When you first join the industry as an insurance agent, you’ll be bombarded with thousands of opportunities to buy life insurance leads.  Every lead company in the world will soon be contacting you about the numerous offerings that they have for sale.  It can be quite overwhelming for the new insurance agent, but with the right guidance and information, it doesn’t have to be a traumatic experience.

In order to correctly go about finding a good company to buy life insurance leads from, you must first understand what types of leads are available and what the pros and cons are of each one are.  Then you have to understand how these leads are generated, what the possible pitfalls of each one are and then how you can go about acquiring the good leads that will produce sales instead of wasting your time.

The first type of lead that’s out there to consider is the one that’s best once to explore more once you’ve gained experience in the industry and have a solid, proven, follow-up system in place.  These leads are shared insurance leads, and they’re very hard to turn into a sale.  These leads are sold to more than one insurance agent and are often sold to five or more agents for a premium price.

You can start to see why these leads aren’t the best leads to start with by any means.  You’re placed in direct comparison with your competitors immediately – they’ll be calling the lead at the same time, so your message may be lost in the crowd.  In order to make these leads work, you have to be able to differentiate yourself amongst the masses of insurance agents that will be vying for the lead’s attention.  In some cases, the lead was generated a long time ago and has already been pitched to by another insurance agent.  These leads, at one time, were considered exclusive leads, but now your message is one of many the lead will be receiving.

Exclusive leads are the only types of leads that are recommended when it comes time to buy life insurance leads, the reason being that you’re the only one who gets access to that lead – even if only for a short period of time.  You’re not going to be vying for their attention over any other agents and your chances of closing on the lead increases tenfold.  You do have to be sure you read the fine print, however.  Many exclusive leads become shared leads after a short period of time, and then your chances of closing on them drop dramatically.

The way that all leads are generated falls into two basic categories – Internet and direct response leads.  Internet insurance  leads are just that – leads that are generated over the Internet.  The lead fills out a web form requesting that they receive more information about a certain type of insurance, and can come in email only or full 21-question insurance leads.  If you decide to buy life insurance leads generated online, be sure to find out how the company weeds out leads with incorrect or fraudulent information.

Direct response leads, on the other hand, are generated through another medium, such as telemarketing, direct mail or some other version of advertising.  You want to find out exactly how this lead was obtained.  If the prospect completed a questionnaire mailed from an insurance company and returned it, that’s a good lead.  If, on the other hand, the prospect filled out a form at the counter fair to win to tractor, that lead is not very good.

If you’re an insurance agent, you know that your life is much easier when you have some qualified leads on hand of people who are actually in need of insurance. There are many reasons that people need insurance of some kind, whether it’s home owners who need new home insurance policies or businesses that need liability coverage. Even individuals need life insurance to protect themselves and their families. As an insurance sales agent that’s working on commission, finding some existing insurance sales leads can go a long way towards building your business quickly. On the other hand, if you already have a business that deals in insurance, you’ve probably already generated some of your own.

There are dozens of different businesses selling insurance sales leads over the Internet, although most of them have sold the same leads at least a dozen of times before your inquiry (tip–only deal with companies that offer exclusive leads and have them put it in writing). Chances are that these leads aren’t worth the money you’ve paid for them if their not exclusive as the other buyers have sent their sales pitches to these prospects. On the other hand, there are some web sites that offer to put you in a database, where you and other insurance salespeople are loaded with your pre-defined sales pitches and offered to the public for their perusal. You pay for this service, and there are no guarantees that you’ll ever get any business from it but the cost is so low, it’s often worth it (see Internet advertising video).

Getting genuine insurance sales leads isn’t easy. One of the best things you can do is to put up your own web page and make sure that you rank well with search engines so that all the people in need of insurance find their way to you (the above link to the video shows you how). You can also work to establish relationships with other businesses in your area. For example, you can cut a deal with a local funeral parlor to give them a discount on business insurance in exchange for the names and phones of relatives of the recently deceased. People who have recently had death in the family are much more interested in life insurance than any average guy off the street. You could also strike a deal with a local bank, where you insure all the mortgages with a life insurance policy that lists the bank as the beneficiary so the bank can retrieve the money and repossess the house if the mortgage client dies.

