Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

How do you focus your energy when it comes to converting prospects to customers? Do you give the guy who makes a million excuses the same time, energy and effort as the one who is barely on the fence about doing business with you—or the one who’s ready and willing to listen right now?

The first type of prospect will suck the life out of you. You need to get excuse-makers, gossipers and complainers like these out of your life because they don’t lead to viable business. The more time you spend with them, the more disappointed and unproductive you’ll become—and that can mean death to your business.

So what type of client should you be focusing on? Those who are balanced, grounded and positive. Clients like this take responsibility for their own lives and actions and won’t place the blame for their failures on your shoulders. They work hard, resolve problems and conflicts as they come up, communicate freely and respect your expertise.

Focusing on this type of lead helps you work smarter, rather than harder, by making the most of your time and energy. In the end, the mature prospect will help you close more sales. Therefore, it’s well worth your time to learn how to identify what type of customer you’re dealing with, so you can focus on the right personality type and grow your business.

The best way to tell one type of client from another is by examining their actions. The person who sets appointments with you and then misses them, or comes to the table without any money, is wasting your time. So throw them overboard—along with defensive, rude, unhappy excuse-makers.

Some people may be genuinely interested in what you have to offer, but don’t have the time to meet with you, are over-extended financially or simply lack focus. Don’t toss these prospects out the window, but put them on the back burner to contact at some point in the future.

Now, spend most of your time and effort on leads who are looking for the products you sell, are open to letting you into their lives, and tend to make things happen. Clients like these are worth their weight in gold, and can really help boost your bottom line!

By determining where your prospects sit from the start, you can improve your closing ratio and become much more successful as an agent.

So don’t get bogged down by the wrong prospects. Renew your focus and improve your success long term by centering on the right type of client. 

Then spend some time making sure you’re at the top of your game by getting adequate sleep, eating a healty diet, thinking positively and surrounding yourself with successful role models. You’ll stay challenged and productive—and your success rate will show it.

If you’re an agent on our service, you know that how you work your leads is one of the most important indicators of how successful you become.   

Since every lead you purchase has the potential to become a client, learning how and  when to contact the lead, and how to communicate effectively, can mean the  difference between building your book of business and struggling to survive.                                                                                                                        

Because it’s so important to get the most out of your InsureMe leads, we’d like to provide a few tips to help increase your chance of converting individual leads to sales. Try each one out, let us know how it helps, and feel free to leave us a comment if you have any to add.

1. Contact the consumer immediately upon receiving the lead. Studies show that leads convert 20 times more when contacted within the first 5 minutes—and the agent who contacts the consumer first closes the sale nearly 80 percent of the time. So don’t wait! Put your best foot forward and pick up the phone or shoot the prospect an email as soon as you get the lead. Remember, you’re competing with other agents, so be proactive and take matters into your own hands.
2. Don’t provide a quote until you actually speak to the consumer. Meeting the person first, whether in person or by phone, gives you a chance to get to know them and their needs, verify their personal and contact information, and demonstrate the value you can provide if they purchase your products. When you send the quoted price ahead of time, you throw value arguments out the window—and reduce your services to a dollar amount.
3. Honor the lead’s preferred method of contact. If they ask to be contacted by email, do so. If they prefer a phone call, get on the horn right away.  Nothing turns a potential customer off faster than being contacted in a way they didn’t request. Also, avoid calling leads at work, if you can. Instead, call their home, cell phone, or whatever number they provided as the primary means of contact.
4. Don’t give up! If you’re not able to establish contact right away, keep trying. Try all means of communication authorized by the lead—and keep at it. The second, third or fourth time may just be the charm.

We hope these tips help increase your sales. Meanwhile, if you need assistance with anything, please call us at (800) 467-8736 to speak with an agent services representative.

Happy selling!

From the moment a prospect walks through your door, shakes your hand and begins talking, proceeding through the sale is all about psychology.

If, at that point, you can learn to identify the type of person he or she is, understand their values, read their body language and see how they’re feeling by the expression on their face—no matter what they’re actually saying—you can increase your sales and start making more money.

