In LIMRA’s Study “Trillion Dollar Baby,” it reports that 48 million households say they don’t have enough life insurance. If consumers say they don’t have enough insurance yet I meet starving life agents, there can only be one explanation—the producers don’t know how to sell insurance. I know that 74% of these families say they cannot afford life insurance, but can they afford a BMW or the home that’s beyond their means or the designer clothes for their kids? People can always afford what they really want.

The problem of poorly trained agents who don’t know how to sell insurance is multifaceted.

First, too many life insurance professionals operate from an insurance “needs analysis” — how much insurance does the family need given their financial commitment for education, retirement, support, etc. They are taught this approach by the insurance industry. The life insurance agent then uses this needs analysis as the basis for his sales presentation. But have you ever seen anyone take action because of need? I only see people take action because of wants.

The Center for Disease Control reports that 61% of Americans are overweight and need to lose pounds. But the only people on a diet are those that want to lose weight. So the first thing that life insurance agents must do is rip the word “need” from their vocabulary. Every time an insurance agent talks about a prospect’s needs, he must have points deducted from his annual conference score or MDRT qualification. There must be a penalty for this improper thinking and speaking. No prospect will ever buy based on what they need. They buy only what they want.

Sure, the insurance agent should be diligent and calculate the insurance needs of the family, but that’s the same as a physician who calculates how much pain killer you need. He does not discuss it with you. It’s a calculation that he does as part of his professional responsibility. He does not want to administer too much or too little. Similarly, the agent must know how much insurance the family needs when it’s time to complete the application. But the need is one factor in the conversation and the number need never be discussed with the client as part of the sales conversation. To include this number as part of the sales conversation will cripple the insurance producer’s effectiveness and allow him to fall back on the “needs” conversation. The agent must focus on developing the prospect’s want because the prospect will only buy what he wants.  We have now addressed the most egregious problem as to why agents don’t now how to sell insurance.

Next, we have a failure to understand what selling insurance (or selling in general) really is. I don’t think the average financial professional  or average insurance company CEO has the vaguest idea of the correct definition of selling. Let me offer two:

• Selling is the asking of appropriate questions so that prospect sees the correct course of action for himself

• Selling is enrolling the prospect in his own vision, his own agenda (not the seller’s agenda)

Note that neither definition has anything to do with features and benefits. It’s my personal belief that any article, book or sales training that mentions “features and benefits” should be burned as this is the lowest level of sales conversation that cheats the prospect from the opportunity to take important action. And when the sales person does not close, the prospect is cheated. To think that the fundamental components of a sales conversation are features and benefits is to admit stunted thinking and intellectual failure. True financial sales training is missing from the financial services industry and as a result, insurance and financial advisors don’t know how to sell insurance or other financial products.  It would be nice if these professionals trained themselves but they don’t.

Let me illustrate my definitions of how to sell insurance in the following sales conversation. (P = prospect, A= agent)

P: I don’t really know why we agreed to meet with you. We really can’t afford any insurance.

A: I do help people get enough insurance but that’s not really what I wanted to talk with you about. Before I explain that, let me ask you a question. Since we are not going to talk about insurance, why did you set this time to meet?

P: I’m not sure; I guess you might have something useful to tell us.

A: About what?

P: About how to handle our money better.

A: Why, do you feel it’s not handled well now?

P: Well, I make a good living but it always seems we are behind, never able to do the things we want to do or are important, like get enough insurance.

A: Do you think that everyone has priorities?

P: Yes.

A: What are yours?

P: That confuses me sometimes.

A: Really? Is that your new BMW in the driveway?

P: Yes.

A: Do you have a loan on it?

P: Yes

A: Well, then I guess your priorities are clear. You have decided to put your family in debt and use your limited cash in order to drive a new German automobile instead of those things you previously alluded to as being important. Would you agree that people set their priorities with their checkbook?

P: Yes. And I don’t really feel good about it.

A: I think you do or you wouldn’t have bought the car. Do you notice that people do what makes them feel good today?

P: Sure

A: Do you think this leads to the best decisions?

P: No, not at all, I think it’s a little immature.

A: What do you think is mature?