Selling insurance is a tough business and it can get downright dirty – especially if you’re only paid when you sell insurance and receive the first payment on a policy. There aren’t very many easy ways to obtain insurance sales leads that result in deals being made, unless the client finds you first or you have someone do business with you on retainer, like the aforementioned bank. Such deals with existing businesses may provide you with steady work and put an end to the constant struggle to find exclusive leads. Who knows – you may even find that you enjoy your work more when you can really sit down and focus on matching people with the insurance products they need.

Leads for insurance are not a commodity – something that’s of immense value for every insurance agent.  Leads are the instant money makers and the treasure maps for every single sales person in this line of business.  Exclusive leads are kept secret, used as quickly as possible and provide agents with the necessary income to continue generating new leads.  If you’re trying to get into this business, there’s no way around these leads.  There are already thousands of insurance agents working in the field, all chasing the same pool of prospects.  To really make it in this business, you’ll need to do some serious brainstorming and get your creative juices flowing, because it’s a crowded market out there.

Think about it for a minute.  Yes, you put up a web site, but the leads you get from there are sporadic and often just seeking information instead of leading to a deal.  To keep you business going, you need inquiries that result in sales, and unless you can provide the insurance-seeking individual with the best offer, the client is probably going to close with somebody else who did.  This is a rough business – some call it cutthroat – and leads for insurance are pure gold.  Unless you can come up with a good idea on how you can generate these leads, you’ll have a hard time making this business work.

Now, don’t get discouraged.  Yes, there are huge insurance behemoths out there with their in-house sales team crowding the market place, but you do still have options available – you just have to take the path less traveled.  For instance, you may be required to have a, well, let’s call it an unofficial payroll.  Having a scout at the local mortuary or in an area funeral parlor is one way to get leads.  People who recently have lost a loved one are more receptive to a life insurance proposal than a “just married” couple.  However, the newlyweds might be interested in a life insurance policy for the purposes of securing a mortgage.  Can you think of some ways to find these insurance leads?

Health insurance leads are a bit rougher to tackle, but you may be able to make deals with small business owners that provide better care than the local HMO at a competitive price.  You’ll need to negotiate with businesses and your insurance house, but it could provide you with a unique deal that no other agent is offering.  New home owners also need insurance policies for their homes, including everything from fire insurance to flood insurance, and bulk deals can be very appealing.  See if you can work with a local real estate company or realtor to offer special deals if they get the home buyer to hire you as their agent.

As mentioned, leads for insurance are the Holy Grail for all insurance agents.  Once you’ve generated an exclusive lead, you’re 50% of the way to a closed deal.  And if you can figure out your own personal way of generating these leads, you’ll be off to a great start in this business.

We’ve all heard the mantra – a dozen qualified insurance leads a day keeps the bankruptcy away.  When trying to start a new insurance business, its often pounded into our heads how important leads are to our business.  Of course, we quickly find out that this is true – to some extent.  We also find out that the most important part of that statement is missing.

Once we get started and established in our businesses, we find that it’s not good enough just to have leads coming in to the office – it’s much more important to have qualified insurance leads coming in.  The difference between the two is demonstrated in the prospect’s intent, i.e. interest and motivation,  and ability to purchase insurance.
The most qualified, ideal prospect has been searching for a solution and is ready to purchase insurance today.  They know exactly what they want, have already done their shopping and are ready to close with you as soon as you can get the paperwork drawn up.  A completely unqualified lead needs a lot of educating in the workings of insurance, has no intention of purchasing insurance and may never actually become a sale.  Of course, most leads fall somewhere in between the two opposite ends of this spectrum.  Note:  there are far too many agents that spend too mush of their day with the latter–unqualified leads in attempt to interest or convince them to buy.
But the question still remains as to how to find these highly qualified insurance leads.  Qualified insurance leads are out there, but unfortunately, most of the time they’re mixed in with the completely unqualified leads and may never show their face among this crowd.  If you purchase leads from a company, you have very little control over the source and quality of the leads.  Even though you cannot control the acquisition of a purchased lead, you can still ask how the lead was obtained:

• how do we know the prospect has interest?
• do we know if the prospect has the ability to buy?
• are they at the point in their shopping cycle when they are ready to buy now?

If you don;t get satisfactory answers, then don;t do business with that lead generation firm.

If you do proceed, the control you have to separate the buyers form the non-buyers  is to ensure that your company is using a qualifying form when getting the lead’s information.  A qualifying form is one in which the lead has to answer a few questions like, “When do you plan to buy insurance,” or “What type of insurance are you interested in,” among many others.  By forcing the prospect to answer these questions, you’re ensuring that they are self-qualifying themselves.  The once unqualified lead then becomes qualified and you won’t be wasting your time on leads that have no intention of buying insurance.

