The Annuity Lead

My firm matches prospects with financial professionals and I have always found it curious that financial professionals only want leads of prospects seeking information on the products and services sold by the financial professional. 

In other words, the average annuity agent only wants us to match him with prospects that have expressed interest in annuities.  Other prospects have expressed interest in financial planning, mutual funds, life insuarnce, etc. but the average annuity agent is not interested in these general prospects.

However, the RICH annuity agents DO have an interest in these prospects.  Here’s the logic of the rich annuity agent:

1. When people express interest in a product or service, it does not mean that they will buy that particular product or service.
 
2. It does however mean that the prospect is motivated to seek a solution–i.e. if they fill out a form on the Internet seeking information on retirement planning, at least this is a motivated, “take action” person.

The rich annuity agent wants to speak to any motivated viable prospect and has sufficient confidence that if an annuity will help the prospect achieve his goals, the agent will have a sale.

How many clients have you lost because you have failed to cultivate a general interest from a prospect desiring to take financial action?

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Take a second to think about today’s advertising landscape.  Annuity prospects are exposed to dozens of conflicting sales messages every day – to have success with annuity selling, you’ve got to find a way to cut through the clutter.  In this second installment of the guerilla annuity selling principles series, we’ll take a look at one easy way to get your message across: marketing with information.

Today, corporations and sales executives spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads that are designed to be humorous and memorable.  However, while these messages may provide a brief burst in market recognition, they don’t always measure up in terms of sales conversions.  Do you remember the sock puppet dog that was the mascot of dot-com bust Pets.com?  Even though people around the world could correctly identify which company the puppet represented, it didn’t result in more dollars coming in to the company.

What people really crave is information – not catchy jingles or memorable mascots.  If you give them good information in your sales message, you’ll have them knocking down your door with more business than you can handle.  But what qualifies as good information?  In general, it should be both concise and specific, demonstrating your annuity’s benefits without being bogged down by obvious sales messages.  The specific type of information you should provide depends on which marketing method you’re using.

• Direct Mail

With annuity direct mail, you have a limited amount of time to capture a prospect’s attention, so your information needs to be short, sweet and to the point.  Come up with three to four single sentences that describe your annuity’s strongest benefits.  For example, consider something like “Earn a guaranteed return of 4.5% on your investment, while the stock market tanks.”  If you want success with annuity marketing and annuity sales, you must immediately answer the prospect’s question “what’s in it for me.” 

• Seminars

When you’re hosting an annuity seminar, keep in mind that people have shown up for the information you’ll provide – not to hear an hour-long sales presentation.  Speak openly and honestly about the benefits of annuities, not annuities.  In other words, your presentation must be about safety, tax savings, savings on social security tax, lifetime income.  Sell the benefits, not the product. Be that guy that tells it like it is, and be refreshing with your honesty and candor.  Even if you turn off some prospects because annuities aren’t the best fit for them, you’ll impress other attendees with your honesty and likely convert more of them into customers than you would rattling off standard sales copy.

The truth is that people can smell an advertising pitch from a mile away, and are more likely than ever to simply ignore it.  Don’t believe me?  Studies have shown that Internet users don’t even notice banner ads anymore because they’vebecome so attuned to subconsciously detecting and disregarding advertisements.  In this advertising-happy climate, the one thing people long for more than anything is good, solid information.  If you’re the one that fills this need, you’ll find yourself overrun with new customers and clients, ready to give you their money.

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Are you tired of cold-calling, hand-holding and bending over backwards for customers who treat you with nothing but suspicion?  For years, the default manifesto of the annuity industry has been to get yourself in front of as many people as possible and do whatever it takes to close the annuity sale.  However, there is a better way to prospect your leads, and in this series of three Guerilla Selling Principles articles, we’ll cover the secret strategies that many agents are using to make the customers flock to them.

For this first article, we’ll cover the importance of being recognized as an expert in the annuity industry.  In this wary economic climate, selling financial products becomes more challenging, since most people want to hunker down and hide their pennies underneath the mattress.  At the same time, they trust the people they consider to be financial experts to lead them through uncertain times.  Fortunately, it isn’t as difficult as you might think to be recognized as an expert.  You don’t have to be knighted by a college or industry organization – you just need to follow these steps:

Get Published

You don’t need to publish a novel to earn the recognition that comes with being a published author in your industry.  You don’t even need to write a word as you can find inexpensive writers at elance.com and guru.com. Instead, offer to write an article for an industry publication, such as Annuity Shopper or the Annuity Market News, or for a popular website in your field.  Not sure what to write?  Start with a success story or with unique observations that haven’t really been published in the industry.  Web and magazine editors are constantly sitting around wondering how they’re going to come up with good, unique content – if you drop it into their laps, they’ll be more than happy to help you out by publishing it.

