Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

You know the saying ‘it never hurts to ask’? Seth Godin recently blogged about this phrase and he added some caveats, namely that it does hurt to ask sometimes—that is, when you don’t have permission to.

Godin, a prolific writer and web entrepreneur, popularized the concept of ‘permission marketing,’ a revolutionary yet simple idea that holds that you need to get people’s permission before you can successfully market your services to them. Note the ‘successfully’ in the previous sentence. You can shill for your product or service to anyone on the street, anyone with an email account, telephone, television or front door, but you won’t be successful unless you establish a relationship first.

Godin’s conception of permission marketing isn’t some warm and fuzzy notion that requires you to sacrifice old-school effectiveness for new-school niceties. In fact, permission marketing is all about being more effective. It’s about being more precise and less indiscriminate. “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t,” says Godin. To give you an example, permission marketing is about trading the 2 percent response rate of direct mail for a 90 percent response rate among a highly targeted group that is willing to hear from you.

Permission can be built on something as simple as an introduction. It can be based on a gift. The point is, if you ask before you’ve earned it, you’ll hear a dial tone, or the digital equivalent—which is the sound of someone clicking the spam button.

Godin: “If you run into Elton John at the diner and say, ‘Hey Elton, will you sing at my daughter’s wedding?’ it hurts any chance you have to get on Elton John’s radar. You’ve just trained him to say no, you’ve taught him you’re both selfish and unrealistic.”

And what about insurance leads? Do you have permission to ask for the sale the minute the lead arrives in your email inbox? The good agents realize that while they’re dealing a targeted prospect, they do not quite have permission yet. A warm and professional introduction coupled with a demonstrated willingness to answer questions is usually all it takes to establish a permission-based relationship with a lead.

Still, deciding when to ask—knowing when you’ve secured permission—is a tricky thing that relies on intuition more than anything else.

All of a sudden, after years of spending like inebriated seamen, Americans have decided to become thrifty.

Which means opportunity for you.

Seminar Marketing
Seminar marketing is essentially a form of lead generation that involves offering something of value (your expertise) in exchange for the opportunity to market your services. It’s a great approach for agents new to the business, as well as for seasoned producers looking to maintain a high profile and continue to generate new business.

Seminar Marketing Benefits

• Gain visibility
• Establish credibility
• Educate prospects
• Improve your speaking skills
• Generate leads (and referrals)
• Gain permission (to market to your seminar recipients)

There are three pillars of seminar marketing: the marketing of your event; the presenting; and the following up. Each one is equally important. Be prepared to spend the time and effort required to gather a list of attendees and contact them, pick a venue and create a compelling presentation. And once you’ve done that, the real work begins: following up and ensuring a healthy return on your effort. It’s not easy, to be sure, but done well, seminar marketing can be an incredibly effective lead generation method.

If you’re not able to put together an invite list, try to find a captive audience, perhaps at a church or neighborhood organization meeting. (If you go this route, is essential to keep things short and free of gratuitous self-promotion.)

Presentation Tips
Don’t be a shill. Be helpful. That’s the best marketing you can do. Make your pitch 5 percent of the overall presentation. And put it at the very end, after you take questions. Keep things lively, short and informative. If you’re going to use PowerPoint, follow the pecha-kucha model: no more than 20 slides, no longer than 20 seconds on each one.

Note: this post’s headline refers to the time period known as the 21st century (lower case ‘C’), as in the century that came after the 20th.

A lot has changed in insurance sales, and that begs the question: What are the essential attributes of a successful agent in the 21^st century?

Persistence

Persistence has always been a requirement in sales, but it may be more important than ever. Why? Because the general populace is busier and more distracted than ever. The added challenge is that persistence is now predicated on first getting permission—interruption tactics no longer work. (Read more on permission vs. interruption marketing.)

Proficiency with technology

The information revolution fundamentally and irrevocably changed the insurance industry:

Technology has greatly affected the insurance business, making it much more efficient and giving the agent the ability to take on more clients. Agents’ computers are now linked directly to insurance carriers via the Internet, making the tasks of obtaining price quotes and processing applications and service requests faster and easier. Computers also allow agents to be better informed about new products that the insurance carriers may be offering.

–Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor

Those agents who are limber enough to adapt to an ever-changing technological environment will be greatly rewarded. In short, sales success these days is less about being a good schmoozer and more about being a good techie.

Ability to specialize in multiple areas

More and more, agents sell a panoply of insurance and financial products, from auto and homeowner’s policies to mutual funds and mortgage loans. This enlarged job description places a heavy cognitive load on today’s agent and requires a mind that can retain a great deal of information AND dispense it in a way that is clear to the layman. The agents that can do these things effectively will have greater success in cross-selling, which has become increasingly important.

Reasonable expectations

Let’s look at this attribute from the perspective of online leads. While the use of internet leads isn’t particularly new—InsureMe came online in 1995—many agents are only now getting on the bandwagon, often at the behest of the people at corporate, who realize that their agents must go where the people are going—online, to get free quotes.

Selling internet leads requires an additional layer or two of persistence mixed with a set of reasonable expectations. This is a balancing act. If you treat your online leads like expendable commodities, they’ll respond poorly and you’ll be left with a lousy closing ratio. On the flip side, if you make a point to convert every prospect into a sale, you’ll burn out and get discouraged in short order. Selling online leads is a numbers game that requires tenacity, technological savvy and a systems-based approach that also has human touch.