Insurance Sales Success: Reason Number 5 You Can't Sell

You don’t know how to gain the interest of your prospects. You use marketing to effectively gain the interest of your prospects so they reach out to you wanting to know more about how you can help them. You can use the shot gun approach to marketing which is what the average agent chooses by default. When you use the shot gun approach to marketing be prepared to work very hard, to have a poor response to your marketing message, and to earn an average income. The other approach is the laser approach to marketing. When you use the laser approach to marketing you can expect to attract more clients with less work, you can expect an above average response to your marketing message, and you can expect a better than average income.

Let’s clear up some marketing terminology. When you decide how you will market yourself there are two words you need to really understand. The first word is target market. Your target market is the group of people you want to work with and the group of people you want to connect with. Most agents believe their target market is anyone who needs insurance. Ok, but it’s actually harder to find and identify with anyone than it is to find and identify with someone. The other word is niche. Your niche is what you help your clients to get. Most agents think their niche is insurance. Wrong, insurance isn’t a niche. If you really understand the word niche you realize that your niche is related to an emotion your ideal clients want or don’t want.

You want to get the attention of your prospects, so you can fill your appointment calendar. It’s much easier to do that if your prospects understand why you and why them. Your marketing message is immediately more interesting when the person receiving the message knows that you have something to offer someone just like them. In fact, as they receive your message you want them to be thinking that either they are someone like that or that they know someone like that. There attention and interest grows when they also understand that you help someone like them with exactly what they want or don’t want.

You have to have a marketing message that they understand as being emotionally meaningful to them. Your sales will increase when you get the attention of people who actively want what you have to offer. These are qualified prospects. And when your appointment calendar is filled with qualified prospects your close ratio will go through the roof. You’re like the ice cream truck pulling into a neighborhood filled with little kids on a hot summer afternoon. When your prospects recognize and understand that you have something they really want, or that you can prevent what they really don’t want they’ll flock to you.

Once you have their attention you need several non-threatening ways they can raise their hand and enter your sales funnel. Clearly identifying your target market and fulfilling their emotional wants that are important to them with a solid message to market match is the first requirement for a full appointment calendar. The second requirement is providing options for advancement in your sales funnel. When the only option you offer is an appointment that’s going too far too fast for many of the people who are thinking they may want to do business with you. When you try to go too far too fast you often blow a good opportunity forever because they lose trust in you, and view you as a pushy insurance sales person. We don’t all like to communicate or be communicated with in the same way, so set up several options to advance and further develop your relationship with these prospects in a way that caters to different communication styles. Getting the right attention in the right way is potentially the fastest and best way to develop a solid business for current and future insurance sales success.