Charge for Events

This might sound crazy – after all, how can you charge for annuity seminars and events when other people are putting them on for free AND d attendees?  Here’s the thing – just charging for an event gives people the impression that the information you’re offering is worth more than the guy down the street who’s teaching for free, even if you’re giving the same information.  Even in tough financial times, people are willing to pay for what they believe to be expert financial information.  In addition, offering paid seminars is a great way to weed out clients that can actually afford to invest – if they can’t even pay a small fee for a seminar, how much can you really expect them to put into annuities?  You can most easily charge when you run your seminar through a local adult school as people are accustomed to paying tuition at a school.  A similar idea is to rent your seminar room at a college which lends an air of legitimacy. 

Sign Up with ProfNet.com

ProfNet is resource for writers, publishers and other members of the news media to find expert sources for articles and interviews.  Professionals who sign up with this resource may find themselves invited to give expert opinions for everything from small-town newspapers to major nation-wide news stations.  Sign up for this service once you’ve completed the first two steps – you’ll be able to advertise yourself as a published author and a keynote speaker at paid seminars, which will bring you even more attention from the news media.

Clip the copies of your articles and interviews which you can then send to prospects and immediately show you are the local expert.

Once you begin to develop recognition within your industry and community, you’ll find that the amount of time you have to spend cold calling leads and prospecting for new clients drops dramatically, while your income increases.

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There are potentially millions of people who may want to purchase annuities, from the recently retired to the fortunately wealthy, and with such a lucrative market it is important to remember that nothing is set in stone; there are a number of different proven ways of selling annuities and many that should be considered. Let’s look at some of the more popular, and how they work.

Lead generation

There are numerous telemarketing companies that can help in finding you potential customers by providing a professional lead generating service. They look at the service you are providing, deduce the clients most likely to be interested in your product, and send them a message offering the service that you provide – in this case annuities.

This is a simple and effective method of generating annuity leads, and leads are essentially potential sales waiting to happen. Look on the web for telemarketing organizations, and you will find a cost effective and simple method of marketing your product.

Direct Mail

Direct mail works by targeting potentially interested parties, and not just to addresses at random, by using lists generated by direct mail specialists.

These lists contain only people or organizations that will be interested in particular products or services – in this case, annuities.  Your best demographic is females, age 60+.

Selling annuities in this way is a proven method of generating leads, and with companies out there that focus on direct mail campaigns, you can be sure to find a campaign supplied by a company that will not only mail your offer to the chosen clients, but design and process the entire project.

Direct mail is a long way from the ‘junk mail’ that it once was considered as, and is now a technologically advanced method of selecting the right potential client for the right service. However, if you don’t want to do it that way, you can buy lists of potential clients from companies that generate and supply them, run your own direct mail campaign.

Drip marketing  - the repetitive sending of direct mail Or email) to the same prospects, making sure your mail drop is high quality, and targeting the same addresses over and over again – is an effective way of hammering the message home.

Each time they receive the message – and for the best effects it must be five or more – it will subliminally be taken on board, even if the card is simply thrown away or email deleted. The repetition element is important in cementing the image, and once the mail drop has been done it is important to remember to follow up your campaign; a quick telephone call to each of those on the mail drop list, making sure they received the card and asking if they are interested will elicit a response in some cases that may not have been forthcoming otherwise.  The same can be accomplished dripping with an insurance newsletter.

The above are just some of the methods of selling annuities, and with time and experience you will be sure to develop many more of your own using these guidelines and ideas.

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The market for selling annuities is massive and, potentially, extremely lucrative. Consider the millions of people who retire each year, and have surplus funds that they want to invest, or those that become wealthy early and want to make sure their funds are used to grow, not decline in value.

But the methods of selling annuities is not set in stone, there are a number of different proven ways of selling annuities and many that should be considered. Let’s look at some of the more popular, and how they work.

Direct Mail

Direct mail works by targeting potentially interested parties, and not just to addresses at random, by using lists generated by direct mail specialists.

These lists contain only people or organisations that will be interested in particular products or services – in this case, annuities.

Selling annuities in this way is a proven method of generating leads, and with companies out there that focus on direct mail campaigns, you can be sure to find a campaign supplied by a company that will not only mail your offer to the chosen clients, but design and process the entire project.

Direct mail is a long way from the ‘junk mail’ days of old, with modern technology allowing the most sophisticated selection techniques, but if you don’t want to do it that way, you can buy lists of potential clients from companies that generate and supply them, run your own direct mail campaign.

Drip marketing

Increasing the intensity of the direct mail marketing method can also increase the success, and this becomes known as ‘drip marketing’. Drip marketing is a the repetitive sending of direct mail to the same clients; make sure your mail drop is high quality, and target the same addresses over and over again with a series of cards. Each time they receive the message – and it must be done at least three times – it will subliminally be taken on board, and even if the card is simply thrown away, the repetition element is important in cementing the image.  A great tool is a monthly insurance newsletter with annuity articles.

Once the mail drop has been done it is important to remember to follow up your campaign; a quick telephone call to each of those on the mail drop list, making sure they received the card and asking if they are interested will elicit a response in some cases that may not have been forthcoming otherwise.

