Hitting the smaller business for life apps.

[Lloydlofton]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

Thanks for all of the help. I just feel that sitting in my office and calling people out of my Book of business may not yield three paid aps a month. Then again, Im new and dont really know. Ill keep digging.

You've gotten a lot of good council and ideas here so I'm not sure how helpful this will be. Before I get started let me ask you a question, have you ever gone onto a car dealer lot, gotten out of your car, the car salesman comes to you and says "Can I help you?" and you say (I think like most people) "I'm just looking." then two hours later you drive off the lot with a new car....if this has happened, at a car dealer, department store, etc, then we agree everyone lies.

Always start off with the truth and for a salesman to tell someone they are not trying to sell anything...well does that start the sales relationship off on the truth or a lie?

When you do call someone or walk into a business what is the end result you are looking for? Is it for the prospect to write you a check for your product? Then let's start there, the product is what in the sales presentation, is it the solution? So if it is the solution what does a solution do, would you say it solves a problem? So if it solves a problem how can you know what the specific problem they have that they may want to solve? Would you have to ask questions to know this? If that rings true then you may consider changing your approach to a question approach instead of statements.

Life insurance is a product, people don't buy products, they buy what the product does. When you test drive a car what features do you test? Do you test the radio, power windows, power seats, etc? Most people, I don't think, get under the hood and look at gasket seals, crawl under the car and check the disk breaks, do you? Talk about how the features of the product are a benefit to the prospect.

Families maintaining the same lifestyle if the breadwinner dies, not having to loose friends, change church, clubs or lose their mom to work because the breadwinner dies and the family has to move. Protecting children's abiltiy to financially protect their family by having insurance so when they grow up no illness will stop them from having insurance for their family, providing the financial assistance to families so they can sell the buisness at a business owners death in the market place at full good will value instead of a fire sell, helping business partners ensure each of their family will have the money to buy out the partner and get the full value of the business at one of their deaths, providing the financial resource when a key business partner or employee dies so the business has time to replace that person without loosing revenue or attracting the top employees by providing life insurance and using the cv as a hook. These are benefits to a product called life insurance.

Lastly the advice about value of time is best, have you moved into a new home, apartment and ordered cable. When you schedule the cable do they give you a specific time like 1:15 pm or do they say sometime between 8 and noon or 1 and 5 pm? What do you feel/think when they say betwen 1 and 5, are you happy or frustrated? If you are like most people you don't like this yet you use the same approach on prospects. So you will be "in the area", you can see them "anytime" because you don't have a business, no-one wants to see you and you have nothing else to do? Is that how you want prospects to view you. How do doctors schedule appointments, 11:15, you get there and wait an hour, yet their waiting room is always full. Prospects will only value your time as much as you do. The truth is you say this because you don't have any appointments.

Buy a small business list, go exchange business cards from small business owners in strip malls and each Monday spend the day on the phone making 15 appointments for the week. Don't stop until you get your entire week filled. Create yourself a problem like the airlines, overbook and get busy.

Good luck.

 

[HomeService]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

I can't tell what is going on either, are you selling group term, prd, individual- or just bringing the pizzas??? Are you moonlighting at Dominos, delivering pizzas? {ha ha -joking} This quota thing of hitting 105 apps or you are gone, that frightens me a little, I squirmed a little- reading that.

It sounds like you are "life only captive". The thing is, you can walk into any business and immediately get the attention of the business owner when talking health insurance. Major med OR EVEN worksite supplemental. If you cannot write health, get with an agent that does, and ride around with him. Colonial or AFLAC may even work. Go in there, let him{health guy} open the door. Let him have the health and or supplemental, then you are there for the life. Work as a team, you get the life, he gets the health. It would have to be a true friend or somebody you really trust, though.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

B to B works - for selling almost anything. I've done a ton of B to B and did B to B for two other sales industries. I also was a regional manager for a marketing company and had a retail location and you'd be surprised the number of industries that go B to B - I got hit up several times a week by everything from coffee services, advertising, office cleaning security systems, etc...

