Insurance Marketing - Use Your Marketing to Make a Connection with the Right People

The objective of marketing is getting the attention of people who are interested in learning more about doing business with you. Using also ran marketing techniques that tell the prospect about you and your products is a complete waste of both time and money. If you want to connect with the people you’re marketing to you have to get their attention and provide value.

Why do you respond to a marketing message? Whether it’s something you get in the mail, something you hear on the radio or TV, or something someone says to you in person you respond to a marketing message because it got your attention. It got your attention because the message told you something that you thought might be of value to you or for you. Once they had your attention you wanted to know more. Smart marketers provide you with a way to know more.

Give your prospects a low risk way to get more information. Have you ever called an 800 number to get a free brochure, or send an email requesting a free guide, or faxed a completed form to get a report, or visited a website to sign-up for an alert? These are all low risk calls to action. You weren’t ready to meet with someone or to have someone call you. You just wanted to know more so you could decide if you wanted to take it a step further. Because there was a low risk way for you to do it, you did it.

The reason you took the time to respond was because whatever was offered in the call to action held perceived value for you. For example, you wanted to know how to compare refrigerators for energy efficiency without going to the store and looking at all the models. Your prospects might want to have a quick guide for understanding the differences between LTC policies. The item offered doesn’t have to be unique or closely held information. Your prospects just want something that quickly helps them to understand differences, or that helps them to understand what they really need to know to make a good decision about something. Would you want to read a free report about the 7 biggest mistakes to avoid when leasing a car? Apply that concept in your marketing.

When you responded to those messages you were actively looking for something, you were thinking about something related to the offer, or you were thinking you should be thinking about whatever was related to the offer. With your offer you’ve now made a good starting connection with three different types of prospects. You have caught the attention of the ready buyer, the soon to be ready buyer, and the some day ready buyer. Now all you have to do is move them from education to buying deepening your relationship all along the way.

Source: Ezine Articles

14 Ways to Promote Yourself (Sales tips for Customer Relationship)

1. It's important for you to be in the minds of your clients as much as possible. You may find the following tips useful: Send cards to clients and their children on special days — birthdays, anniversaries, specific holidays, New Year's, and so forth.

2. Make your business cards stand out! A creative business card idea is one modeled after a baseball card with your photo on the front and your qualifications on the back.

3. Give a donation to a charity in your client's name as a birthday gift to them.

4. Send a birthday cake to clients.

5. Become more active in social or civic organizations like the PTA or at a local church.

6. Get a group of successful local business persons together to discuss and exchange business ideas from which you will all benefit.

7. Send newspaper clippings of clients who have been featured in local newspapers. If you come across an article that would be of interest to a client you might send it to them as well.

8. On your anniversary with the company, hold a special event where you can invite your clients and thank them for their business.

9. Send flowers or a fruit basket to clients who are ill or who have recently had surgery.

10. Send a small gift, such as a photo album, baby spoon or flowers, to a client who has recently had a baby or adopted a child. If your client is a new grandparent, do the same.

11. Have your name and telephone number imprinted on "give-away" items such as pens, message pads, hats, golf balls, key chains or mugs. Specialty catalogs have a variety of inexpensive items and clients will love these token gifts.

12. There are all sorts of calendars that you can put your name and telephone number on. For example, desk calendars, pocket calendars, wall calendars and fancier appointment books.

13. Place advertisements in your local newspaper or country club bulletin.

14. Sponsor a grant application for a local charity. Each year the MDRT Foundation provides from $800,000 to $1 million in grants to member recommended charities. If the charity you choose is awarded a grant, you are asked to present it during a public event held by the charity. As the grant’s.

Sam Ghosh: Large potential in Middle East region for Insurance services

Bloomberg: Allianz SE, Europe's biggest insurer, named Sam Ghosh chief executive officer for the Middle East region, where the company sees ``growth potential'' for all its businesses.

Ghosh, who is Allianz's country manager in India, will take up the position on Oct. 1 and the regional headquarters will be in Bahrain, the Munich-based company said in an e-mailed statement today.

``We see large potential for profitable growth in the region,'' Ghosh said in the statement. Demand for insurance and financial services is growing in the Middle East, he said.

Note: Indian Insurance brokers and agents who have access to Indian population in the Middle East can make note of the fact.

LIC agents image make over to 'Customer Relation Manager'

The introduction of new economic policies and consequent financial sector reforms have brought number of changes in Insurance sector. The privatization of the insurance sector has seen setting up of shop by many companies with most of them in joint ventures with companies from the developed markets.

This has brought a huge change in the indian markets which till 2000 was monopolistic with Life insurance Corporatio of India (LIC) being the only player.To gain a share of the market the private companies have adopted aggressive tactics, including advertising campaigns, well-trained salesmen and modern selling ways.

