Is it possible to breakthrough in online marketing for life insurance with a small marketing budget? YES. Absolutely 100%, yes. 1,000 times yes.
Do many agents breakthrough into selling life insurance over the phone with small marketing budgets? NO.
The reason is most life insurance agents are lazy. Plain and simple.
If an agent were to make 50 brand new cold sales/marketing calls every day, you will be successful just as quickly as the agent pouring $2000/mo into their marketing. In my opinion, you’ll have a stronger business in the long run.
You just need the right direction on who to call and what to say. It’s all about strategy on who to target and positioning yourself. Make 50 of these cold calls and emails a day (which may take you 2 hours tops) and you’re well on your way to a steady stream of referrals. Remember, this is cold calling for referrals, not to sell a life insurance policy.
But who has the perseverance and confidence in themselves to make all these calls? Very few.
Most agents seem to gravitate to low friction sales activities that produce poor results and that’s why the success rate is so low.
All the advertisements to buy life insurance leads inundate your inbox and follow you around the web so you think that’s what you have to do. 99% of uplines have no clue on how to build an online life insurance business in our shifting industry, so they tell you to buy leads, sell your family/friends and ask for referrals, go to networking events etc. It’s just not a sustainable way to build a business unless you’re very well connected.
You have 2 choices to make it selling life insurance over the phone:
1. Invest in your inbound marketing strategy.
2. Hustle your ass off building a referral network.
I did both to build my business. It took time for me to build my first website up to provide me with enough leads to handle. In the meantime, I made 750 dials a day (4 hours on a 3-line dialer) calling aged life insurance leads until I got to the point where I didn’t need to anymore because my website was generating enough leads. I wasn’t wasting away with one foot in this business and the other one out.
I will say this, dialing aged leads worked for me not only because of the sales I made, but because of the database of prospects I built up over that year. I’m still reaping sales from the efforts I made 3 years ago. However, knowing what I know now, I would be calling on potential partnerships and referral relationships.
Here’s why:
I have 1 relationship that like clockwork, places $3k-$5k in business every month – it’s been this way since June of 2012. I ripped this relationship away from another agency who made a few mistakes and didn’t pay them enough attention. I have another relationship that sends me at least 1 $5k+ case every other month – I chased this guy down after helping one of his clients and now I get all of his referrals (he’s an annuity guy). I have a bunch of other local referral sources that send me referrals every now and again and if I put them all together, I would make a great living (from anywhere with an internet connection) without my websites. I hustled to get these and I service these referrals like it were my own family. No one can pry these referral sources from me.
My point is that if you have a small marketing budget – you can still sell life insurance over the phone. You just need to come up with a strategic marketing plan and hustle to get it.