So says Michael Lovas, co-founder of AboutPeople, a unique consultancy focused on helping companies and individuals better read, attract and connect with their A-Level clients.

According to Lovas, learning to read and respond to prospects in a way that’s meaningful to them makes it easy to craft a response they can understand and, effectively, get inside their heads.

Not too many years ago, insurance agents were well versed in personality types. In fact, it was part of their sales training. But these days, those numbers have dropped significantly, leaving especially newer agents scratching their heads, as they try to figure out how to appeal to each customer individually.

If you’ve taken personality type training to help you succeed in business, good for you! We’d love to hear how it has helped you in business. If not, check out Lovas’s article entitled, Why your sales efforts fail to read more about the psychology involved in sales and common personality types you need to learn to reach.

By knowing how to read and understand prospects, you can reach more customers and make your sales presentations clear to them. And that’s the first step to making more sales.

How do you reach the leads you receive? By phone? Email? Fax?

What kind of response rate do you get? 10, maybe 20 percent? OK, so what’s your closing ratio?

If you’ve never tried using text messaging to reach leads, you’re missing a lot of business opportunity. According to a July, 2008 survey conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, SMS (Short Message Service) campaigns are the most successful mobile ad medium, with 70 percent of those surveyed responding to marketing text messages.

That’s major when you compare those statistics with only 41 percent responding to a survey and 30 percent to emails.

Why are Americans so open to text messaging as opposed to other forms of communication? According to an article in The New York Times, “SMS is still a relatively uncluttered and spam-free marketing channel. It’s also the one form of communication that many people are tethered to 24/7.”

Consider these facts you may not be aware of:

1. 77 percent of mobile subscribers used text messaging by the end of 2007
2. More people text than make cell phone calls
3. 3.5 billion text messages are sent and received every day
4. Text messages have a 97 percent open rate

Not only does the use of SMS texting allow you to reach your leads quickly, getting the jump on your competition; it’s also well received by a majority of Americans, as you can see from the statistics above.

But besides the advantages to the consumer, text messaging has many advantages for you as the insurance agent, too. As the New York Times says, “…Its platform, when used correctly, becomes as much an extension of a client’s customer relationship management system as its marketing strategy.”

Indeed, this venue of communication allows you to contact the consumer, provide a quote, gain new business and follow up for months or even years afterward. And, after a period of time, you can again use text messaging to contact your client, ask if he or she would like to re-shop rates, conduct an annual review or even purchase another type of insurance.

That’s right, I smell an upsell!

Other benefits to insurance agents include:

• Low-cost means of marketing
• Increased customer loyalty
• Ability to track leads to sales
• Help in driving ROI

With more people than ever using cell phones as a communication hub these days, text messaging provides the perfect solution for reaching today’s leads. Give it a try, and let us know the results.

For any of our readers who are new to the business, the seasoned veterans among us can relate one simple fact: selling insurance isn’t easy. 

What makes it so difficult? You have to find the right customers, get them to take the time to listen to your pitch, convince them they need what you’re selling, and finally, get them to commit to actually buying.

It takes time and determination to work potential clients through all those steps. And often, just when you think you’ve got them snagged and they’re ready to sign on the dotted line, they wind up slipping through your fingers anyway.

No matter how long you’ve been selling insurance, you’re no doubt learning some things along the way. For instance, you know you have to establish trust and rapport with your clients up front before they’re likely to proceed through the sales process.

Maybe you’re learning to read your clients’ body language so you can gauge what they’re thinking and overcome their objections before they reject the sale. Or maybe you’ve learned some effective closing strategies that have really paid off.

Here at InsureMe, we’re grateful to have wonderful relationships with the agents on our network. And over the years, we’ve been privy to a few sales tips that have helped them become successful.

Now, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned with you. We hope you’ll take these tips to heart, try them out, and let us know the results!

Sales Tip #1: Know your product well. Not knowing a product’s features and benefits will cause you to lose credibility with potential clients and could cost you the sale.

Sales Tip #2: Have confidence in yourself. The more professional and confident you appear and sound, the more credibility you’ll gain with leads.