If you’re generating your own leads, you can do this as well.  Just be sure that they can submit the qualifying form on your website without answering all of the questions.  While they may be qualified and interested, they may not be comfortable putting all of that information on a form to send over the Internet or through the mail.  However, you can’t discount them because of this.  Instead, give them a call and ask them further questions to qualify them before you spend your valuable time ensuring they’re serious.

These tactics are known by most, but practiced by the very successful insurance agents only.  If you take these tips to heart, you’ll find that you’ll work less and make more money.  Pre-qualification is a very powerful process and should always be used, no matter how you buy your qualified insurance leads.

There are a several ways to find long term care insurance leads.  You can buy them or generate your own leads.  Both processes have their pros and cons, but there’s one distinct advantage to generating your own leads.  If you do decide to purchase leads instead of generating your own, you should be aware of some common pitfalls that most new insurance agents stumble into.

If you decide to purchase your leads, it’s strongly recommended that you use exclusive long term care insurance leads to start off.  The difference between exclusive leads and shared leads is exactly that – exclusive leads are sold only to you, whereas shared leads are sold over and over again to many insurance agents, sometimes up to ten or more at a time.  As you can imagine, it’s much harder to convince the prospect to go with your products if you can’t prove to them you have a good, solid business under your wings.

Additionally, if you decide to go with shared leads, you should have a good marketing system in place that ensures maximum success with the leads you are getting.  A good marketing system must include a script for setting appointments, a way of automatically following up with the prospect and a good, solid, unique selling proposition that differentiates you from the rest of the crowd.

Once you have these things in place and they’ve been tried out and honed on exclusive leads, you can try your hand at shared leads.  There are a few words of caution, however, as there are many lead sales companies out there that will sell you stale leads or those don’t convert for of a variety of reasons.  There are many tricks a company can use to get the prospect to give up their information, and they use them a lot.  For example, you’ll find that there are some companies that offer incentives for a person to fill out their information, like a chance to win a free cruise or even monetary rewards.  While this may seem harmless, it will waste your time because more often than not the lead has no interest in insurance – they just wanted their free gift card.

After you’ve finished putting the finishing touches on your superstar marketing system, you can try them out on shared leads.  By first trying to use them on exclusive leads, you get a chance to talk to many more prospects and find out what you need know to tweak your marketing system to garner maximum responses and lead satisfaction.  Then, you can start thinking about generating your own leads using your own advertising and marketing system.

The danger with this method is that your results aren’t hinging on something or someone that you just turn on and off when you need to work on your business.  You constantly have to be ready to receive long term care insurance leads or you risk losing the prospect.  In addition, you have to be ready to take the emotional and economical roller coaster that’s associated with marketing your own business.  However, if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you could soon find yourself in charge of a successful and profitable business.

It’s no secret that generating exclusive insurance leads may be the most important part of any insurance business. However, as any experienced insurance agent will tell you – and with all due respect to Thomas Jefferson – all leads are not created equal.  In fact, there’s such a dichotomy between good, producing leads and stale, overused, uninterested leads that some companies forbid their salespeople from buying leads altogether.  Here’s how to tell the difference.

While buying leads isn’t always bad, there are a few companies out there that prey on the unsuspecting insurance agnet that’s new to the industry and hasn’t bought leads before.  These companies are unscrupulous and will do anything to get a salesperson to buy from them.  On the other hand, buying good leads may turn out to be a great resource that a salesperson can turn to in order to increase their sales.

So how do you know the difference between good leads and bad?  The best giveaway – if you don’t already know – is to always be sure the leads you generate or buy are exclusive insurance leads.  This means that their information will only be given to you, no matter how much time has elapsed.  The other types of leads are called shared leads and should be avoided at all costs.

If you think about what a shared lead is, you’ll understand why they’re so bad.  The lead, who sometimes is completely unaware that they’ll become a shared lead when they volunteer their information, will be barraged with phone calls, emails, and direct mail pieces begging them to buy every insurance company’s best selling product.  This tends to get annoying and even if they were interested in buying when they filled out the form, they sure aren’t anymore.

