October 7th, 2009 → 2:18 am @ Richard
Insurance lead generation for most companies is a straightforward process. You start by buying leads or generating them yourself through advertising online and off. Then you start selling.
Simple!
For the consumer however, buying insurance is confusing, time consuming, and tedious. They are afraid to ask someone like you for more information because they believe it will lead to a sales pitch. That means that you don’t get as many leads as you would like. This is unfortunate, because you’re probably the one person most qualified to answer their questions and help them make an intelligent decision.
In short, if you want to place more customers, you need a way of generating insurance leads that sets you apart from the other insurance companies who are targeting those very same prospects. So how do you do that? How do you make yourself stand out?
Starting with the customer in mind, the best method of insurance lead generation is to make it easy for prospects to contact you and find the information they’re looking for – without fear of the dreaded hard sell.
It might sound crazy but if you want to generate more insurance leads the smart thing is to…
… give your prospect the information they want, with no strings attached.
Providing content that answers your prospects queries will attract more prospects – the ones who are put off by the hoops that other agents make them jump through. Secondly it will make you a trusted resource that they will return to. Of course, you’ll also want to gather prospects’ contact details where possible. This is your permission to continue to market to them over time. To encourage prospects to give you this permission you’ll often need an incentive.
In your insurance lead generation process, the first step could be to create a special report that covers the key points your prospect should be aware about before buying your kind of insurance (life, auto, income disability, home, etc). The report should cover basic dos and don’ts and give him advice about what to expect when purchasing your insurance product. Then, at the end, you should include a simple way for them to get in touch.
Many times he will call you to finish what he set out to do – buy insurance. If not, you can still go back to route one and call them. Even if this does not lead to an immediate sale, you’ve started a relationship and are now one step ahead of your competitors.
Many prospects still don’t buy immediately, even if they need what you’re selling. Things happen. They get busy. Other life events take attention away from buying insurance. So what else should you do as part of your insurance lead generation process?
Simple. Follow up with them. By joining your mailing list the prospect has given you permission to keep in touch. You want to stay top-of-mind and ask for the sale as many times as needed until they become a client or ask you to stop contacting them. Depending on what contact information you have, you can stay in touch by phone, email, mail, or a combination of all three.
Ideally, you will automate this communication to save you time and allow you to focus on fresh leads as they come through. You’ll find by being consistent and communicating with lukewarm prospects over time, those that don’t buy now often buy in the future (or do other good things like refer business to you).
Now that you have a mailing list of prospects interested in insurance, you can cross-sell them other lines of insurance. For instance, if the first reason they contacted you was about information on Life Insurance, you can now offer information on purchasing Income Disability Insurance. Also, if you only focus on one line of insurance (for example, Business Owner Policies), you can partner up with another agent that specializes in a different line of insurance and split commissions.
Many agents use the leads they buy poorly. They buy them and wait days to call the lead back. When asked why, many say that they were busy or at appointments when the leads were emailed to them. Don’t let these leads go stale.
Have an assistant or sub-agent call them back immediately. If too much time passes the prospect’s enthusiasm dies and their level of interest disappears, making a sale harder or impossible. Chances are they’ll also be contacted by other agents. If you don’t get a sale right away, remember to encourage them to join your mailing list (again using free info as an incentive). This can provide a long list of prospects to contact in future with new offers or simply keep in front of until they’re ready to buy.
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