The public sector giant Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) continues to lead in the market, but private players have been steadily improving its market share. LIC’s higher market share in the number of policies sold compared with premium income means private life insurers are cornering a larger share of high premium policies. The private players have been able to agressively penetrate the market with higher income bracket and sell policies with high premium. Where else the LIC agents have been identified as softer and lacking the modern confidence and skills.

For long, LIC as been mulling over the traditional image of an LIC agent of that of a government servant and is keen for transition of an agent to a more modern corporate image.




The insurance company is emphasising on changing the image of its agents due to increasing competition from private insurance companies. LIC had observed that the private insurance company’s agents are better equipped with laptops, and provide power point presentations to its prospective customers and are dressed in an executive style.

LIC has started training their agents to equip themselves with best methods and tools. Their first batch of training for 1000 agents would soon be completed and they would present themselves as 'Customer Relation Manager'.

They will storm the insurance market with a better image of the company. The major focus will on improving the lethargic government image of LIC into a modern and corporate image.

LIC is in the process of conducting interviews and select more agents that will be trained and designated as CRM. It is a one week training provided by the LIC at its Pune facility. The customer relation manager will also be provided with premium collection electronic devices.

How to prepare the Prospect File

1) Decide area of operation. Where would you be doing Business? Let us say take for an example: Area as Mumbai City. You decide to work from Borivali to Cuffe Parade on the western line only.

2) Divide your area of operation into four Zones. A Zone should be an Area where we can travel from one end of zone to the other end in 30 minutes like Haji Ali to Cuff Parade could be one Zone, Worli, Parel up to Haji Ali another zone.

3) Make a file of the prospecting call sheets given to you. The file should have at least 50 sheets.

4) Put partition cards after 12 sheets in such a way that there are four partition cards in the file denoting each Zone.

5) Write the name of a different zone on each of the partition cards.

6) Designate four days in a week purely for meetings with customers both new and follow up. Allot a different zone to each of those four days.

7) Paste the Schedule on the front inside cover of the file.

8) Fill up the prospect file with names, Tel no’s, addresses and reference details zone wise depending on where we would meet them. If we do not know where the person would prefer to meet then write his details in both zones – zone of residence as well zone of his office. If he stays in Santa Cruz and office is in Town write his details in both zones.

9) Whenever you want to fix appointments look at the schedule in the front inside cover of the file. Depending on the day and the zone allotted to that day, open the divider of that zone and take appointments for persons in that part of the prospect file.

10) If a customer is generally not available on the day allotted to that zone or if someone would meet you only on a particular day then change the schedule in that week to accommodate that person and then revert back to the original schedule in the following week. This should however be an exception than a rule.

11) Whenever you call a particular person enter the details of the call in the calling sheet provided to you. One calling sheet can accommodate 6 persons and 12 call details of each prospect. Enter the date of calling in the column provided for the date. Enter the name of the prospect if you spoke to him/her. If the prospect is not available then enter the name of the person you spoke to. Always enter the details in pencil so that you can extend the use beyond 12 calls. Enter short details of what the prospect told you.

12) Whenever you call the person again, read all the details of his previous calls so that you can an understanding of the situation. If he has asked to call after a month and if a month is not over you can skip calling that prospect.

7 PRINCIPLES OF PROSPECTING

Prospecting Principle No.1: Go on asking different Prospects on the same day till you get the desired no of appointments. How many calls do you need to make to get 5 appointments on a good day. No guesses , go on calling till you get 5 appointments.

Prospecting Principle No.2 : Go on asking the same Prospect on various occasions till he gives an appointment. How long should you call ? No guesses , till you get his appointment.If somebody says “No” it means “No” for the day. It does not mean No forever.

Prospecting Principle No.3 : Always be in front of ProspectsBe in front of prospects always as there is a time for each Prospect and he will buy when he wants not when you wantPeople who says “No” in one month may buy some other month, so always keep in front of people. You don’t know when they would be ready to buy.

Prospecting Principle No.4 : Dedication & CommitmentMany a time the customer will deliberately go on delaying and ask for more and more clarifications. What they want to check is your dedication and commitment. It’s an acid test you are put through.

Prospecting Principle No.5: Business of “No’s” Every one who meets a client expects a “Yes” but if one gets a “No” he gets upset and de-motivated. This business is a business of “No’s”.Try to collect as many “No’s” as possible because after some No’s there is bound to be a “Yes” Every 10 No’s. will be followed by one “Yes”. So how about collecting maximum “No’s” in a month.

Prospecting Principle No.6: Visiting FeesOne is paid 35% commission – Why? Not because of the one person who buys but it is a payment for all those people who did not buy. Visiting fees is equal to commission earned divided by the total meetings. Every meeting pays you.

Prospecting Principle No.7 : Meeting with a positive mind set sellsMost of the times we decide that a particular customer is not very potential and thus we are not able to make a good impact.