The Annuity Lead

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 agent.

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.

Annuity lead generation in your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!

Bookmark It

The generation of leads in the search to sell annuities is a vital tool in the overall sales technique, as the more leads that are generated and the higher the quality, the more possibilities of closing that lead and creating a sale.

The problem for many annuity agents is that they look too deeply at the apparent ‘miracle sales techniques’ and ‘guaranteed leads’ that are often offered on Internet advertisements, and find in time that these are not what they seem; there is no miracle answer to generating annuity leads, just the overall ability of the individual selling the annuities to do the job.

Think of the business of selling annuities as hitting many singles.  Don’t worry about the home runs.  If you are always at bat, you will get your share of home runs.  The key is to always be at bat, contact annuity prospects every day.

There are a number of proven and popular methods of helping to generate leads that are used by sellers in the market, and these take into account the individuality of each separate potential client – let’s take a look at a few of the more successful aids to annuity lead generation.

Looking for annuity lead generation providers

The Internet is a booming business tool, and even in the field of generating annuity leads there are a number of organizations in the net that specialise in this area. Be aware that most form that generate leads are field marketing organizations (FMO) that require you to write your annuity business with them.  They offer you free leads.  But is the lead free?  If you sell a $100,000 annuity and the FMO that gave you free leads also paid you 1% less in commission than you could have received from another FMO, you may be paying plenty of their annuity leads.  Then there are lead providers that don’t distribute any product.  They are simply experts at generating leads for sale.

Try web search, and look in particular at telemarketing outfits that offer a dedicated lead generation service. These people are professionals and know what they are doing – they don’t offer a miracle but a tried and tested method of attracting leads, of reaching the potential client that you need to find. Using easy to use message retrieving systems, these companies have a proven record in the field – read the testimonials, and look for names that are well known in the market.

For example, one firm uses an auto dialer to all consumers and play a message.  If the consumer had interest in the message, the consumer presses ‘1″ and is connected to your phone. While at first this may seem like a dream come true, consider that calls are only placed to people that have not placed themselves on the “do not call” list.  These may be lower quality investors with less money. So make sure you understand the nature of how the leads are generated and how that impacts the quality of the annuity lead.

Consider a direct mail campaign

Direct mail has come a long way from the ‘junk mail’ days of old, and with today’s sophisticated direct mail techniques it is worth considering a direct mail campaign to help generate annuity leads.

Direct mail works by making sure the mail shot goes to potentially interested parties, and not just to addresses at random, and thus enhances the success rate of any campaign. For example, if you mail an offer to people age 60+, that own homes with a household income over $50,000, you are targeting the sweet spot of fixed annuity buyers.With companies out there that focus on direct mail, you can find a supplier who will take on an entire project, designing and writing the mail shot and sending it out to a select list of clients of whom some are almost certain to respond. Each response is a lead, and each lead a potential sale.

If you don’t want to go the full route as above, you can by lists of potential clients from companies that generate and supply such things, and devise and operate your own direct mail campaign. In general, the professionals are adept at the technique, and can provide a cost effective and potentially lucrative annuity lead generation service.

These are just a couple of the many options for marketing yourself, and for generating leads a result. There are no hard and fast rules here, no right or wrong, and trial and error, along with a well planned campaign on the lines of the above, can prove a very good method of generating annuity leads.

Post provided by Javelin Marketing

Bookmark It

Selling of annuity products is done either by the direct representatives of insurance companies or by agents who sell annuities on behalf of the insurance companies. Generating leads is the most important aspect of annuities. So let us now find how annuity lead generation is done. There are various ways of how it is done.

Annuity lead generation is done by cross selling and up-selling annuity products to existing clients. If an insurance company has a client of life insurance products, an agent would definitely call up the customer for selling an annuity product. Now, the lead generation or prospecting of a customer is done after considering many different factors. These may be the age of the person, sex and other factors such as investment appetite. Once the customers are segmented various products which are created for specific groups are pitched to them. Once a customer shows interest in any product, sales agent visit the customer and explains the various features of the product.

