This article on prospecting applies to any type of financial sale.
Your first boss told you that insurance prospecting is the life blood of your business. We say don’t do it. Insurance prospecting is the activity of a sales laborer and not an insurance sales professional. As an insurance sales professional, your time is far too valuable for this administrative, clerical activity.
Know that insurance prospecting is the boring activity of separating the insurance prospects (those people with an interest and with money) from suspects, e.g. names on a list. Imagine you had a list of all residents in Beverly Hills zip code 90210; you can reasonably assume that most of these people have money. However, most are not interested in your product or service. How do you locate the few that are viable insurance prospects? You let a sales laborer do the insurance prospecting.
Here are four scenarios:
1. You delegate insurance prospecting to an outside firm that will design and print a mailer for you. That company and the post office employees become your sales laborers to deliver your thousands of pieces of insurance direct mail. The few recipients that respond ( say 100 people) are “insurance prospects” and these are the individuals you should speak to now that the insurance prospecting has been done.
2. You hire a telemarketer or telemarketing firm to call those Beverly Hill residents with your offer (might be an invitation to a workshop, offer for a whitepaper, etc). You only talk to the people who express interest, the insurance prospects.
3. You place an ad in the Beverly Hills section of the LA Times offering your report “The Six Things Agents Never Tell you About Insurance.” You talk to the 50 individuals that order your report. The newspaper becomes your sales laborer to locate insurance prospects.
4. You hire an insurance lead generation company to run ads for you on the Internet and find insurance prospects that meet your criteria. You pay the insurance lead provider per Internet lead.
All of these tactics cost money. They are all an investment. If you prefer not to invest in your insurance agency, then find a position as an employee working for an insurance company or another insurance agent, as clearly you’re not cut out to own a business. You can be a sales laborer for someone else and do their insurance prospecting and let them make most of the money.
Sure, insurance prospecting is the lifeblood of any insurance practice but you, the sales professional, shouldn’t be doing it.
