How to Prospect for Life Insurance
- 1). Identify your target markets. They will be determined by the types of life products being sold, such as group or individual, term or cash value, payroll deduction or key man. The insurance company's own market preferences and the agent's level of experience will also influence market selection. For example, one company's term or accidental death products may be more suited to the individual marketplace whereas another firms' high cash value policies are designed for business owners and corporate executives.
- 2). Design a marketing strategy to reach your selected prospects. This may include cold calling lead lists generated from a specific demographic profile, networking using Twitter and Facebook, volunteering as a speaker with various business groups or getting referrals from friends and associates. The choice of marketing tools will be guided not only by cost and the insurance professional's timetable for market penetration but by the target market itself. For example, mass marketing might employ greater use of media ads, and selling to small business owners may require more selective advertising and personal networking.
- 3). Execute your marketing plan. A carefully crafted prospecting plan needs time to begin generating leads. Be patient. One of the traits of a successful insurance agent is his goal orientation and his sense of urgency to accomplish a task. Understandably, patience is not one of his strong suits. Make sure you have allocated enough money to fund your plan. It may take longer than you projected to bear fruit. Make small adjustments in the plan as needed, but keep working the plan until you have enough input from prospecting calls and closing interviews to evaluate the plan's effectiveness.
- 4). Review the plan. How many leads turned into face-to-face interviews and how many sales developed from those presentations. Sales are generated when an effective marketing plan uncovers qualified prospects, people who are ready, willing and able to buy your life insurance. Turning those qualified prospects into clients is the job of the insurance salesperson. Any plan review should look at both the number and quality of the leads generated as well as the number of closing interviews and sales made by the agent from those leads.
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