So you’ve just started your insurance business and you’ve learned how important it is to have insurance leads knocking on your door on a daily basis.  But what are insurance agent leads really?  You’ll be shocked to learn what the real answer is behind the names, phone numbers and email addresses, and mastering this will help you master your business.

Behind every insurance agent lead is a person.  This person has just submitted their personal information to a person or company that they don’t know in order to get more information on insurance policies.  While this may seem mundane and a non-event for an insurance agent, in order to increase your sales rate dramatically, you have to fully appreciate what this means and what an insurance agent lead is not.

• it does not mean that the person is ready to buy insurance
• it does not mean they want you to call
• it does not mean they want a quote
• it does not mean anything other than this:

in order to fill out some information (a direct mail piece, an Internet form, respond to a telemarketer), that the insurance prospect has SOME motivation, which could be anything.

The insurance prospect may in fact want a quote or they may just want to learn more about how insurance works.  They may in fact be thinking of buying or they may just want to get pricing form you to take back to their own agent.  Since you don’t know their motivation, your first order of business is to find out.

The insurance agent lead could be asking for more information because they’re in the middle of some kind of transition in their life.   Unfortunately, insurance prospects don’t think about insurance when they’re perfectly fine and nothing is happening.  They think about their family, hobbies and work, but they don’t think about insurance.

So it’s reasonable to say that when you get an insurance agent lead, this person or family is in a  transition in their life.  Perhaps they just lost their job, or maybe someone close to them in their family just passed away and they’re starting to think about their own mortality or they got divorced.  Maybe they just had a minor break-in and want to add more coverage to their homeowner’s policy to be ready for the major break-in that they think is coming. While these are all reasonable assumptions about the insurance agent lead, the REAL way to find the motivation is simply to ask the prospect rather than assume.

Here’s what your call sounds like to an insurance agent lead: “Mrs. Smith, I just received your name on a card asking about life insurance.  While I am happy to send you information that would me useful to you, may I ask what motivated you to fill out this card?”

We go into depth about this because it’s the key to making the most from every insurance agent lead.  Each one of these insurance prospects has their own fears, worries and concerns – it’s your job to find out what these concerns are by asking questions and finding out exactly what the prospect seeks.

Once you know what the prospect wants, closing the sale is just as simple as offering it to them in a clear and concise manner that they understand, and making them feel comfortable with you and your company. It may seem trivial, but so very few insurance agents do this before they get into talking product. This puts such insurance agents at a huge disadvantage when it comes time to add these people to their client list.

If you approach every insurance agent lead that comes across your desk like they have a problem that you absolutely have to solve and make it your mission to first find out and then solve their problem, not only will you increase your business, your new clients will thank you for all of your help while you close the sale.

Lastly, you have to realize a difference in expectations when it comes to each insurance agent lead depending on how it is generated.  For example, Internet insurance agent leads expect a completely different level of service (i.e. fast response first by email) than mail order leads do, and vice versa.  Keep this in mind the next time you want to call up an Internet lead and have a serious conversation and save the heavy marketing strategies for leads that have sought you out via more “hands-on” means.

I was interviewing a guy who had sold leads for Eloan to mortgage brokers.  He told me he had sold leads for years and had used them himself. “The truth is,” he said, “lead programs never work.”  The producer who needs to buy leads is the guy who can’t figure out how to market for himself.  So he usually has poor communication skills, does not think strategically and will just ruin the lead anyway.”  This guy had a very valid point about insurance lead systems–that if you fail to work the lead properly, the lead is worthless.

Here’s an example from another industry.  Today, say 50 people walk onto the BMW lot in your town.  Of those 50, they ALL have a motivation to be there.  They don’t just happen to be there by chance.  Now it’s possible that ten of them have no credit, no money.  Their motivation is to look at pretty German cars.  The other 40 however do want to buy a car, have credit and are considering a BMW among several other brands.  At the end of the day, the dealership sells 3 cars to these 40 people.  We could say that the dealership, the sales people, failed at communicating with the other 37.  In other words, they “blew the lead.”  Similar, most professionals in financial services blow the lead.  The issue is usually not with the insurance lead system, it’s with the financial advisor not knowing what to say or how to approach someone who has minor interest and turn that into a hot interest and an appointment.

