The Annuity Lead

Selling annuities is tricky business. As a result, you see that while some people selling annuities somehow eke out a middle class existence, others who have mastered the tricks of the trade roam around in high end cars and live in plush villas. You might find many high end annuity salespeople turning away sales and annuity leads for some reason or the other and thought that in their position, they can afford to. Right?

Wrong! Because the main reason why some annuity sales people are successful while others are not is because they have learnt the art of turning away prospects. Your success as someone selling annuities largely depends upon your ability to judge prospects and disqualify imperfect annuity leads instantly. Most people who succeed in this business do so because they do not waste their time convincing non- buyers to buy their products but rather spend it productively only on chasing leads that they know will turn into conversions.

As someone with even a little amount of experience in annuity selling, you would also have gained the experience to judge whether a prospect is inclined to buy or not within the first five minutes of interaction. However, most salespeople continue wasting their times with such leads because they are desperate to make a sale. But since no customer is an idiot, most of them can see through your desperation and leave you without a sale and all alone with your desperation once again.

On the other hand, people who have made a success out of selling annuities do not waste time on every annuity sales lead. Instead they will begin by disqualifying leads based on demographics, telephone conversations and initial contact. So if you give both a newbie and a pro 20 leads to begin with, the rookie will waste the whole week selling to every lead and make 2 sales while the expert will disqualify annuity leads based on initial interaction, meet with 8 and make 5 sales in two days. This would leave him with more leads to follow and give him time to work on improving his marketing strategy and promotion.

Another major advantage that you can get by disqualifying annuity leads is that you can establish yourself as a specialist. Everyone wants to deal with a specialist, and if you manage to create a niche for yourself in this market, you will never be short of sales. Just make sure that the niche is not too narrow! For example, you can market yourself as a specialist dealing only with seniors above 50 years of age and sell products targeted only to the senior market. You might have to turn away a few good leads that do not fall under this category, but you will soon find people seeking you out because your clients might recommend you as the specialist to go to for the senior annuity buyer.

Other situations in which you will save a lot of time, effort and energy that can be put to good use prospecting elsewhere are when you get an initial impression that your client cannot afford the products you are selling, that they are not suited for him or her or when your annuity leads do not look interested enough. 99.9% chances say that they will not buy. Don’t waste your time on such leads and you will gain credibility and respect. Once people get the impression that you are not a desperate salesman, they will feel more inclined to buy. This definitely sounds convoluted, but human psychology generally is!

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This post provided by Javelin Marketing

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Selling annuities is not just a tough job, it is also extremely competitive. However, people who are successful at annuity selling can and do drive around in Mercs and Jags whereas others eke out a dismal living from being an annuity salesperson. If you are a serious annuity seller who wants to prosper in this business, make sure that you never commit these five deadly mistakes.

1. Using Only One Kind Of Marketing Strategy: There are many annuity sellers out there who follow upon their annuity leads with direct marketing; others resort to mailing or telemarketing. Other annuity sellers advertise only through flyers or newspaper ads. But by relying on a single marketing strategy, you expose your business to an extremely high risk of failure. Be a savvy seller and combine different types of marketing approaches like mailing, postcards, newspaper ads and flyers, telemarketing and direct sales with referrals, endorsements and symbiotic marketing and Joint ventures. This would ensure that even if a couple of your marketing plans fail, your business will not.

2. Investing Money In Buying Loads Of Useless Leads: Always remember that one good lead is worth more than a hundred bad ones. In spite of this, most people selling annuity programs invest money in buying single dollar leads that have an extremely low chance of converting into sales. Others might spend hundreds of dollars on buying costly, but prime leads that might convert into high end annuity sales. The best way here is to try and follow a marketing path where you first identify your target market and then spend money to innovatively capture leads that turn into sales. By spending a little time and effort, you can save thousands of dollars in lead generation.

3. Blaming The Economy For Your Failures: Over the past one year, a lot of people selling annuities as a part time job have left it because with rising inflation and a bleak economy, they feel that nobody is in the mood to invest in annuities. However, this is nothing but a lame excuse. If you are unable to convert your annuity leads into sales, then maybe there is something wrong with your own approach, your sales pitch or your method of dealing with clients. Everyone wants an assured income once they stop earning, and whether the present market is up or down hardly makes a difference to someone who is planning for tomorrow.

4. Not Having A Marketing Plan At All: Faced with this, I am sure that you would respond with, “Are you crazy? Of course I have a marketing plan.” But when asked to elaborate upon a marketing plan and strategy on the lines of a professional company or firm, most people who sell annuities draw a blank. Realize that just buying annuity sales leads and cold calling or sending out mailers and postcards is not a marketing plan. Instead, you need to garner all your resources to formulate and implement a marketing plan that clearly outlines expenditure, aims and revenue. Having a multi pronged marketing plan is not only necessary for keeping you on the track to high earnings but also for keeping you afloat in a highly competitive business.