P: Making decisions based on the long run and those things that are really important.

A: What’s really important to you?

P: The health of my family, being able to send my kids to good schools, making sure they are happy and protecting them.

A: Do you feel you have made those things a priority—is the BMW consistent with that?

P: No.

A: Would you like to get on track and start living consistent with your priorities and making financial decisions consistent with them?

P: Yes.

A: Where do you think you should start?

P: Well, I know I need to start placing money in a college fund and I know I don’t have enough insurance should anything happen to me.

A: And heaven forbid you become disabled; are those you love protected?

P: I’m not sure if I have enough of that protection through work.

A: You tell me. If I could help you with the items you just mentioned so that you start making financial decisions consistent with your visions for your family, those things that are priorities and living the vision of being a responsible father that you have for yourself, would that be valuable for you?

P: Yes, that would be unbelievable.

At this point, the sale is made. The conversations that occur hereafter are mechanical. The prospect now desires to make a change. The product features are close to irrelevant because the prospect has made an emotional commitment.

It’s amazing that every new recruit is told that “people buy emotionally” and then is immediately taught to sell logically using features and benefits. The dialog above is the true definition of selling that makes a difference:

• Selling is the asking of appropriate questions so that prospect sees the correct course of action for himself

• Selling is enrolling the prospect in their own vision

The next problem with how to sell insurance is that sellers miss a fundamental fact about American psychology – most people don’t care about the future. Why do you think we have this giant problem of inadequate savings by baby-boomers? Because they would rather focus on these three letters “BMW” than these three letters “IRA.” The BMW gives immediate gratification as it hugs the asphalt on the next turn while the IRA contribution won’t have a payoff for years. That’s not fun. Why do American’s continue to consume rich desserts like ice cream and cheese cake—because they taste oh-so-good right now. Sure, eating these foods leads to increased cases of obesity, diabetes, arteriosclerosis and a myriad of other ailments. But as long as you’re feeling good right now, there’s nobody that doesn’t like Sara Lee. You willingly opt for poor health in the future for good desserts now. It’s the same reason people drink excessively or smoke. These activities are enjoyable now and the future resulting problems are discounted. (In economist speak—people have very high hurdles rates for their decisions and thus prefer a payoff today much more than a payoff in the future).

Thus, those in financial sales have the challenge of recreating their sales presentation from highlighting a future payoff to a current payoff because that’s all most Americans care about. If it doesn’t make them feel better today, Americans are not interested. So how does the financial pro show a current benefit for a life policy that has no payoff for years?

I’m reminded of the old time insurance agent that meets with the married couple and when he sees that the husband won’t close, he digs deep into his bag of closing techniques and pulls out his big gun. He turns to the husband and asks, “Do you love your wife?” While this tactic today seems like some line borrowed from tin men, that old agent may not have realized the advanced nature of his question. This question took a decision about the future (does the prospect spend his cash today for a benefit that the family won’t obtain for years) into an issue needing immediate attention, in the present. As soon as the decision becomes a decision about the present, the sale closes. The husband says, “Of course I love my wife.” The agent replies, “Then you’re making the right decision,” as he hands the husband the pen.

The agent that connects his product or service to a current emotional payoff knows a fundamental and important aspect of how to sell insurance.

I do not suggest that financial sales professionals use some sales hack line from the 1950s to close sales (although I can argue whatever it ethically takes to benefit the client should be done). However, I do assert that sellers must reorient what they believe insurance to be – a contractual obligation by an insurance company to pay a death benefit in the future for premiums today. Instead, the agent must be motivated by this definition – a transaction that forwards family values, solidifies family relationships and empowers the primary income earner to take financial responsibility for is family right now. Is there any parent that does not want to give his/her family those benefits and be so empowered? If this is the agenda of primary income earners then agents should close 100% of sales presentations for life insurance. But the insurance agent must reunite the prospect with the prospect’s deep seated desires and priorities.

The sales cannot happen unless the insurance agent knows how to secure the appointment.  Securing an appointment is a type of sale and requires all the skills of any successful sales conversation. Insurance agents don’t secure many of the appointments they should because, as we have established, insurance agents don’t now how to sell.