Sales Tip #3: Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Empathy can put you on level ground with clients and help you establish a great relationship that leads to a sale.

Sales Tip #4: Learn to listen. A prospect who feels you aren’t hearing their concerns isn’t likely to trust you enough to do business with you.

Sales Tip #5: Offer options. Rather than asking clients what they want, present them with two or three options they can choose from. Even if they choose the cheapest one, they’re more likely to buy if they feel the choice is theirs.

Sales Tip #6: Drop the jargon. Use laymen’s terms to describe what you’re selling and don’t overwhelm the customer with boring insurance terms they won’t understand anyway.

Now it’s your turn. What works for you? Have you recently stumbled across a sales technique that seems to work every time? Please leave us a comment and let us know.

Though different methods work for different people, we can all learn from one another by sharing–and become a little better at what we do.

Are your coworkers stressing you out? Is there someone in your office who absolutely drives you bonkers–and sends your blood pressure through the roof–with their annoying jargon, constant gossip or inconsiderate behavior?

Or maybe you’re fed up with slow computer systems, arctic office temperatures or equipment that never seems to work properly?

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. A new survey conducted in London by Opinium research reveals that something drives most everyone crazy at work–whether or not it’s discussed openly.

Discussed in a recent Reuters article, the survey shows that nearly two-thirds of respondents said they were stressed out over various office irritations–and one in 10 have actually left a job because the stress became too overwhelming.

What kinds of things tend to drive people crazy in their work environments? Top responses include:

• Grumpy or moody colleagues (37 percent)
• Slow computers (36 percent)
• Office gossip (19 percent)
• Use of annoying jargon, like ”Think outside the box,” “Drill down to a more granular level,” “Bring your A-game” (18 percent)
• Not showing up for meetings on time–or at all (16 percent)
• Not cleaning up after oneself in the kitchen (15 percent)

Do any of these issues strike a chord with you? If so, how do you deal with frustrating situations at work?

Do you…

a.) confront the party at fault head-on?

b.) vent to your coworkers behind the person’s back?

c.) suffer in silence, wishing they would just quit their job so you wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore?

d.) fire the person (if you’re the boss) when you just can’t stand it anymore?

At one time or another, we’ve all grumbled and moaned about selfish, uncaring coworkers who make our lives miserable–or malfunctioning office equipment that stalls our productivity.

If you’re an agent or broker dealing with unpleasant situations like these in business, remember, you’re not alone. And if you’ve found ways to help diffuse the situation, cope with it or move on, please feel free to share! We’d love to hear from you.

If you’re a young agent well versed in using the Web for business, you’re probably familiar with online social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Sites like these hold much promise for the future, as insurance customers wander around online, chat with friends and business associates and talk about their lives.

Why not make insurance part of that discussion? And why not meet customers online, right where they are, and do business where they’re most comfortable? 

According to the Auto Insurance Report, insurance companies like State Farm are joining the world of social networking, attempting to connect with and service customers all over the country.

And sites like these aren’t just for young people and companies anymore–or for corporations. Small agencies and individual agents are also finding their voice in social media, amidst everyone else looking for a piece of the pie. There they can answer questions, dispell myths, offer service and talk about breaking news in the insurance industry that might affect their customers.

Rather than pretending their clients have nothing but good to say about them and tuning any negative remarks out, insurers are wise to listen up, participate in the discussion and know what’s being asked and said about them online. This immediately puts them on the offense, rather than the defense, and offers the opportunity to inform, engage and connect with  customers–instead of playing damage control after the fact.

Not only that, but by tweeting on Twitter or posting comments on their Facebook wall that link back to their own Web sites, agents who participate in social media strategies can increase their business by driving potential customers who need insurance directly to their own contact information.

Are you using online social media sites to increase business opportunity? If you’ve never made use of sites like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook in growing your business, we recommend you check them out. If you have, drop us a comment and let us know how it’s working out for you.

Though it does take some time and effort to establish a “following” of existing and potentially new customers, it could be well worth the time you put into it when examining your bottom line.