Verizon just finished laying their fiber optic lines in our community about 2 months ago - offering VIOS now and trying to compete with Comcast. Guess their chosen method of marketing - cold-call residential door to door. We've already had 3 reps come by. Verizon knows door to door kills telemarketing and sending postcard mailers.

105 life apps? That's a no-brainer if you go B to B - basically 2 apps a week. You can absolutely pull 2 life apps a week doing B to B but you simply may have to spend more time in the field then other agents doing health or employee benefits.

One of my friends interviewed for a UHC group health job a couple of years back - base pay, health/dental and 401K. Guess what the job entailed....B to B to get middle-market group business.

Concentrate on what you made for the week. Take a surreal situation and assume you had a job where you want B to B 6 hours a day, every day and got one sale a week that made you $5,000 - and you did that consistently. Good job? You bet.

I went B to B almost exclusively the 1st three months in this biz - wrote $220,000 in health premium in three months. Unfortunately it was with Mega. However at a 20% commish level as an independent is it a bad deal to make $44,000 over three months?

I had agents in my Mega office saying "wow...you walk into businesses all day - dude, there's better ways of doing this." Yeah....and I was turning in $20,000 for the week and they were turning in $8,000.They didn't mean "better" ways - they meant lazier ways.

 

[James]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

B to B works - for selling almost anything. I've done a ton of B to B and did B to B for two other sales industries. I also was a regional manager for a marketing company and had a retail location and you'd be surprised the number of industries that go B to B - I got hit up several times a week by everything from coffee services, advertising, office cleaning security systems, etc...

Verizon just finished laying their fiber optic lines in our community about 2 months ago - offering VIOS now and trying to compete with Comcast. Guess their chosen method of marketing - cold-call residential door to door. We've already had 3 reps come by. Verizon knows door to door kills telemarketing and sending postcard mailers.

105 life apps? That's a no-brainer if you go B to B - basically 2 apps a week. You can absolutely pull 2 life apps a week doing B to B but you simply may have to spend more time in the field then other agents doing health or employee benefits.

One of my friends interviewed for a UHC group health job a couple of years back - base pay, health/dental and 401K. Guess what the job entailed....B to B to get middle-market group business.

Concentrate on what you made for the week. Take a surreal situation and assume you had a job where you want B to B 6 hours a day, every day and got one sale a week that made you $5,000 - and you did that consistently. Good job? You bet.

I went B to B almost exclusively the 1st three months in this biz - wrote $220,000 in health premium in three months. Unfortunately it was with Mega. However at a 20% commish level as an independent is it a bad deal to make $44,000 over three months?

I had agents in my Mega office saying "wow...you walk into businesses all day - dude, there's better ways of doing this." Yeah....and I was turning in $20,000 for the week and they were turning in $8,000.They didn't mean "better" ways - they meant lazier ways.

You know AT&T is doing residentual marketing here, they have came to my door three times, I'm sold yet haven't gotten it? Everytime the wife or I request they come back when we are both here, even give them exact times on when to come back and, they agree on the time. They have been a no show everytime! Remember if you promise a prospect something, deliver on the promise and you'll likely get a sale, I guess some call it "Service"?

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

Well for a company, what better way to sell services then hiring 100% commissioned reps for B to B?

Verizon could spend thousands on postcards and get "X" return. However, they can send reps door to door and not spend a single nickel unless the reps lands an account. Not a bad way for a company to market.

We get to "so what's your time worth?" Say for every 4 hours of B to B you write one app with a commission of $700. Your marketing expenses are gas and flyers so it's almost pure profit.

Ok, so you plug in 16 hours of B to B that week to get 3 apps and gross $2,100 - net $2,000 after $100 in gas and flyer expenses.