Agents confuse the prospect’s agenda with their agenda. The prospect’s agenda is the well-being of their family. The agent’s agenda is how to sell insurance to the prospect. Thus reasons the agent: since adequate life protection is fundamental to the family’s well being, my agenda is consistent with the prospect’s agenda. But the agent’s logic is flawed. The agent knows that the policy is fundamental to the prospects agenda but the prospect does not know this. Therefore, when the agent brings up life insurance, he appears to be concerned with his agenda and not the prospect’s agenda.In other words, the agent is focused on the tool, the policy or the coverage, while the prospect is focused on fulfilling an emotional desire.  The financial sales professional does not discern a difference between the two.

This is why Americans don’t like sales people. Prospects believe that sales people have an agenda that is not consistent with their own. Prospects believe that sales people just focus on how to sell insurance. Therefore, the agent, if he desires to set an appointment, must communicate in a manner consistent with the prospect’s agenda. Once the prospect sees this consistency, he will agree to meet with the agent. This provides the agent the needed opportunity to explain how the prospect’s agenda and agent’s agenda coincide.

Let me provide an example of how I have used this concept for many years with annuities. I have advertised a free booklet called “Annuity Owner Mistakes.” At first this title might seem strange. If I want to sell annuities, why don’t I call the booklet “Why you should own an annuity?” This is why so much of the product-focused marketing by the insurance industry fails. It screams “Our Agenda” and prospects have no interest. The prospect is interested only in his agenda.

My booklet is designed to have the annuity owner contact me to obtain this booklet which is filled with information that the average annuity owner does not understand. The booklet is consistent with their agenda—to be informed and avoid financial mistakes. I print the booklet with my photo, credentials and biography. The prospect sees that I am an expert in annuity issues. The booklet makes no attempt to sell anything—it is purely educational

When I make my follow up call, the prospect treats me as a consultant, not a sales person. I use a script that also does not address any product. My goal is to uncover the prospect’s motivation for ordering the booklet and determine if I can serve the prospect. Only at the end of the first meeting might a product be mentioned, after I am 100% clear on how I can serve the prospect and whether I have a product or service that will do so (this is all explained a the Brokerville website for those who want more detail).

Financial advisors of all types, well-schooled in features and benefits of their product, believe they must explain these product specs to sell it. I would rather sell my product before I explain it. In other words, I would rather not confuse the prospect with the details before I get their commitment. If we get bogged down in the product minutia, my prospect can easily lose sight of their priorities and the big picture. Notice from the sales dialog above, I secured the emotional commitment before discussing the product. I get the application signed and then I say, “now let me explain how this particular policy works.” To do it any other way is absurd.  But because financial consultants are product-centered (as a result of insurance company and packaged-product manufacturer indoctrination), they focus on the product, e.g. how to sell insurance, and not the prospect.

Let me illustrate with an example from another industry.

Imagine for a moment that you want add a room addition to your home. You decide to interview three contractors. The first arrives and spends his time showing you that he uses Porter Cable power tools, he marvels at his Stanley tape measure and boasts about his Craftsman hand tools. After 30 minutes of this tool worship, you decide this guy is tool lunatic and escort him to the door.

The next contractor arrives and begins asking you questions:

Your house is colonial, do you want the room addition to match the same style?
Would you like the normal 8 foot ceiling for a cozy feel or a 10 foot ceiling for a more open, expansive atmosphere?
Do you plan to carpet or tile?
How will you use the room?
What other family members will use it?
What time of day will it be used as this helps in planning the location and amount of windows?
He then pulls out pictures of room additions and asks you to point out features you like in the various pictures.
(You’re now picturing exactly how you want your new room to look).
You hire this contractor and cancel the third contractor you had scheduled to interview. It’s clear this person is a professional. He asks you about your agenda, your likes and dislikes and wants to know your vision.

The first contractor, like some insurance agents, comes off like the village idiot and talks about his tools-his screwdriver, his tape measure, his power tools. Your funds, your policies, your managed accounts — they are just tools and people don’t care how you reach their objectives, just do it.

