selling water to parched desert travelers.
The truth is that no such ‘group of golden prospects’ exists.
The problem lies in people pitching pipe dreams of ‘hot qualified leads’ begging you to sell them something.
Now I’m not saying that you can’t get people to come to you, who are exclusive, and who are better prospects than the jokers who go online and fill out 13 quotes and have their information sold to 79 different agents.
If that’s the type of lead you are working…THAT IS miserable. Of course it may not be as bad as having no leads at all, but just barely.
But what I am saying is that usually there is a PROCESS required to take someone from merrily enjoying their day, to getting interrupted by you, to reading your message, to realizing they might possibly be interested, to wanting what you sell, to trusting you, and ultimately realizing that they need your product worse than they need their own money.
Does that sound like something that happens within 30 seconds of receiving a postcard in the mail, or seeing an ad in a magazine?
Nope.
In some cases you’ll use the internet to capture people who’ve already gone through maybe 30-50% of that process, but usually they don’t have their credit card on the desk anxiously waiting to buy insurance, it just doesn’t happen that way.
So how do you get someone to the point where they ARE ready and willing to buy?
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by Ethan Kap
I remember the first time I bought leads. I was so desperate. I needed leads bad.
I wanted something quick and easy, delivered right to my email box .. or a service where someone would call me.
That is the dream for any agent or advisor.
I mean, come on let’s be honest… who really wants to *work* to attract their own leads when someone could deliver high quality leads on a silver platter?
(Of course learning to attract your own leads IS the best way long term)…
Sadly, so many charlatans wave their little flag, promising agents and advisors “guaranteed leads … but just enter in your credit card. The majority are scamming agents right out of their money. In fact, here is another post just last week on our blog about a company that screwed one of our fellow agents…
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Let’s just jump right in to JV’s and endorsed mailings. This is something that is so underutilized, it’s ridiculous. In the marketing world, joint ventures are the life blood of many, many companies and they make people hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars on a regular basis by
-list sharing or mailing to each other’s lists and
-cross-selling to each other’s lists of customers.
So it works online well and it works offline as well. Most people just don’t do it because it takes a little bit more effort than most are willing to put in. This is going to make you so much more powerful than all the other agents out there that are just scraping the bottom of the barrel to get leads. By doing this, you’re going to get access to the best clients, and potential clients, that you can possibly get.
That is because its coming from a referral of somebody they are already doing business with, an endorsement, and you know that they’re obviously a buyer because they’ve currently been purchasing something from the other individual that you’re joint venturing with.
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The first thing to remember when you’re doing direct mail is that the list is everything. The best direct mail piece in the world is no good if you send it to the wrong list, or to a bad list, or to a bunch of people who have already moved and aren’t there to receive their mail. So, focusing on, and getting, a good list is key to making your marketing pieces perform well.
Write that down. The list is everything.
How do we go about getting a good list? First of all, it’s important to know who your best customer is.
Do you have a lot of customers in a certain geographic area? If so, then that’s probably a good indication that you can mail to that area and be successful in getting clients. Do you have a lot of people who own a certain type of home, or a certain type of car, a boat etc? These types of things give us demographic information that tell us “this is the type of individual that I want to mail to”.
Just taking a zip code and saying, “Okay, I’m going to send a mailing piece to everybody in this zip code” is the most common approach to direct mail. And trust me, there’s a ton of bulk mail blasting out there. Taking this “shotgun” approach with your money and with your mailing can work, but it’s not the way to really get the best results and return on investment.
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