Is that a bad deal? Figure a presentation is 2 hours "door to door time" - so 16 hours in the field plus 6 hours for appointments - 22 hours total for $2,000 net. That's $90 per hour. It's also why I was out B to B yesterday and the day before.

The only thing that beats it is telemarketing. You can reach more owners by calling then you can going B to B and that's also free. However, I'd personally rather go B to B then telemarket.

The bottom line is brand new agents without prior closing experience with other sales jobs should not be spending any money on leads.

 

[Agent Jeff]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

I think we've all figured out or been told that Agent5913 is a new agent for State Farm working on his contract validation. So he would be licensed to sell health insurance, but probably hasn't yet although he may have an assistant who is up to it.

So I'd guess he'd rather, at this point, come up with a strategy that involves B2B prospecting for life along with business/commercial or (maybe better for State Farm) personal lines P&C insurance. Take care of selling those things where quotas must be met first! The life policies that he would sell would come with discounts when combined with the P&C policies.

The policies he must sell are certainly not the cheapest out there and the commissions are very low. In other words, pure prospecting for life insurance would not be a profitable use of his time unless it can be done as a low-effort add-on to another distinct profitable prospecting activity.

So what would be the B2B prospecting pitch for a captive State Farm agent with the intent of meeting a life quota but who also must pick up some auto, home, small business policies along the way just to keep the activity profitable?

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

I've come to know the State Farm agent in our chamber of commerce - great guy. He's simply into everything - one of these "president of this" and "on the board of that" guys. I'm not too sure when he's in his office since from talking to him he seems to be at all these events, planning committees and speaking at engagements. He also seems highly successful.

The bottom line it this guys spends his life meeting and interacting with as many people as possible. He's definitely not sitting behind his desk cold-calling.

 

[James]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

Totally agree, yet some would say you have to account for the time? Well, if you are sitting at the house doing nothing and making nothing, I suppose that time has to counted also? Let's face it, more then likely an Agent has more time then money to spend freely.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

Yes the "account for you time" people don't account for the fact that most agents just sitting in their homes spend, at best, 2 hours a day contacting prospects talking about how bad of a deal it is to be out and about.

For me it's just flat out depressing; couped up in my house just on the phone all day? That's not why I got into sales. I did it - successfully too - just signed people up online for almost a year. When the dust settled I wasn't happy nor did I wake up looking forward to my day. I find it mind-numbing to makes calls to people's answering machines all day. A good use of your time is calling 20 leads and 3 people pick up the phone? Ok.

But that's just me. I do know very successful agents selling online who are happy as clams. And that's the problem with this business and where newbies get confused. There are many ways to be successful in this biz and new agents simply need to be aware of the available marketing strategies and choose the methods that best fits their personality and provides results.

Shared leads, telemarketing, B to B, etc... - none of those methods are "wrong" and you can argue ROI until you turn blue in the face. What's the ROI on calling shared leads if you make 40 calls with no deals? What's the ROI if you tell yourself day in and day out that you'll make calls yet never pick up the phone?

There are people selling medical equipment. They may work on an account for months before the deal closes. They may cold call on hospitals, labs and doctor's offices hoping to land one new account per month. A lot of work but who cares if you're raking in $150K.

A car salesman, even a successful one may work bell to bell to sell 20 cars in a month. That's 20 cars over 10+ hour shifts which means 90% of their time is "wasted" - but go ahead and tell 'em that's a bad deal when they make six figs.

My first month at BMW I pulled down 12K and only sold 16 cars that month. Most days I'd take 5 to 10 "ups" about 7 average per day. That's seven full out presentations per day for 16 days for the month. Do that math. Think my wife was bitching over the 12K?

 

[arnguy]

Re: Hitting the smaller business for life aps.

Totally agree, yet some would say you have to account for the time? Well, if you are sitting at the house doing nothing and making nothing, I suppose that time has to counted also? Let's face it, more then likely an Agent has more time then money to spend freely.

Tsk, tsk, James. It should read, "....MORE TIME THAN MONEY...."