Prospecting Problem
A fix and control issue

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The real problem for the insurance producer is how to generate quality prospects

What’s So Difficult About Selling Life Insurance?

Article # 7
Written By John Lensi, CLU, ChFC, RHU, REBC, CMFC, LLIF

Let’s examine in more detail, what we call the “Fix and Control” producer issues.

Fixing the producer’s prospecting problem and controlling their business submissions is a huge task – although very much accomplish-able. Let’s examine each of these two issues separately.

Fixing the prospecting problem can be addressed in a number of ways, but I’ve chosen to focus attention on one quality solution, the answer lying in the financial professional’s skill to consistently generate quality referred leads.

Stepping back for a minute, there are three high-level categories to generate prospect inventory as illustrated below. When you boil it down and weigh all the pros and cons of various prospecting methods, there is one single prospecting method that far out distances the others in overall effectiveness for most producers- qualified referrals.

If it’s so evident that this is what will improve sales force retention, loyalty, and productivity, why does this occur?

And what should be done to solve these producer challenges?

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The Many Ways and Approaches to Prospect Acquisition

Examples:

1) COMPANY GENERATED LEADS:

• Orphan policyholders
  Service inquiries

2) PURCHASED LEADS:

• Vendor lead
  lists
  On-line leads

3) ACQUIRED LEADS:

• net working
  Referred leads
  Social Mobility Contacts
  Trade shows
  Seminars
  Lead exchanges
  Employer directory
  Personal observation
  Transition x-dates
  Prospect Inventory

A strong key to producer prospecting problem and personal success is controlling the source of sales lead inventory. Third party influence must exist for a lead to be “qualified”.

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Why prospecting by referrals is the preferred method of choice.

The benefits of prospecting through qualified referrals far out distances most any other prospecting method.

The key benefits are these:

• Allows a producer to pre-qualify prospects and tailor an effective approach to gain a favorable sales appointment


• Allows a producer to target a particular market that best matches the producer’s skill sets

• Allows for third party influence (TPI) which translates to a more favorable contact-to-appointment ratio when following up the lead

•  enhanced persistency results when a more qualified prospect buys

• A better closing ratio results from the producers’ ability to work with people who trust their recommendations as a result of TPI and because they are able to target market resulting in a leveraging of skill sets

• More repeat sales are generated as a result of deeper fact-finding which occurs as a result of TPI; far less overall time is needed to develop a new client

• A continuous chain of prospects materializes

• Larger size sales result from pre-qualified prospects being contacted.
  

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The reasons struggling producers’ don’t obtain referrals
include and consist of the following:

• Some producers aren’t sure how or where to start the prospecting problem process, but it is unfortunately an early training issue

• Some in the satisfaction of a sale forget or      avoid asking (confidence issue)

• Some actually don’t believe they deserve referrals from those whom they do work for (previous two issues)

• Some feel they may jeopardize their client relationship (confidence issue - rarely does this occur)

• Some convince themselves they simply don’t have enough time to obtain referrals as they schedule sales appointments close to one another (training issue - missing a premier opportunity to get qualified leads)

•  some avoid seeking referrals because prior attempts were unsuccessful confidence & training issue)
  

• And lastly,- the king of them all – some feel they already have enough prospects, so there isn’t a need to spend time getting referrals (these folks usually have a large inventory of prospects with no TPI and mistakenly think they have a ton of qualified sales leads to contact – serious training issue)

learn and earn

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