These life insurance prospects responded to the ad for the booklet "The Best Way to Buy, Sell, or Replace Your Life Insurance." ( Click here to see a sample ad.) These are mature life insurance leads who either have life insurance they think they don’t need, or people who think they need life insurance but don’t have it. These life insurance leads are prospects for:
All you do is send
the booklet, and then follow up with your prospect by phone per the instructions and script that
we provide you to set your appointment. Unlike
life insurance prospects that request a quote and
will shop price on you, these life insurance prospects are interested
in understanding their best option.
Because these life insurance leads
will have already received your life insurance booklet
before you call, you will find the call a warm call
with the booklet already having established you as
a local life insurance expert. You will be treated
as a professional and not as a salesperson when you
follow instructions that we provide.
Gain New Clients in 72 Hours! Call
toll-free 888-893-2993
Let’s answer some common questions about life insurance leads generation and their use in the insurance industry.
The best way for any agent is always to source leads yourself. However, most agents do not have experience in advertising and not able to do that successfully. In order to generate life insurance leads or any financial leads, you need to know and be an able expert at many things:
Specifically, an agent needs to know what images to use, what your title should say, and what your message should be for success at generating leads. You can’t simply write an ad that says, ”Get life insurance here.” It won’t work.
Unless you are willing and able to put in the time to study how to create winning advertisements (you will need to study books on copywriting, image selection, and take some on line courses), you will be better off finding a service that does you advertising for leads.
An agent can select from two types of life insurance lead industry services:
--a service which creates custom advertisements for you - these leads will always be exclusive to you
--the service which uses standardized ads to generate leads for life insurance - some provide exclusive leads, like Retirement Prospects while others sell the same lead top four agents
The service which creates customized ads, at minimum, will require the agent to make a $3000 investment just to get started. Plan on investing at least double that amount until you find out if your customized ads work.
The service which uses standardized ads to generate leads, such as Retirement Prospects, has already tested and proven ads that work. An agent makes a small initial investment and has almost no risk and most agents are able to start with smaller investments to build their business.
Yes. However, you must be willing and able to follow the exact instructions provided by the lead generation company or have excellent communication and persuasion skills. Do not depend on a life insurance lead to be a prospect who is ready to buy. You’ll have to cultivate every lead from mildly interested to a hot buyer. The success of the agent will not be just about the leads but highly dependent on the agent following a good script and having good sales skills. No matter how great the leads, earning a commission requires selling.
At Retirement Prospects, the leads are $29 each as of June 1, 2021. However, you can find life insurance leads for up to $200. What’s the difference? On the more expensive leads, the prospect has typically completed a questionnaire having 10 to 20 questions and possibly even had an initial phone interview. So it is a trade-off between how much you spend for the lead and the qualification of the lead. If you opt for lower price leads, be prepared that you will have more unqualified people to talk to. Of course, if you sell other products, you may find some of these leads may be good annuity, medicare, final expense prospects, or good prospects for other financial services. The amount of business you do from your leads depends greatly on your ability to qualify your prospects and cross-sell.
Generally, Internet advertising and lead generati0n does not work for group life business. An agent focused on business insurance should use other lead generation methods.
Why do some services sell leads to more than one agent?: The service earns more money. But non-exclusive leads put you in a pissing contest with other agents. Stay away from non-exclusive leads.
Insurance agents have gravitated to web leads because the cost is low. Compared to other types of marketing, such as direct mail or seminars, your cost for leads will be much lower. This is principally due to the reasonable rates charged by Facebook. Facebook could easily double their rates and not lose too many advertisers. In fact, Facebook announced that they received 30% more for their ads in 2020 (meaning insurance agents paid 30% more for their leads).
Having a web page or website to get leads will not be profitable for most agents. It is difficult to get traffic to a website without paid ads. Of course, big companies like State Farm and Allstate will appear at the top of the search engine results for "life insurance." Those companies generate a ton of insurance leads for their agents. But your website will likely not appear in the top 100 search results - it will never be seen.
Too many agents rely on web-based quote engines as these are pushed by the insurance industry. This is not a great source for leads. Consumers using these sites are usually looking for the cheapest term insurance and may not be the best leads. The result will be new clients that are not able to earn you large commissions. Specifically, if interested in leads that will earn you a $300 commission from a small term insurance policy, then fine. However, if you want to get good life insurance prospects from Internet marketing, do not run “priced-based” ads like “get a quote.” Quote engines will not work to produce leads for cash-value life insurance.
You want to run “information-based” offers that will attract more educated and more affluent life insurance leads. Offer a guide such as “The Best Ways to Buy, Sell or Replace Your Life Insurance” or “Six Things Your Life Insurance Agent Will Never Say” or “Three types of Life Insurance You’ve Never Heard of.” When you create an offer for information that is deemed valuable, the quality of your leads will be better. You will be able to sell more profitable cash value insurance policies.
Any agent wants to talk with rich motivated prospects. But you cannot ask personal qualifying questions online because most prospects will not reveal the truth. The agent needs to get personal information on the phone or in-person or on a Zoom session.