And that’s why this article is about “Insurance Lead Systems.”  Because if you just treat the lead as what you have paid for or cultivated and don’t view it as part of a “system,” you will lose a lot of money. An insurance lead system has several components:

• Insurance lead generation–how is the lead generated (Internet, direct mail, telemarketing), how fresh is it, what is the degree of interest of the prospect, etc
• Pre-approach–most insurance lead systems miss this step altogether.  In the pre-approach, you want to build your credibility BEFORE you contact the insurance lead.  In the insurance lead system we recommend, you send a booklet personalized with your name, photo, credentials, background, etc.  The booklet is totally educational, no sales pitch.  The purpose is to get the insurance prospect positively inclined toward you so that when you do call, they treat you as a professional, not a sales person.
• Approach–what you say in the first 30 seconds of your call.  If you blow this, assume the prospect will hang up within 60 seconds saying “I’m not interested.”  This approach must be very soft, no selling no pushing and must be about the insurance prospect and making friends with them,  e.g. “Hi, Mrs. Smith?  I’m a neighbor of yours here in Toledo and I had to call you about a coincidence where you came to my web site last week…..  Notice that that approach does not start with the stupid way that 99% of all insurance agents would start “Hi Mrs. Smith, this is Bob Jones with the Jones Insurance Agency….”If your insurance lead system does not have a well-scripted approach in the first 30 seconds, don’t call another lead until you get it on paper.
• Call Termination–what is it that you want to happen at the end of the call?  Do you want an appointment?  If so, then you must offer a compelling reason for the prospect to meet with you rather than just offering an appointment.  Here’s the difference.  Do you want:
  a) a steak or do you want
  b) a 60-day dry-aged steak, cooked by the food network steak grilling champion, a steak that is perfectly marbled and the same steak served in the Zagat top ranked steak house in New York,  juicy and tender, melts in your mouth steak?

  When you offer an appointment, does it sound like a) or b) above?  Is it any wonder you don’t get all the appointment you should from your insurance lead system?

• Dripping–of every ten leads, you may never reach half of them because you get their voice mail or the phone just rings.  What dripping system do you have to make the prospect call you?  If you don’t have a series of offers that you deliver by mail or email (such as a direct response insurance newsletter), you’ve already lost half of the value of the insurance lead system.

Hopefully, you now see that an insurance lead system is a lot more than just an insurance lead.  The lead itself is the starting point.  If you fail to have other steps that create a comprehensive insurance lead SYSTEM, don’t waste your time or money.

The answer is yes, you should use an insurance lead service because efficient, productive businesses outsource whatever they can.  When you outsource prospecting, you get to spend more time in appointments where you need to be to make sales.

There are a few very important aspects to running an insurance leads function that many new agents just don’t understand.  In fact, many experienced agents don’t understand these concepts either.  Unfortunately, they are the true secrets of the top producers, so if you have any desire to become a top producer in this industry, you should heed this advice.

In order to get a good feeling for how powerful this idea is, think about how much time you spend on your business.  Do you spend 10 hours a week or 80 hours a week building your business?  Either one is fine, but how much money do you make per week?  Do you make $800 per week or $10,000 per week?  How much do you want to make per week? To meet your goals, you need to be face to face or on the phone with prospects and clients.  Any other activities, like generating leads or prospecting should be delegated or outsourced to an insurance lead service.

Figure out how much money you make per hour and then take your weekly income and divide it by the number of hours you work per week.  This is your current hourly rate that you pay yourself.  Next, figure out how much you want to make per week – this is your goal hourly rate. After you’ve figured out your hourly rates, go back through and list everything you do during the day.  Be very thorough and list every task that you do – it may help to keep a log or journal of every step that you take during the day.   Patience please—we will get to how an insurance lead service makes these numbers look better.

This is where it gets good – go through your day and figure out what tasks you can give to someone else to do for less than your desired hourly rate.  For example, if you can hire an assistant to make your appointment calls or generate your leads for less than what your desired hourly rate will be, then mark that as one of the processes you should outsource.

Are you surprised at how much time you’re wasting on tasks that you could easily send to other people for much less than what you’re paying yourself?  If you’re like most insurance agents, this should be a wake up call for you. It’s very common to fond that your time is worth $300 an hour and you waste a big chunk of it prospecting when you could just pay and insurance lead service $20 per lead for the same prospect you would get on your own.

I can almost guarantee that one, or even most, of the tasks that you listed has to do with generating insurance leads.  It’s always amazing to see how much mundane, monotonous, and just flat out cheap laborious work insurance agents put themselves through to generate leads when they can easily outsource this task by using an insurance lead service.
If you decide to use an insurance lead service, you’ll quickly find that it isn’t very hard to make more money, work less and enjoy life much more than you currently do.