You can understand that when I tell young advisors and agents to close the sale before they discuss the product, how confused they become. Because they think the sale is selling the product. No; the sale is enrolling the prospect in their own vision and that’s done by asking questions.

How to make a sale before discussing products or services:

Mrs. Smith, I noticed that you paid $30,000 in income taxes. Does that irritate you? (sales masters want to know how their prospects feel emotionally).
Yes, it’s terrible. Is there anything I can do?
What do you have in mind? (a master never gets trapped answering questions early because the person asking the questions controls the conversation)
Are there some investments or things I can change financially?
Let’s assume there were. Let’s assume that we could reduce your taxes by half and save you $15,000 a year. What impact would that have for you?
Well I’d be $15,000 richer!
So what. What would you do with the money, how would it impact your life?
(after several seconds of thought) I would take my grandchildren on a cruise over the holidays.
Where would you go?
I’d take them on the Disney cruise.
How do you think that would impact them?
I think they would remember it forever, long after I’m gone.
If we could rearrange your financial affairs and make that a reality, would you want to do that?
Yes, can you help me make that a reality? Tell me about the solutions.

Notice that we have a prospect that is asking; he is eager for the solutions. There will be no convincing or persuading this prospect to take action because he is very interested in his agenda which is the outcome we offered him.

You consider people who address your vision to be professionals. You consider workers that talk about their tools to be simpletons.

What sales conversations do your agents have?

I hopefully have not offended anyone in this post. I have the highest regard for the insurance industry and the benefits it provides. (I personally own a lot more life insurance and annuities than most people). However, so much of the benefits the industry could provide are squandered because insurance agents don’t know how to sell insurance or other worthwhile products.

To generate life insurance leads successfully, or leads for any product or service, demands that you align three components of your life insurance lead generation system:

1. the benefits provided by your product or service
2. the emotional desires and wants of your prospects
3. a communication which ties together items one and two

Item #2 above is the place where most lead generation system fail. If your prospects don’t have an emotional desire for the benefits that your products and services offer, your lead generation system nor your sales efforts will be successful.  They don’t sell cars by talking about the type of steel used in construction.  They sell cars by getting the buyer emotionally desiring to have the wind blowing through their hair, speeding around hairpin turns.  If your prospect do not emotionally believe they can suddenly drop dead (logically believing it is insufficient to have a sale), you won’t sell any life insurance. So you either need to make sure you have products and services that match the desires of your buyers, choose another group of buyers (people who have a worry about suddenly dropping dead) or choose different products and services to offer.

While this may seem obvious, this incongruency among the three factors listed accounts for the failure of most life insurance lead generation systems and why most life insurance agents spend 90% of their time looking for sales rather than making sales.
Once sure that your products have benefits that your prospects emotionally desire, you need the message that bridges the two. The challenge of crafting the right message is that your orientation you our products is different from your prospects – it has been distorted. In the past 6 months, it’s likely that you have been brainwashed with stories of policies that paid off to save families, you delivered some benefit checks yourself and you participated in the Life Insurance foundation’s educational drive. To you, it’s the most important product in the world.  To your prospect, it’s the last thing from their mind.

Therefore, if you want a great life insurance lead generation program, your communication best include what your prospects think about:
• keeping their family safe from harm and healthy
• not getting in a car accident
• paying bills
• bringing down the credit card debt
• concern about the economy, terrorism and air born weapons of mass destruction

So let’s assume that you decide to use public seminars as your life insurance lead generation system to generate life insurance leads. You send out via US mail invitations attracting people to your seminar, hoping to have a crowd of 50 people attend your luncheon and hear your presentation. To be successful, your invitation cannot talk about life insurance because your prospects don’t want life insurance. Your successful lead generation invitation needs to read something like:

• How middle income families can best protect their children from harm
• How to invest safely in an upside down world
• How to build a growth portfolio that won’t get decimated in the next downturn
• Ideas for managing your money that will take it farther
• Ideas you can steal from Warren Buffet, Sam Walton and Malcolm Forbes – Even tough you are not rich

As you see, the wording on the invitation meshes with the emotional desires and concerns of the prospects. It just so happens that your product or service of life insurance is a building block to fulfill those concerns and desires. But in order to have an effective life insurance lead generation system, the communication bridge must be focused on your prospects and not on the features and benefits of your products.

