Telemarketing Advice

[jweaver4263]

I've recently decided to get back into insurance and have decided to focus my efforts on Final Expense. I've got access to some great telemarketers in this area and would like to give it a shot as my main lead source. I've made a list of questions I was hoping you could help with and any extra advice would be greatly appreciate.

1. Does anyone have a marketer script that they've had success with. (If your not willing to share the actual script some advice would be appreciated.)
2. How many calls should I expect my marketer to make to generate an appointment. I know this can vary depending on the marketers skill level, quality of list, etc. but an estimate would still be great.
3. Where can a person get a quality cold call list? Are there warm list, like aged leads?
4. What king of demographics would you recommend when compiling my list?
5. What qualifying questions would you recommend my marketer covers.

This is it for now. I'm sure I'll have more over the next couple days and can't wait to get the forums opinion.

 

[Josh]

I won't share the script, but here are some pointers that have helped a bunch of folks:
-Be direct
-Avoid a length introduction (or one at all if you can help it) because folks will ask you who are if they are interested. One of the most common mistakes I think folks make is "Hi, my name is Bob and I'm calling you from Senior Insurance Specialists. I'm your local insurance agent and I was wondering if..." is entirely too long. "Hi, how are you doing today? (I'm glad to hear that/sorry to hear that), I'm calling you because..." tends to be much more effective and I've seen that consistently be the case across many different campaigns including FE.
-You should get between one lead every two hours and two leads every hour, probably averaging out closer to around one lead per hour (ballpark).
-I'm biased on thinking I offer great lists, but there are certainly other companies too. If you're looking for aged internet leads you're probably going to have a hard time getting enough in your area (if you want to do f2f), but I would strongly recommend Michael Norris at stellarprospects.com if you are considering aged internet leads.
-Usually folks are looking at a 60-80 or 60-75 age group when compiling an FE list. As far as income goes, ideally you're looking at $50k/year or less, but the reality is most FE agents have sold folks who are extremely low income as well as upper income which is great, because the income filter is a bit dodgy. With the income filter, if "the system", which is a group of different databases that all pour into one database, if there isn't a value for folks it will default to zero which means you can get stuff all over the place. I bought a list to sell dual-eligible folks (Medicare and Medicaid) using just the $15k/year or less income select and ended up getting results all over the place. Usually if you're going to filter by income you're better off using zip codes, but some folks just avoid doing anything with it altogether and go by age.
-You probably want to just have your telemarketer focus on filtering to make sure they are interested in buying life insurance. If they are, it doesn't hurt to ask them a few other questions like if they know how much coverage they would be looking for, who they would want the beneficiary to be, etc, but a lot of agents get in trouble because they try to make the telemarketer do too much of the their job. A good telemarketer is going to find folks that have expressed interest in a product, not necessarily qualified them too much. I know other agents will disagree with me on that, but I would be willing to bet that very few of them have actually hired, trained, and used a telemarketer for any length of time, if at all. You can try it both ways and see how it goes for you, but usually if you have a telemarketer screening folks too much you end up losing decent leads because they don't feel like getting into personal info (health/verify banking account) and at that point they spit the hook, even if they were interested, because they think it might be an identity stealing scam.

Was that helpful?

 

[Mark]

Here is a script. It is better than nothing. I know someone that used this one and it did work for them.

 

[jweaver4263]

MPS - I really appreciate the advice and it was very helpful.

Couple Things
- I agree about the short introduction. The quicker you get into the pitch the better.
- You mentioned averaging about a "lead" an hour. I wanted to make sure you understand that the marketer will be setting appointments for me not just generating a lead. I know some people refer to lead/appt. as the same thing so I wanted to double check.
- If you offer quality lists I would be very interested in speaking with you. PM me your contact info and I will give you a call today.
- I agree that a lot of sales people want the marketer to do to much of the work. I'm really looking for two things out of my appointments. I want them to be interested in speaking with me and qualified for the product I'm there to offer.

 

[boins]

Thanks for the script. <saved>

Here is a script. It is better than nothing. I know someone that used this one and it did work for them.

 

[Mark]

This is all really trial and error.

I dont like scripts. Have a gameplan of what all you want to be said, but in no certain order. DOn't sound like a robot.

 

[jweaver4263]

Here is a script. It is better than nothing. I know someone that used this one and it did work for them.

Thanks for this. I really appreciate it.
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I dont like scripts. Have a gameplan of what all you want to be said, but in no certain order. Don't sound like a robot.

I agree. But it does make marketer training easier when you have an outline for them to follow and build a foundation with.

 

[Josh]

- I agree that a lot of sales people want the marketer to do to much of the work. I'm really looking for two things out of my appointments. I want them to be interested in speaking with me and qualified for the product I'm there to offer.

I would contend that you're asking too much. They should have some level of interest in talking to you, but you probably want to think over the qualification part. You can always start off asking a lot of qualification questions and trim it down, but you may find that if you do a health screening and ask to verify bank account information it's hurting you more than helping you.

 

[jweaver4263]

I would contend that you're asking too much. They should have some level of interest in talking to you, but you probably want to think over the qualification part. You can always start off asking a lot of qualification questions and trim it down, but you may find that if you do a health screening and ask to verify bank account information it's hurting you more than helping you.

I will take your advice. My concern was spending to much time in front of people who don't qualify. But as I review the different policies that seems unlikely.

- Do you have any advice in regards to getting appointments to stick when being set by a marketer and not yourself.(Besides the standard of not setting them more than 24 hours out)

 

[Frank Stastny]

I find that I sell more FE, it is easier to sell and stays on the books longer by leading with Med Supps and cross selling FE.

But, I don't like prospecting for FE. I've done it and really don't care to do it again. I think it is way too expensive to prospect for and because most of what seems to be the best prospects are ones who do not going to have a lot of money persistency could be a problem, ie charge backs.

As I said though, I don't like prospecting for FE. There are agents who love it, I'm not one of them.

Just my two cents worth. I will now take you back to your regularly scheduled program.