Another method of lead generation is making calls from a random database. These databases are created from various resources such as telephone directories and yellow pages. However many insurance companies prefer not to use this method because customers may sue companies if they make unsolicited sales calls to customers. In many telecom company’s database’s customers who do not want to be called have registered their names in the “do not call” registry. Calling up these customers can be legally challenged. There are many other innovative methods that are used by insurance companies to generate leads.

When we receive our credit card statements many a times we see flyers which advertise annuity products. This is one of the potent methods of advertising which can create the pull for an annuity product. Customers who are interested in a particular product call up the company’s toll-free number or drops an e-mail which is responded by a customer service executive of the company. These leads are stored in a database and followed up by the sales agents. Other ways of generating leads is by conducting events.  During such events, there are many prospects who show interest in a product and these leads are captured by the company. After the event ends, the sales agents start calling up the customers with sales calls.

No one technique of lead generation can be perfect. An insurance company will adopt a multi pronged strategy in their marketing and sales effort. A multi pronged strategy will help the company to get better results. It needs to be understood that not all leads can be converted to actual sales. Therefore insurance companies stress on maximizing the lead generation process which will help them to get a broader clientele.
Competition in the annuity market is driving companies to adopt newer strategies which will help to increase their revenues.  And agents are getting more aggressive resulting in the SEC wanting to take over control of regulating EIA sales.  But a sound annuity lead generation effort eliminates the need to be overly aggressive or bend ethics to make sales.

Bookmark It

Annuity lead generation is not an easy task. Most people selling annuities resort to buying leads, but if you have been there and done that, then you would have realized by now that buying cheap annuity leads will never make you rich. Annuity lead generation has become tough because of the huge competition that exists in the market. Every prospect that you might reach out to would already have been bombarded by others selling the same things, as a result of which, you will simply not be entertained. However, by wisely using lead generators, you can get valuable leads that result into high end annuity sales.

The first and foremost thing to consider is the target audience that you are reaching out to. Most firms collecting annuity leads simply collect a database of people in a certain age group. But this is simply no criteria for selection of people who might need or buy annuities. At the outset only, decide who your target audience is, what is their age bracket, monthly household income and socio-economic profile. This would help you create a message that is tailored for your audience, making them more likely to sit up and take notice.

Once you have narrowed down your target market, you will need to decide what path to follow. While conventional annuity sellers collect demographics and make cold calls, savvy annuity selling professionals nowadays use lead generators to get access to a database of leads that have high chances of converting into sales.

Lead generators are generally products or services that you advertise, in place of the annuities that you are selling. Once the prospect takes up the offer of the lead generator, you gather all his contact information and quickly become the owner of a list that has an extremely high percentage of conversions.

A major advantage of using lead generators is that most people have become bored with annuity selling ads. As a result, they simply ignore them, but this is not the case with lead generators. Instead of advertising your product, which is annuity, you advertise the lead generator, which could be an informational manual or booklet about annuities, a free consultation with a retirement income expert or a retirement income calculator that calculates retirement income with and without different financial products attached. Most people would jump at the chance of getting valuable financial help and advice for free. But, you will also be saved from generating leads that are not interested in buying or using financial products.

To generate relevant annuity sales leads, you can start by making people aware of your free “lead generator” through emails. Build a directory of people who show interest in your product and mail it to them as soon as possible. Make sure that your product is unique, helpful, professional, good looking and offers value to the customer. Most importantly, it should not be a sales pitch at all.

After your product has been delivered to your prospect, you can give them a call and ask them if they are interested in buying annuities. Even better, make them feel that your aim is not to sell anything, but rather to help them with their financial planning. Your leads will definitely feel more inclined to buy if they realize the need for buying annuities instead of having the need thrust down their throat through incessant sales pitching.

Annuity lead generation in your local area – prospects seeking assistance now!

Bookmark It