Just be sure you choose your insurance lead service carefully.  There are many services out there that won’t produce very good results and will only take your money and leave you with leads that don’t want to buy your insurance.  Proper due diligence is the key to making this work, so spend some time research the insurance lead service’s policies and their reputation online as recommended.

If you truly want to free yourself from the slavery of Insurance lead generation and reach the income goals you set for yourself, using an insurance lead service is by far one of the best ways go to about it.

It’s a shame that so many insurance agents are clueless about marketing and client acquisition.  In July 2009, 1600 insurance agents did a a Google search on the phrase “insurance agent lead.” What exactly were these agents looking for?  A life lead, a P&C lead, an annuity lead?  Do they have any idea as to their niche, do they have a strategy or are they just fishing around for their next sale?  Unfortunately, the bar is so low to become an insurance agent (take some easy classes and pass a very simple exam), that it has become the second career for truck drivers.  Once the ex-truck driver passes his insurance exam, he now sets out looking for an insurance agent lead, I guess. (by the way–I like truck drivers.  I just think they should drive trucks and not sell insurance).

I don’t want to take anything away from the true insurance professional–those who are clearly financial advisers, have the CHFC or CPCU credential and really add value for their clients.  But some yahoo that may use Yahoo or Google to look for insurance agent lead is no one that should be exposed to the public.

So let’s give our 1600 Internet searchers the benefit of the doubt, assume they are new agents and provide some advice on how to generate insurance leads and grow a business. Depending on how new you are to the business, you may or may not know what an insurance agent lead is.  But even if you’re an industry veteran, you still may not know exactly what this type of lead is.  Even if you think you know, it’s still important to brush up on your knowledge and marketing strategies every now and again.

When you’re first getting started, it’s important to learn how to generate leads or have others do so for you.  Insurance agent leads come from a variety of places such as the Internet, direct mail, direct response TV, telemarketing – also known as cold calling (something you should never do but may want to hire someone to do).  The physical aspect of the lead is a name, address, phone number and email address – and possibly some other optional information – of a person who’s interested in receiving insurance information or a quote.  At the time he is filling out the form, the lead may or may not know exactly what type of insurance or company they need.

An insurance agent lead is a whole lot more than that, however.  To the average, unsuccessful insurance agent, this information is just an address and phone number.  It’s a faceless piece of information that the agent must use to get to their end goal – a sale.  To successful insurance agents, however, it’s a lot more than that.

The person on the other end of that insurance agent lead is someone who has worries, desires, needs and wants.  It can’t be stressed enough how important that is to success in this industry.  When you pick up that phone to talk to this lead, you’re speaking with someone who is potentially very scared or misinformed about insurance in general.  They may have no idea that you’ll be calling, and the reason they filled out the form with their personal information is because he’s going through a transition in his life and have some unknown circumstances that he needs you to help him through. To the experienced agent, this insurance agent lead is also a connection to everyone this prospect knows in the neighborhood, at work, his employer, etc.  In other words, one new client can lead to a whole lot of new business.

For example, many times an insurance agent lead will be calling because someone in the family close to them had just passed away and they’re starting to think about what will happen when they die, whether or not they have enough insurance coverage, and what will happen to their family when it’s their time to go.  Others are calling because they’re starting their own business or were laid off from a job that used to provide insurance and now need to find an alternative solution.

The key to success in this industry is to always keep these considerations in mind when talking to prospects.  Each insurance agent lead is a person and not just a potential sale.  Your job is to find out what this person wants.  What keeps the prospect up at night?  Why is he seeking further coverage (the emotional reason is what you want to know as people buy emotionally)?  It may seem simple, but finding out the answer to these questions, then answering them with a product that you offer is what will take you from being just an insurance agent to becoming an insurance super agent, a true professional. Not only will you make more money in the industry, but your clients will be eternally grateful for you doing it.

When a life insurance sales lead comes in to your office, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed by what you now have to do to make that lead convert to a sale.  Your emotions are running high, the possibilities start drifting through your head, and you start to think about how you’re going to spend the money before you even close the deal.  This is a big mistake, because there’s a lot of work and some smart thinking to be done before you can count on the sale and, at any time, you can easily derail the sale.

The first thing you should do when you receive a life insurance sales lead is to look over the lead and find out some specific things about the prospect.  Pay the most attention to the lead’s story, if you’re lucky enough to get some of this information.  What’s their situation and why are they looking for life insurance?  You’ll be surprised at some of the reasons why people look for insurance, but this information is the key to closing to the lead.  Try to find out exactly what they’re looking for and offer it to them.