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Poor Advertising.
Most agents selling annuities or other financial products would agree that ads selling annuities generally look the same and are all equally boring and non- attention grabbing. If you go on using the same advertising message that has already done the round for the last ten years in different avatars, then you should not expect to get any good leads from this kind of advertising. On the other hand, by simply changing your ads with the use of attention grabbing headlines and outlining the benefits of your products, you can raise the number of annuity leads generated per campaign exponentially.

Poor Marketing
Now you would go ahead and say that your cold calling staff is well trained and that they get you satisfactory annuity leads. But do you want to spend the rest of your life with a business whose performance is just that—satisfactory? An extremely large number of annuity sellers rely on only one kind of marketing instrument—direct mailers, emails, cold calling, seminars, endorsements or referrals. But do you know of any successful company that markets through only one single medium? Frankly speaking, I don’t. A good multi pronged marketing plan is necessary for you if you want to survive in the competitive business of annuity sales.

A Loser’s Attitude
To tell you the truth, most losers do not realize two facts—one, that they are losers and second, that they are the only people responsible for their failures.  The annuity selling business will always go through good and bad phases, but the person who can face problems head on and handle them will be the one who will succeed. This is not rocket science, but still we find a large majority of people selling annuities questioning God, circumstances, destiny and what not in order to find out the solution to their problems. There is only one solution to your problems, face them, address them and change for the better.

Be Everything To Everyone.
A large number of annuities today are focused on the senior group aged above 50. However, if you get an annuity lead who is aged 40, won’t you try to sell a similar product to that person? The inner salesman in you would never let that opportunity go, but unfortunately, most such sales either do not take place or result in customers who suffer from major cases of post purchase dissonance. Identifying a niche and becoming a specialist is important for survival in a world that is all for customization.

Not Following The Right Annuity Leads
To follow the right annuity leads, you will first need to find the right annuity leads, and you will never find them selling for a dollar each. Getting the right kind of annuity leads involves the use of different kinds of lead generators like seminars, booklets and informational websites where people genuinely interested in buying annuities volunteer their contact details themselves. If you cannot find such annuity leads yourself, buy them because even if they cost more, they will eventually give you an ROI that will be much greater than what you will get with cheaper but non-focused annuity leads.

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As an annuity agent, the most crucial thing in your business is getting relevant annuity leads. A large number of people resort to buying annuity sales leads, but in many cases, even these leads might turn out to be useless. While there are a number of companies that do sell annuity leads, many of them just sell you a list of phone numbers and addresses of people who might not fall into your target consumer bracket at all. At the same time, there are others that collect targeted annuity leads that have higher chances of turning into conversions, but these leads can be quite costly.

As a newbie who is just starting out or even an old timer who is just plain fed up of paying for annuity leads that cost too much and deliver too little, you might be forced to think how good it would be if you could somehow get free annuity leads. In fact, with a little time and effort, you actually can. Some ways by which you can create your own database of annuity leads are:

Set Up An Information Website: By setting up an information website regarding annuity products, you can easily and quickly get a list of high end, high conversions leads. You can set up a website for free and include information on everything to do with annuities, ranging from selling structured settlement annuities to the annuity formula and annuity rates, and inform readers about how they can get the best annuity rates etcetera. Instead of making free registration compulsory, ask people to register and provide contact information if they need any further “free” guidance or counseling regarding annuities.  You can be sure that anyone who shows this amount of interest in getting annuity related guidance is a lead that is very very promising. If you get leads outside your geographic area, you can also trade them with other agents in those areas.

Advertise In Local Newspapers: While this will not really cost you nothing, posting little flyers in local newspapers will cost you “next to nothing”, especially when compared to the huge amount that even a single high conversion lead will cost you. Instead of advertising an annuity program or selling annuities through your ad, try to sell a “free consultation with a financial expert” and when you do get an appointment, please try to behave like a financial consultant and not a salesman. Build trust in the people you meet, give them genuine information, and they will actually ask you to sell them your annuity programs. However, most people selling annuities fail at this stage because the pressure to sell gets to them. If it would not, they would all make much better and much wiser sellers.

Provide A Free Booklet: Once again, creating and printing a booklet that you can give away for free will cost you something, but even this cost would be phenomenally lesser than what you would otherwise pay for an interested “lead”. You can even buy a number of such annuity booklets online for a small price. Send them to people who voluntarily express an inclination to receive guidance about annuity products. You can gather these annuity sales leads by making people sign up to get a free information booklet on a website or in exhibitions, camps and seminars.

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