First realize that insurance lead generation is taking a message and sticking it in front of your prospects.  That message could be as a direct mail piece, an Internet ad, a telephone call — any method of communication can be a method to generate life insurance leads. BUT, the message must be the right message.  If the message does not hook your prospect, then you waste time and money. This author asserts that you do not know the right message to hook your prospects and generate life insurance leads,  although you think you do.

To understand why it is you don’t really understand what your life insurance prospects want, you need to understand that you are not a prospect! You are inundated with information from the insurance industry about insurance products and services. You have developed and entire orientation and been brainwashed to think about life insurance products and services in a certain way. This is not how your prospects think about them. So in order to know how your prospects think about your products and services and what they really want, there’s a simple task ahead. You need to ask them.

Market researchers for years have used focus groups. A focus group is simply a small group of people representative of your prospects. You get them together and you ask them a series of questions. The questions cannot be leading questions but rather questions that give you fresh insights and clean, unbiased information. One way to do this is simply to place a small classified ad in say the local senior newspaper, if seniors are for example, your target life insurance prospects. You simply say “free dessert buffet question-and-answer session about insurance products and services 6:30 to 8:30 PM Thursday night at the senior center.” You’ll end up with 15 or 20 people who you can get answers from in the form of having them fill out a questionnaire and then after the questionnaire, have a discussion about each one of the answers on the questionnaire. Make sure you audio record the session so that your recollection of what was said does not taint or distort the valuable information you receive.

You will likely find information and gain some insights about your target prospects desires and thoughts regarding the purchase of life insurance. From that data you begin to develop headlines. Headlines are important whether using direct mail, Internet ads, telemarketing or any form of marketing because your headline contains the main motivating element to attract your life insurance prospects. You will also find what I would call “sub-headlines” and these make up the body of your message. For example, in a newspaper ad, there’s a headline and then there’s the copy. So the lesser points below your main point would become your body copy of your life insurance lead generation message.

It’s only in this way of interviewing potential life insurance prospects that you can understand what they really want and remove your bias from ruining your marketing efforts, wasting money and having a life insurance lead system that doe not work.

The first thing to understand is that the more data you try to gather on the Internet or other way of generating your life insurance lead, the fewer leads you will get. In other words, the more questions you ask the consumer before making contact with the life insurance lead, the less likely he is to complete the form. So the goal is to ask just enough questions to make sure you are dealing with the motivated consumer and not try and ascertain their insurability.  Leave that for your call or meeting.

Next let’s consider if the life insurance lead is an insurable party. So what if they are not? Their insurability is only an issue if your sales skills are so lacking that you can’t probe for other financial needs that you can fill. Let’s assume for a moment, that Mr. Smith, your life insurance lead wants the insurance because he’s leaving his business to one son and therefore wants to leave the other son the cash proceeds from the life insurance. It turns out that Mr. Smith is uninsurable. So so if you’re a smart life insurance agent, you realize that the insurability of your insurance prospect is not the issue. The issue is your ability and creativity in making a sale that fills the prospects objectives.  Write the policy on Mrs. Smith.  Or write the policy on Mr Smith’s brother.  Since these other people are the same age as Mr. Smith and have similar life expetancy, son number 2 will get the cash (the life insurance policy death benefit) consistent with Mr. Smith’s objectives.

A similar alternative is to sell a replacement product. Let’s assume that the inquiry about life insurance was because the life insurance prospect learned something about the new combo policies that have long-term-care protection built into the life policy. Well there are also annuities like that nowadays. So just sell an annuity if your insurance lead is uninsurable.

If you want to be a wealthy insurance agent, do not try and qualify your prospect so finely before you ever talk with them or you miss talking with viable life insurance leads who could make you plenty of money. The most important aspects about a prospect are:

1. their motivation and
2. their ability to buy

Once a prospect meets those two criteria, and somebody who goes on the Internet looking for life insurance is pretty far down the path to being a pretty good life insurance lead, you have a prospect you can do some business with. If you don’t, it’s your own shortcomings.

