Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

You, the brand.
What goes into your personal brand?

Personal branding isn’t fakery; it’s presenting your true self in a cohesive way. Part of it is packaging, but more than that, it’s lining up what you say with what you do, who you are at home with who you are work, your personal values with your business objectives.

Tell a good story.
Your story is an essential part of your brand. Here’s an anecdote that illustrates the power of a good story:

Last Sunday morning, my girlfriend, a friend and I were strolling at our local farmers’ market. We stopped at a diminutive stand where a girl, about 17 or 18, was selling spinach and basil. As we picked out some greens and retrieved some cash, the girl told us her story. Turns out she and her friends have a small garden plot on Federal Ave., a busy and otherwise strip-malled road in Denver. They garden both for fun and extra cash. The girl casually and unassumingly told this story in about 10 seconds. Almost in unison, the three of us said, “That’s really cool,” or something similar.

The point I’m trying to make? Here I am telling you a story about one vendor among 50. Was the produce fresher? Were the prices lower? Dunno. But the story was better.

Emily Post was right.
If good manners aren’t part of your brand, then you’re working against yourself. Every touch point you have with coworkers, existing clients and prospects should convey class and humility.

Work on your voice.
Have you ever flipped through a magazine and noticed that all of the articles read as if they were written by the same author? That’s no accident. Businesses do the same thing: they develop a unique persona by speaking with a consistent voice. That means that every medium–your web site, your phone manner, your business card, your e-mail tone, your office walls–should augment your unique voice. The only right voice is your natural one.

Exercise: write down three or four adjectives to describe your personal brand.
Suggested reading: for more on branding, check out this article from Peggy Klaus, the expert in such matters.

Hold the snickers–insurance can be fun…right?

Chris Amrhein and the folks at InsuranceIsFun.com think so. I met Chris briefly at HIGH TECC earlier this month, and after meeting him, I can tell you that his energetic personality and sense of humor have been successfully infused into the site.

We’ve tried to get the insurance industry to lighten up for a long while. (Remember all our videos?) Perhaps by joining forces with InsuranceIsFun.com, we can achieve that goal.

After you’ve perused our video archives, head over to Insurance Is Fun and enjoy! And stay tuned to this space for updates in the area of fun insurance.

Understand their fear of the unknown.
While life insurance has been around for centuries, long-term care is only about 30 years old. So how do you calm consumers’ fear of the unknown? By being honest, clear, dispassionate and empathetic.

Clear up any misconceptions.
Since many consumers don’t understand the difference between health insurance and long-term care insurance, they think that their private and/or public health insurance will cover the costs associated with long-term care. It’s important for you, then, to make sure they know that medical insurance won’t cover the costs associated with the activities of daily living (ADL).*

Maintain your integrity.
Scare tactics may be effective, but they come at a moral cost. LTC is a smart buy for some, but not others (the poor and the rich). Painting terrifying scenarios of losing retirement nest-eggs to nursing homes may help you sell a few more policies, but it’s not a long-term model to rely on. Nor is selling policies to people who are either poor enough to qualify for public assistance or to those who have enough retirement savings to pay for care out of pocket. You’ll lose sleep and tarnish your reputation (and that of the entire LTC industry) if you sell LTC to people who don’t need it.

Don’t sell. Educate.
Present yourself as an impartial expert, not a biased salesperson. Provide manageable bits of information to potential clients and, if necessary, help them see how LTC could be beneficial. The best way to do that? Ask questions, the most essential one being this: “Do you have a plan and/or funds in place in the event that you need help with the essential daily tasks of eating, bathing, moving around, etc.?” By asking open-ended questions, you’ll let them come to the decision themselves, winning their trust (and probably a referral or two) in the process.

* The original sentence erroneously referenced “IADL” instead of ADL, the correct acronym. Thanks to reader Scott A. Olson for catching the error.

Whether you call them Millennials, Generation Yers or members of the Internet Generation, you’re likely to have opinions–some valid, some not so much–about the segment of the population that was born in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

And those opinions may not be positive: Attention spans ruined by MTV. Egos inflated by permissive and overly encouraging parents. Narcissistic tendencies solidified by internet sites like MySpace and YouTube.

But there are a few reasons why you should take the time to get to know this powerful group. The first is that they’re becoming your co-workers. The second, and more important, is that they’re becoming your clients. Or they should be. The third is that, despite the negative press you’ve heard from the pundits, this isn’t a bad generation to do business with.

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Ever heard people talk about something being “above the fold” and felt totally out of the loop?

“The fold” refers to the portion of your web site that is displayed to a web visitor without having to scroll down. “Above the fold” is valuable real estate. That portion of your site needs reveal who you are and what you do, while persuading the visitor not to leave.

What too many folks don’t realize is that the fold falls in different places depending on a web user’s browser and screen resolution. FoldSpy.com helps site owners locate the fold on their site, showing you where the fold falls in various browsers and resolutions. This can help you determine where you need to drop advertisements, insurance quote boxes, etc. so that a visitor doesn’t have to scroll (read: take additional action) to find them.

Finding the fold is important. Stop by FoldSpy and get h’edumacated.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, content is king for those of you using the web to build your brand and generate sales leads, for two main reasons:

1. Search engines like good, relevant content
2. Consumers like good, relevant content

If you haven’t yet hired an in-house or freelance copywriter to create and finesse your web copy, it’s time to get on the stick.