But even better than buying exclusive insurance leads is learning to generate your own.  By generating your own leads, you’ll never have to worry about competing with other insurance companies or sharing critical information with them.  Instead, you own those leads and you can contact them for the rest of your life if you like.  You can cultivate and grow a great relationship with them that will pay off in spades when they keep coming back to you with their business and recommend that all of their friends and family do the same.

And it doesn’t have to be difficult.  There are many ways to generate your own leads – too many, in fact, to cover here.  But there are a few tips to take to heart while you’re getting started with generating your own leads.

First, become a steady disciple of marketing and advertising.  You have to be very good at both in order to profitably generate the leads you need.

Second, know the lifetime value of your customers.  While you may not make money on your first sale to them, you’ll be growing a relationship that pays off when they come back to buy more insurance for their car, boat, house, and more for the rest of their lives.  You can’t know how much you can afford to spend to build relationships like that until you know how much each customer is worth to you.

By generating your own exclusive insurance leads, you can write your own ticket in this industry.  All of the top producers do, so why not start today?

If you’ve been in the business for an appreciable amount of time, you’ve probably heard that insurance sales leads are the most important aspect of a successful insurance business.  While this is generally true, it’s the whole truth.  Leads are great, but without a good system to follow up and produce closed sales with these leads, they aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

Unfortunately, this is the hardest step for most new insurance agents to master.  Instead of focusing on closing the leads, they focus on generating them.  They’re then left with hundreds of insurance sales leads that they can’t close because they either have a fear of closing with them or they have a terrible system – or no system at all – for contacting, following up, and closing those leads.

The process begins by selecting the medium through which the leads are generated.  The options of mail, Internet, and fax are all possibilities, and all of them have their own advantages and disadvantages.  The foundation to a successful system, however, is knowing where those leads were generated, how they were generated, and why the lead responded to the marketing.  Without this information, the chances of closing with the lead are already reduced by 60%.

Next, a successful lead follow-up system will be able to respond to the leads quickly and in a repeatable manner.  If the lead is a shared lead – and most of them are – your lead will receive between three and ten phone calls from other insurance agents right off the bat, all competing for the same business.  If you can be the first to reach the lead before they become weary of talking to salespeople, your chances of at least receiving their attention – or of the lead even answering the phone – are greatly increased.

Once you get a hold of the lead, the magic starts to happen.  You should always have a follow-up phone script that’s proven to quickly engage the insurance sales lead in a professional, friendly, and caring manner.  First impressions truly are the most important, and if yours is a bad one, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle throughout the entire pitch.  If you don’t yet have your own script, ask a friend or mentor in the field for help developing it.  Users of the SeniorLeads insurance sales lead system are provided a script that has been scientifically proven to increase results by 300%.

Throughout the conversation, it’s important to be courteous and professional.  High pressure sales tactics are short lived and globally hated – you’ll turn your prospect off for good if you resort to those.

Instead, think about your conversation with your prospect as a conversation with a friend.  Try not to think of yourself as a salesman selling your services, but instead a friend looking out for their best interests.  This attitude will come across in your voice when you talk to them, and if your concern seems sincere, you’ll quickly find that you’ll need a bigger office to handle all the business you’ll receive.

Insurance sales is a very emotional profession, and recognizing this will get you far.  People come to insurance companies when they’re either in turmoil or are thinking about the possibility that bad things could happen to them.  It is your responsibility to stand above that chaos as the strong tree in the middle of a storm.  Do this, and your clients will not only do more business with you, but they’ll thank you every step of the way.

You’ll never meet an insurance agent who talks about the glory of generating insurance leads.  Likewise, you’ll never meet someone who joined the insurance industry just to learn how to generate leads.  However, any one of the super successful insurance agents working today will tell you that the secret to their success is simple – a solid, never-ending supply of fresh, qualified leads that convert to sales.

If you’d like to join the ranks of the super elite, you’ll quickly learn the only path that leads to this emerald city is through the process of insurance lead generation.  The following is a quick guide for new agents to getting all the leads you’ll need to take your business to the next level.

One of the most common strategies for insurance lead generation is to use a list service.  The list company will gather exhaustive information on people, their families, and their occupations.  These companies will then sell the information to you, either as a list or individually to insurance agents.  When choosing which list service to go with, do your due diligence – pick a company that has a proven track record of offering good quality, exclusive leads, and interview the staff that will be generating the information to be sure they’re qualified.   Ask experienced agents.