If you can send something to the life insurance sales lead, like an article you wrote, an interview with you from the newspaper, an educational booklet on how to select the right life insurance, this will go a long way to helping you close the sale.  You may have the mistaken idea to avoid sending things.  This is partially correct,. you DO want to send items that b8uild your credibility (not sales literature) so that the lead is more inclined to buy from you.

Once you’ve taken a serious look at the life insurance lead’s situation, you should find out exactly how that lead was generated.  This will tell you a lot about the prospect, and is the key to success with a life insurance sales lead.  While the exact techniques you should use to market to the prospect have been debated for dozens of years, there are a few aspects of talking to a lead that all sales methods have in common.

To begin, you should always focus on the prospect.  They don’t care about whom you are, what awards you’ve won or how you’ve had hundreds of years in the business.  They only care about what’s in it for them.  If you truly did your homework, you should already know exactly what the life insurance sales lead wants out of their life insurance, so closing with them should only be a matter of providing their ideal solution for them.  If you don’t yet have this information, ask them what they want and what they would think of as their ideal insurance solution throughout your consultation. In sales, “to ask is your task.”  Do little telling–let them do the telling.

Another good technique is to try to paint a picture for the prospect of what it will be like for them when they’ll have to use the insurance.  Don’t go overboard, but try to make them see the value they’ll receive if they decide to buy the insurance they’re looking for.  Put them in the situation you’re trying to insure them against and make sure they know that your product is superior to your competitors, without directly putting down your competitor.

Lastly, you must figure out your unique selling point.  Your life insurance sales lead has a choice of thousands of insurance agents, so why should they choose you?  For example, if you are an independent agent, you can stress how you will comparisonshop for them.  If a captive agent, you can stress the multi-billion financial solidity of your firm. This goes way beyond your elevator speech and should truly set you apart from the rest of the crowd.  One example is specialization – by showing that you specialize in dealing with the prospect’s situation, you’ll find that many more people will sign up with you, instead of your competitor.

Congratulations – you’ve got an annuity insurance lead.  You’re one step closer to a great commission.  But what do you do next?  If you’re a new insurance sales person, you’ll probably find that it’s very easy to become confused with what you have to do to convert that annuity lead into a sale.  Too many new agents let this excitement get the best of them and practically spend the money before they close the deal.  Little do they know, they’re just hitting the tip of the iceberg in terms of the work that needs to be done.

When you receive an annuity insurance lead, you should immediately look over the lead in detail to be sure you know what your lead is looking for.  You have to pay special attention to the lead’s story and any other qualifying information that can teach you something about this lead.  Keep this in mind–people who buy annuities also buy mutual funds, long term care and almost any conservative investment option so you have multiple opportunities for business with the prospect.  If there was a spot where the prospect could explain the reason why they’re looking for new or supplemental insurance, you should read and reread this part carefully.  This information is what will dramatically increase your chances of getting the annuity sale (or any sale).

This is the secret to closing sales.  Whether you know it or not, every one of those annuity insurance leads has a story.  Whether they’re looking for a good investment vehicle or if they want to be sure they’re leaving a guaranteed payout for their spouse, you must know exactly what it is they want.  Then, making the sale is as simple as giving them what they want and convincing them that they can trust you to achieve their desired ends with their money.

After you’ve figured out exactly who your prospect is, you’ll need to look over how the prospect’s information was collected.  This will determine how you will contact the prospect and will help you formulate your plan for marketing to them.  For example, if the annuity insurance lead was generated on the Internet, you may load their information into your email marketing tool and send them email newsletters that discuss your products and other information that the prospect may find useful.  Don’t take advantage of the fact that you can send an email to them at any time, however, and bombard them with sales pitch emails at all hours of the day.  If you do, you’ll lose the trust of your prospect and any chance you ever had of closing the sale with them.

Finally, when you’re ready to talk to the annuity insurance lead, try to remember that the prospect has a choice between you and thousands of other agents.  You have to find a way to differentiate yourself from the faceless masses of insurance sales people that will be contacting your prospect as well.  You need to find one thing about yourself that sets you apart and make sure that this benefit is highlighted in everything you do.  This is called your unique selling point (or proposition) and it’s the number one way to rapidly increase your sales.

So if the process of following up with your annuity leads seems overwhelming, don’t worry.  If you follow these steps, you’ll find that you’re able to close your annuity insurance lead at a record pace, bringing you business for years to come.