Why? Even asking on a web form, “net worth” or “household income” will get 90% false answers. Therefore, when generating life leads, expect that you will get the full range of poor to rich. Therefore, you must have phone contact to qualify your best prospects.  For those prospects that don’t have much money, send them to your online quote engine for term life.
Expect that any prospect will have a mild interest. The job of a professional agent is to convert mildly interested leads into action. If you try and find only prospects ready to act, you will go broke in this industry. You must accept the fact that you will need sales skills to convert Internet leads to cash. Below, we provide some tips on how to have that sales conversation with your leads.
In general, the people who most respond to any advertisements are lower-tier. For example, you can attract more final expense and term life insurance prospects than whole life buyers.
However, you may be under the impression that no wealthy life insurance buyer would respond to an Internet advertisement. You would be wrong. Internet leads produce a full range of prospects but more on the low end such as final expense and fewer on the high end such as whole life or IUL prospects. You can hear comments from industry agents about their experience (turn speakers on):
Substantial commissions, surprisingly easy
Sending booklets builds rapport
You will likely have, from every 10 prospects, one prospect that is a millionaire, 2 prospects that have low financial resources, and 7 prospects that have from $250,000 to $1 million net worth. If you prospect the “middle market,” you will find that Internet leads are very worthwhile. Agents who want only million-dollar face cases should probably prospect in other ways.
Understand that most consumers, regardless of their net worth, know little about the life insurance industry or its products. They do not go to Google searching for “universal life” or “IUL.” Because companies in the insurance industry push products so heavily, you may be out of touch with how consumers think and what they know (and don't know). Consumers have much broader concerns and do searches on broad phrases such as, “strategy to protect my family,” “estate planning,” “options for retirement planning.” The consumer does not understand the details about life insurance products so your advertising should not try and sell IUL when consumers don’t know an IUL from an IRA.
Therefore, it does not matter if your leads searched on something general like estate planning. Once you meet with such a prospect and show him how life insurance plays a part in addressing his financial concerns, you may have a new client. Just because people go looking for one thing, means nothing about the products they eventually buy. So do not push life insurance in your marketing. The industry wants you to push products but that's not how you attract leads and eventually new clients. A smart agent markets solutions to concerns such as affording college for my kids or planning for retirement.
The point is that Internet leads are general in nature and not prospects that have specific desires. The lead is the starting point in your conversation and your sales ability is what has the prospect become a client.
Note that online lead generation works for consumer leads and should not be used for group life or other business life insurance
If you understand that you want people with more money, then people age 50+ will be your best market. And Facebook is the dominant online source for that demographic. Leads from Facebook work well because the agent can target the advertisements by zip code, by age, and by household income. Note however that using Facebook is a form of “intrusion marketing.” The prospect is online looking at their feed. Then your ad pops up in their face and tweaks their interest. But they did not go looking for life insurance information.
Compare “intrusion marketing” to “permission marketing.” If you run search ads through Google as a source, then your prospects are people doing a search on a term that you have selected for your advertisements. When the prospect clicks on your ad, he has sought you out and therefore, gives you permission to respond. The only problem is that when you source leads from Google, you will likely pay $70 or more for such leads. Since everyone wants to capture the buyer who is seeking a solution, you will be competing for that investor with 500 life insurance companies and 10,000 insurance agents.
Forget a source like Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok, etc. as these sites cater to a young demographic that is not right for the prospects you want unless you want leads to sell small term policies.
Yes, direct mail works in almost any industry selling to consumers. Direct mail can be a great source for leads. Not in all areas and not at all times. Expect that it will be profitable over time but you will have losing months with no sales.
If you meet someone attractive at a party, it is not wise to assume they want to marry you. Your prospect must be courted. And so it is with life insurance prospects. Your first conversation must gently probe, “What motivated you to order my booklet on “Six Things Your Life Insurance Agent Will Never Say”?
With each answer that the prospect provides, ask another question that goes a little deeper, “has that been a concern for you? “what alternatives have you considered?” “why does that worry you?” Once you have “hit a nerve” then suggest the next step which might be preparing a quote, inviting the prospect to a webinar, setting up a Zoom session, etc. But don’t rush it. Take each step slowly just as you would a marriage candidate.
The idea with a prospect is to “peel the onion” by following each prospect's answer with a slightly deeper question. You want to be sure that you get to the prospect's “hot button” before suggesting the next step. If you suggest the next step too early, the prospect will say, “let me call you after the holidays,” “let me think about that,” “I will call you next month.”
And expect that some very good prospects will need to be kept warm for weeks or months. You must have a newsletter or other drip marketing tool so that the leads you meet today stays warm until he is ready to act. You must stay “top of the mind” so they do not take their business elsewhere.
A ton of P&C insurance originates from online leads. As to life insurance products, leads for life insurance (including final expense and mortgage insurance) and annuity leads can be generated online. At Retirement Prospects, we specialize in exclusive life and annuity leads.
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