A new Marketing Sherpa study found that the length of time it takes a web visitor to convert has increased by 80% since 2005–from 19 hours to 34 hours. Why the delay? It seems customers shop around now more than ever–passing up sites that don’t provide the information/services they need, or that they deem untrustworthy based on look, feel and site offerings.

Marketing Sherpa Content Director, Anne Holland, gave some tips to help online proprietors increase their conversion times:

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Jeffrey Sachs, celebrity economist, has a revolutionary idea.

And like most revolutionary ideas, it’s quite simple (conceptually, at least). It’s so simple that your first reaction is to slap your forehead and say, “Of course!”

The proposition: spur economic development in Africa in the same exact way we spur it here: manage risk through insurance.

Maybe this isn’t orignally Sachs’ idea, but as a big-brained and well-traveled guy who’s frequently seen with the likes of President Clinton and Sir Bono, he’s got the street cred to actually get African farmers in insurance policies.

Let me guess what you’re thinking: much of the African continent needs clean water, peace, cheap antiretrovirals and a whole host of important things. Insurance, you say, is pretty far down that list.

Yes, it is.

However, when it comes to economic development, managing risk essential. But as Sachs’ recent article in Scientific American magazine notes, “traditional crop insurance is almost non-existent in Africa.” So any farming operation that has even a modicum of ambition is fraught with risk–and likely doesn’t even get off the ground because of the loss potential.

The reason for the lack of insurance, Sachs says, is a lack of innovation. Insurance as we know it wouldn’t really work in Africa. Sachs explains why:

But in impoverished Africa, multiple problems would routinely be fatal to [a typical crop policy]: the absence of an actuarial risk model; adverse selection (farmers with especially risky conditions would seek the contracts); moral hazard (farmers covered by insurance might fail to take other protective measures) and enormously high costs of marketing, signing and assessing losses relative to the value of the policy.

But that doesn’t mean insurance won’t work in Africa. Insurance isn’t one size fits all, so the challenge for policy makers and insurers is to create a risk model that reflects the realities of the under-developed world. Sachs’ article describes one such model, but instead of explaining it here, I’ll let you read about it over at Scientific American.com.

The Insurance Information Institute is sporting a nice redesign. (And if you haven’t seen our agent site recently, we’ve got a new look as well. Kudos to Patrick Ritz, our designer, for the facelift. Agent.insureMe.com looks years younger!)

If you want to know how to use PowerPoint effectively, check out Megan and James’ slides from their High Tecc presentation. I may be a little biased, but I think they stole the show.

Totally unrelated to insurance, this site, which picks up on various feelings throughout cyberspace, may just wreck your productivity.

What will the long-term effects of Michael Moore’s “Sicko” be? Did the 24-hour news cycle simply absorb it? Or is it destined to alter the future of our health care system? Drop your two cents by leaving a comment below. (Actually, things have been so quiet on this blog, please just offer a grunt to let us know you’re still here.)

In other news, here’s a recent headline from the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog: “Bush Opposes Expansion of Children’s Health Insurance.” Ouch.

A recurring theme of the recent High Tecc conference was selling to different generations–boomers, Xers, millennials. I think most effective sales strategies are timeless and apply to every generation, but there are differences between the generations, and you’d do well to figure out what they are and adjust accordingly. But please, please watch the firstminute of this video before you start peppering your vocabulary with MTV-generation lingo.

Many thanks to 37 Signals for bringing our attention to the pointless blinking light on Bluetooth headsets. (It’s pointless because everyone can see it but you –and why on earth do we need to see your ear constantly light up?)

While we’re on the subject, let’s talk about headsets in general. But before we go there, let’s talk about Cheetos.

Cheetos are delicious and mildly addictive. (I have no evidence of the latter, but I’m pretty sure they are.) It’s not uncommon for me to suddenly realize that I’ve eaten almost an entire bag in one sitting. They’re “dangerously cheesy,” Frito Lay aptly warns.

They are also terrible for you. And they kind of make you look silly–especially if you’re an adult in a professional setting. They are quite tasty, but they have their place (at home, in the car) and should only be eaten in moderation. (I’m working on it.)

Much the same goes for headsets: they enrich our lives, but they can be misused, and misuse can make you look silly. Moderation is key.

But what defines misuse? It depends. I suspect that misuse for many in the insurance industry would be wearing a headset in the shower. For me, however, misuse is wearing one all the time.

I understand how someone could easily forget to take their headset off. (I easily forget to stop eating Cheetos in much the same way.)

What’s wrong with wearing a headset all the time? There’s the cyborg element, for one thing. And overuse can make you look self-important: “An important phone call may come at any moment, when you see me touch my ear, you’ll know our conversation is over.”

In short, headsets can be dangerously cheesy.

James and I are back from HIGH TECC; we gave our presentation–Search Engine Marketing: How Insurance Agents Can Take Advantage–yesterday afternoon.

I also had the pleasure of spending some time with the presenters and conference-goers on Sunday during the welcome parties. If you’ve heard rumors about how warm and wonderful Steve Anderson and his team are, consider those rumors confirmed. I had a fabulous time talking with them and look forward to meeting up with them again in the future.

I hope to compile some additional thoughts about HIGH TECC this week, but for now, enjoy our slideshow from yesterday’s presentation (located in three installments after the jump). We should get a copy of the audio as well, so we’ll pass that a long as we get it.

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