From there, it is the responsibility of the insurance salesperson to take this information and act on it.  You’ll need to contact the individual and use the information gathered through the list service – as well as good old fashioned sales techniques – to find out what the person needs/wants in terms of insurance.  Once you have this information, you can offer them your products in a way that makes it sound like they shouldn’t go another second without this insurance.  In order to do this, you’ve got to have extreme confidence in both yourself and your products.

However, even better than using a list service company to find the lead’s information is the ability to generate your own leads.  It’s always good business practice to keep the health and viability of your business out of the hands of other companies, so with this knowledge, you can ensure that your business is dependent only on you – not on a list service company that could go out of business at any point in time.

While there are numerous books, courses, and seminars dedicated to the art and science of generating your own leads, the following is a single tip that the best of the best in the insurance lead generation business practice each and every day.

First, be sure you have a good, professional website that has the ability to collect a prospect’s information.  Get additional exposure using an inexpensive service like LocalAdlink. Try to be as detailed as possible when collecting this information – for example, how big is their family?  What is their household annual income, and do they live in a flood zone?  What type of insurance are they looking for?  Finally, put the most effort into gathering their contact information.  Be sure your website employs the time-tested tactics of persuasion and sales copywriting to convince them to enter their information.

Remember, a lead will be very reluctant to give up their information – after all, no one really wants to be swamped by telemarketers who got their information.  Make it easy for them to call or contact you if they don’t trust submitting their information over the internet.  Consider offering them a free report or a discount on one of your products to get them to give up their information, and be sure to stress the importance of your offerings.  Eventually, you’ll find yourself flooded with contacts knocking at your door.

These tips, along with established sales and marketing strategies will open more doors for the average new insurance agent than they ever thought possible.  And while there’s no such thing as insurance lead generation that happens by itself, these tips are about as close as you’ll get.

Leads are the life blood of any life insurance business.  Any experienced salesperson will tell you that without a constant, steady flow of life insurance leads; a business will quickly run out of new clients and find itself out of business.  The following are a few tips to help you sort through the clutter of finding the life insurance leads that are interested in what you have to offer.

When life insurance salespeople first start out, they are quickly introduced to the lead companies that will sell them the same leads that they’ve been selling over and over for the last few months.  Unfortunately, new sales people are easy targets for these companies, not yet having the knowledge and experience to be able to spot a bad deal when they see one.

And with plenty of honest lead sales companies that exist, thrive and flourish in the industry, the companies that resell leads over and over again would quickly become obsolete, save one constant in the industry – fresh blood.  If you’re reading this article, it’s safe to assume that you’ve already learned how to identify these shoddy lead sales companies and steered away from them, but for the timid, fresh meat in the industry – buyer beware.

But if you can’t trust companies to sell you quality leads, how are you supposed to get started?  The answer is in your marketing strategies.  The sales and marketing tactics that specific insurance salespeople employ is what splits the ultra successful from the struggling and starving – if you have any ambition to become the next best thing in insurance sales, you’ll pay heed to the quality of your marketing.

By learning how to market your own business and learning how to find life insurance leads on your own, you learn an invaluable skill that will take a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.  If you get it right, you’ll never have to worry about your business again.  But how exactly do the experienced insurance sales people acquire that marketing Midas touch?  There are hundreds of courses, books, seminars and gurus that are dedicated to this exact topic, but the following strategy is one of the most advanced tactics you can employ in order to ensure your success.

It’s simple – make sure you’re leveraging your time correctly.  Do you have systems in place to find, qualify, and set appointments for all of your leads, or are you still trying to do everything yourself?

The best way to decide whether or not you’re actually leveraging your time correctly is to sit down and figure out how much you value your time.  Figure out how much time you spend on your business and how much your net profit is at the end of the month.  Do you make $10 an hour or $100 an hour?  Your answer will vary, but be honest with yourself.  If you want to make $300 an hour, but you’re only currently making $30, you need to change some things.

Next, go over all of the tasks you do every day – calling leads, meeting with leads, setting appointments, and drafting policies.  Which of these tasks can you hire someone to perform for less than what you’d like to be paid?  You can probably find someone to do about 90% of your menial tasks, which will leave you the time to perform the high profit, very important tasks, like closing deals.

By leveraging your time and staying away from shifty lead vendors, you’ll have no trouble finding life insurance leads and will build the foundation for a very successful insurance sales business – no matter what the state of the economy may be.