Cold Calling or Buy Leads?

[redsquash]

The question is about Life Insurance, but may be applied to all.

Many independent agents buy leads, but captive/employee agents (NY Life, Mass Mutual etc) mostly depend upon cold calling. With limited budget in the early stage of my agency, I'm currently using cold calling and have not yet bought any leads.

Am I making any mistake, by not buying leads? Cold calling has not produced any encouraging results yet, and all the apps I have written so far came from my contacts or referrals from those contacts.

Or may be I need to improve my cold calling skills. How ?

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

It depends on a lot of things.

Are you calling residential or business?

Have you filtered you're list down to "high probability prospects"?

What are you trying to sell? Whatever is the best fit for them? FE, Term Whole Life, Mortgage Protection?

Have you listened to any Life Insurance Producers cold call, so you know what works and what doesn't work?

 

[redsquash]

I'm calling ONLY Business, NO residential. Most of the business I call are small business, and I try to sell them Term or Limited Pay Whole Life.

I'm currently going through the threads on cold calling on this forum and taking some valuable points, which I didn't use so far.

Are you calling residential or business?

Have you filtered you're list down to "high probability prospects"?

What are you trying to sell? Whatever is the best fit for them? FE, Term Whole Life, Mortgage Protection?

Have you listened to any Life Insurance Producers cold call, so you know what works and what doesn't work?

 

[VolAgent]

I'm calling ONLY Business, NO residential. Most of the business I call are small business, and I try to sell them Term or Limited Pay Whole Life.

I'm currently going through the threads on cold calling on this forum and taking some valuable points, which I didn't use so far.

Cold calling works if you do enough of it, but its painful.

I take it you've joined a career life shop. Did you do your project 200, is there an older agent whose C clients you could work, perhaps some orphans to call on?

Be careful with buying leads, they can work, but they can also burn you.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

I'm calling ONLY Business, NO residential. Most of the business I call are small business, and I try to sell them Term or Limited Pay Whole Life.

I'm currently going through the threads on cold calling on this forum and taking some valuable points, which I didn't use so far.

Check out the ILIAA.org, Nick Perry and Rick Brontsein's life ins association, they should be able to give you some solid info about marketing life ins.

 

[LGilmore]

Why not try a bit of both?

There's no law against you using a couple different poles with different lures while you fish in this pond.

Then what you can do when you find a method that works for you is, quit it and try something else.... agents's habit.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Why not try a bit of both?

There's no law against you using a couple different poles with different lures while you fish in this pond.

Then what you can do when you find a method that works for you is, quit it and try something else.... agents's habit.

If you're new and don't have much for marketing, then you have no business buying leads.

It's all about the cold call at that point.

 

[LGilmore]

"If you're new and don't have much for marketing, then you have no business buying leads.

It's all about the cold call at that point. "

I disagree. A new agent could limit internet leads to a couple a day, or establish a weekly limit. You actually have some control over how much, how often and where leads come from. You don't have to sign up to receive 10 leads a day. A couple will do while you work other streams.

The fact is, it is rare for an agent to be successful using only one method of marketing. Developing several methods over time strengthens all of them.

 

[Bob_The_Insurance_Guy]

Not to take this off topic, but I would begin to Network heavily. It's very similar to cold calling; however, it's usually done in front of groups:

Associations
Job Seekers
Financial Planners
CPA's
Civic Groups

You get the idea. I Network 5 to 6 days a week, and work only off of referrals. When the stream is low, I hop on the phone and cold call telemarket.

 

[redsquash]

I started with the prospects I knew (about 150+ prospects) andso far, got all my business through them or their referrals. But I've exhausted that list, and now more sources of prospects.

I take it you've joined a career life shop. Did you do your project 200,..... Be careful with buying leads, they can work, but they can also burn you.

I like the idea of networking and using several methods of marketing. I'll see if I can join local Chamber of Commerce, do some direct mail to Home owners (since I cannot call them due to DNC) and also local networking with the professionals.

Bottom line that I got from here is, buying leads can "work" as well "burn". But I'll give it a try with minimum leads, once I start getting commission from the apps I wrote in last month or so.