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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1. Create a valuable tool that you can send to their list.

It’s so important to be developing some of this stuff like an emergency preparedness plan or an inventory record book or an insurance shoppers checklist, etc, that you can say, “Hey, Mr. President of the Association (or Mrs. President), I have this great tool that would be valuable to your members. Would you willing to let me mail it out to them or send them an e-mail and have them go to my website and get it?”

This is a great way to position yourself as the expert, offer something of value before you ask them for something.

2. Develop relationships with the Presidents or the leaders of these associations to get endorsed mailings.

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Selling is an art that evolves through time. Through the years, we have seen insurance companies and individuals achieve tremendous success by employing various methods of getting more leads. In the past, a provider could become a big business just by using one way of gathering prospects. The conventional methods of getting insurance leads include telemarketing, direct mail, face-to-face selling, radio, and print media.

However, the reason why a lot of those who engage in insurance sales eventually fail in their craft is because they lack foresight on the direction of their business. The advent of advanced technology as well as the new laws have inevitably brought forth a revolution in sales and marketing.

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