Lead generation

In the field of generating leads there are a number of organisations on the net that specialise in this area, and a web search will give you a list of the more popular of these, and most likely one that can offer potential annuity clients.

Telemarketing professionals know what they are doing, and they don’t offer a miracle but a proven method of attracting leads, and of reaching the potential client that you need to find.

The method is simple to use, and picking up your potential leads is as simple as retrieving a message on the cell phone. It’s also an efficient method, too, as the leads generated are sure to be interested in what you have to sell.

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Annuity selling is not an easy job, but with a sound marketing plan in place you can earn much more than you ever thought possible. Like all other jobs, selling annuities requires not just hard work, but being innovative, talent and an effort at out of the box thinking. Having a sound marketing plan in place is the first thing that you need to do if you want to distinguish yourself from the run of the mill annuity salesperson.

One very important thing to remember here is that no marketing plan should feature only a single marketing strategy. There are a number of annuity selling agents who either resort to cold calling or direct mailing to follow up with their leads. But having a single strategy greatly increases your risks of failure whereas a multi pronged strategy not only manages to reach out to your prospects at different levels, but also increases your chances of getting higher sales. So what are the marketing methods that are most effective for selling annuity? Some of the best methods for approaching your annuity leads that will yield good results are:

1. Advertising: I know you will be shocked that I said advertising! After all, that is what you do all the time and you already know what the results are. However, we are not talking about advertising what your company is providing, or the run of the mill annuity ad. Like in all things, you will have to distinguish your ads from others advertising similar products. For this, you will not only need to rework and redesign your ads, you will also have to post them at the right time. The main focus of your ad should not be just what the company is offering, but rather the benefits that buyers of that particular annuity will get. On the other hand, most people shift their investments or plan them around the beginning or end of the financial year, so advertising around this time would be more fruitful as compared to advertising during the holidays when people focus more on vacations and shopping.

2. Seminars: Seminars are one of the best ways of cashing upon and creating high quality annuity leads. Offering a free seminar in localities where your target customer resides can get you an extremely high rate of sales compared to other marketing methods.  This is because only people who have a serious interest in financial planning will attend a seminar that is focused on personal financial management, retirement planning and buying financial instruments. Covering a number of topics at your seminars, instead of just focusing on equities, will help you get a larger audience. You can tie up with other agents dealing with other products to host a full fledged informational seminar for seniors. Just make sure that you provide valuable information instead of delivering your sales presentations during your seminar. This would establish you as an expert and you will notice people coming to you to buy annuities instead of the other way round.

3. Direct Mailing: Direct mailing can be an extremely powerful marketing tool provided you know how to make your mail stand out and grab your prospects’ attention. To know more about how to do this, check out our post on creating powerful direct mailing messages.

Get annuity sales leads  your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!

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Selling annuities can be quite profitable, provided you know whom to sell to and how to sell. Most people view the annuity selling business as a gamble because getting annuity leads that work is actually one. When you buy annuity leads for money, you can get amazing leads that lead to a high percentage of sales. On the other hand, you might end up buying annuity sales leads that have a conversion rate of one per cent or less. By managing to get quality annuity leads, you can end up earning excellent commissions. So how do you go about generating annuity leads that convert into customers? Our step by step guide here will help you get good annuity sales leads easily.

Know Your Target Market: If you are already into the annuity selling business, then you might have a good idea about the demographics of people who are buying annuities. Seniors form a major portion of the people who invest in annuities, but simply buying a list of names and addresses of people over 60 does not qualify as a lead list. Define your prospects in terms of age, monthly household income, geographical location, occupational profile, and ownership of financial products etcetera if you want to generate quality sales leads.

Choose Your Medium Wisely: Once you have identified your prospects, the next step is to find a place or a medium through which you can reach out to them. Do you think all your prospects surf the internet for products and advice? Or are they living in small communities where everybody swears by the local rag? Do all of them live in certain particular areas where you might hold educational seminars for collecting leads? Advertise through the medium that you think your prospects are most likely to use. You can also try a combination of mediums based on your marketing strategy and budget

Create A Powerful Message: The common man is bombarded with hundreds of advertising and marketing messages everyday. If you want your adverts to catch your target audience’s attention, you will have to think of something that is different and customized. Offering something of value to your customers or a lead generator can come in handy for collecting quality leads. When you use a lead generator, you offer your prospects something like a free financial counseling session or a free booklet on managing funds (e.g. How To Buy The Best Possible Annuity, How To Manage Your Funds Post Retirement etcetera) based on the demographics of your target audience.

This would establish you as an expert and people would come to you to buy annuities instead of you running after them to sell. But you will have to make sure that your lead generator offers valuable information instead of being an ad for your product. On the other hand, you can also directly advertise your annuity product as long as the message you choose is powerful and compelling.
Get annuity leads in your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!
This post contributed by Javelin Marketing

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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!

Get annuity leads  in your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!

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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!

Get annuity leads in your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!

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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