Unlike conventional advertising, you don’t pay Google when it exposes your ad; you pay only when an insurance prospect clicks your ad. If somebody searches Google for life insurance, Google displays your ad alongside articles and news about life insurance. If somebody searches Google for your important phrases, you know they’re in all likelihood looking for your services and may likely be a good insurance lead. AdWords can thus be a great alternative when you want to direct your ads to a certain audience, such as prospects seeking life insurance.  AdWords is a kind of direct marketing, much like direct mail or telemarketing, allowing your message to be delivered individually to each potential client.

AdWords may also be a good choice when you have just a few dollars for generating insurance leads. Even though Adwords may be an economic marketing program, know that there are LOTS of others targeting popular key phrases like “life insurance. Because AdWords doesn’t charge a set price per ad, you bid on the important phrases that you want to display your ads and those bids are competing against others (e.g. other insurance agents). If you bid higher than others who bid on the same key word, your ad will probably appear near the top of the sponsored ads (i.e. better position so you get more clicks and more leads).  For example, if you set a upper limit bid of 45 cents for the phrase “life insurance”, and the next highest bid is 33 cents, Google gives your ad preference among the sponsored  links it displays when somebody searches “life insurance”.  But with a popular targeted phrase like “life insurance”, in all likelihood the high bid is 15 dollars per click and your bid of forty-five cents will make it so that your ad is never shown, i.e. no insurance leads.

To decide who gets top higher placement among the paid ads, Google takes into account the bid and accounts for the number of people who click through each advertisement, giving preference to the more popular ads. You cannot, therefore, buy the top spot unconditionally but your bid is the most important element in determining how much exposure your ad obtains.  It’s pretty much true that the higher the bid, the more clicks, the more leads.

The trick when you get facility at using Adwords is uncovering key phrases where you have low bid competition but you get good traffic.  Once you hit on the sweet spot of key phrases for your practice, you have a solid way for obtaining insurance leads.

If it all sounds like burdensome work, get Brokerville to manage it for you.

In the pre-Internet days (before 1996 or so), agents used off-line insurance lead generation such as post cards, 3-fold mailers, telemarketers, seminars, etc. While these insurance lead generation methods still work (when one has mastered the correct way to do them), the Internet is a less expensive insurance lead generation system.  I recall speaking to the person who ran the long term care lead generation system for Acasia and he told me that it was being disbanded due to high cost.  He said that once the cost exceeded $28 per lead, it become unprofitable.  The Internet delivers insurance leads for far less money and that’s why the Internet is the most cost effective method for insurance lead generation.  However, there is some trade-off of effectiveness as I explain.

Unlike direct mail where you target the people who will receive your mailer, anyone can see your ad on the Internet.  You have no control over the quality of leads you get.  That does not mean your leads will be of lower quality–it means that your insurance leads will have a greater dispersion.  Let me illustrate. We run an insurance lead generation system and one insurance agent, Charles Wood in Texas,  met his largest client worth over $200,000,000, from our system.  Other agents complain that the leads are of low quality.  When using the Internet, your insurance leads will be better and worse than when you use targeted direct mail. You will also need to tolerate bogus leads as explained below.

Let’s say that you run your offer on a web site controlled by another party. In fact, you are forced to do that unless you have a way to put up 1000 web sites.  You agree to pay the web site owner per insurance lead sent to you.  It turns out this web site owner is not the most honest person so he hires a high school kid to take the telephone white pages and enter the names, addresses and phone numbers of people from the white pages. These are real people so the insurance lead information is accurate.  The problem is when you call, the prospect says “I did not fill put that form!”

So the low cost of Internet insurance leads is offset by a greater dispersion of rich and poor respondents as well as a greater number of bogus insurance leads.  As long as you understand that, you will not be unhappy as you can still earn a 1000% return ($1000 for every 100$ invested) and be flush with insurance leads.

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.

Insurance Agent Leads

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.”  Similarly, most professionals in financial services blow the lead.  The issue is usually not with the insurance lead system, it’s with the financial advisor / insurance agent 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 appointments 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.

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.

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 or using any prospecting system.  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.