More Information:

Using Social Networking in Business 101

Using Social Networking for Business

Are you a young P&C agent or broker, age 40 or under, who’d like a chance to voice your opinions on the industry? 

What do you really think about the business? Do you have ideas you could share about technology, sales or how to make the job better?

If so, now’s your chance. In case you haven’t heard, you can voice your opinion by weighing in through the Insurance Journal’s Young Agents Survey.

Performed exclusively online, the survey consists of 26 questions on opportunities, attitudes, management issues and the soft market. It takes only a few minutes to participate, and you never know what changes might come as a result of getting involved.

Get what you’re feeling off your chest. Today’s the deadline, so take the Young Agents Survey now–and become an agent for change!

Whether you’re a captive or an independent agent, becoming successful in this industry takes hard work.

Talk to anyone who’s been around more than a year or two, and each of them will tell you they put their heart and soul into their business to get where they are.

Let’s face it, becoming a top insurance producer takes time–and sacrifice. If you’re new to the biz, you might not become successful overnight.

But if you hang in there and copy what you see the super successful doing, you can move your way up the same ladder of success.

So what sets top producers apart? What do they do that others don’t to grow their businesses, make more sales, and establish long-lasting relationships that pay off for years to come?

Here’s the key: It’s all about establishing good habits. In fact, top producers consistently practice habits like these:

• They invest in themselves, using their income to stay up-to-date on their knowledge and continually improving their practice. They also put 10 to 20 percent back into their business for future growth.
• They terminate relationships that don’t pay off. Time is money, so they make sure they’re getting what they want out of the relationships they’re maintaining.
• They work smart. Reducing interruptions can add more hours to the day, giving everyone more time to sell.
• They put their own needs first. Believe it or not, setting aside time for things like physical fitness, family interaction and relaxation helps keep them fresh, on their toes and ready to provide exceptional service, as well as call on new customers.

What are you doing to achieve success? Do you, like some, make excuses, blaming your lack of income on being a new agent, not having the experience or training others have, or refusing to prospect because you really dislike cold-calling? Or are you replicating the actions of top producers?

If you want to become successful as an agent, stop making excuses and start forming good habits. It’s already working for some–and it can work for you, too.

More Resources:

Tips for New Insurance Agents

Building Solid Client Relationships

Now that 2010 is in full swing, have you given any thought to your marketing plans? Or have you been putting that off, not sure where to go from here–or how to get started?

Along with a new year comes new opportunity: a chance to expand your business, increase your contacts, and set and reach new goals. And, like many other things we attempt at the start of a new year, successful marketing requires planning.

But how can you form a marketing strategy if you’re new to the industry, are filling a new position of leadership, or have little to no business experience?

Well, here’s a hint: Your marketing goals should be a supportive part of your overall business plan and goals for the year. For instance, if your business plan calls for growing your business by 20 percent by year’s end, your marketing plan should support that goal by outlining the steps you’ll take to get there–and possibly the tools that will help you achieve those goals.

As you reflect on everything your business experienced in 2009, consider these four goal-setting strategies that could help propel you to greater success in 2010. Then use them as stepping stones to help you move toward a more successful year than ever.

1. Start fresh. You can’t do anything about last year now; but you can learn from what happened and use those experiences in setting this year’s goals.
2. Know what you want to accomplish. How can you know if you’re achieving your goals if you’re not sure what they are? We recommend setting monthly, quarterly, semi-quarterly and yearly goals to keep you focused and on-task. Setting a course, then making changes along the way, ensures you accomplish what you need to accomplish.
3. Define your goals in quantifiable, measureable, specific and realistic terms. The more specific the goal, the easier it is to attain. Don’t set them so high that they’re out of reach; but keep yourself challenged.
4. List your goals in written form. Whether handwritten or stored on your computer, having them close at hand allows you to refer back to your goals as you move through the year–and check them off as you accomplish and complete them.

Your goals can be big or small, like earning a certain amount of profit by the end of the year or gaining five new clients each month. However you define them, use the new year to set and achieve reachable goals. There’s no better way to help grow your business now.