Last night I read a great article on insurance sales leads generation that was talking about how many new agents put up some fancy web site online that have the full quote engines and look like a sales brochure.  Many of them fully expect this to make sales for them even while they sleep.  Turns out that it does not work out that way.  Even if the site gets a lot of traffic,  it does not translate into many sales because the glossy look does not translate well on the internet and the quote engine gives the visitor too much info without them knowing what they are actually looking at.

What you are basically doing is taking yourself out of the picture, which is the wrong thing to do.  You are the key element in the sales process.  The website should be a tool to generate leads for you to sell to, not an tool that sells the policies for you.  That is your job.  A cool looking website is not a magic bullet.

You can see this in other websites that are used in different services if you need some examples.  I was looking at a website a friend of mine had put up some time ago for his landscaping company.  It was absolutely beautiful, with flash animation, full of portfolio pictures of the company’s work and employees and everything.  The problem was even though this site has been up for years, he had never gotten a sales referral from the site, and the site ranked really well for a lot of good terms.

The problem was that the site did not get the core message across to the viewer and did not have a call to action.  The lead form also had too much barrier to it.  In effect, the viewer saw a pretty website with a lot of good pictures, thought “that’s nice” but just kept going on to other sites.

Speaking about the lead capture forms having too much barriers, this is another huge problem when it comes to agent websites.  They usually ask for too much info.  In fact, all you need is a name, number, and an email address.  Who cares about the rest?  You will find out that people would rather give another human being that info anyways rather than typing it all in on a website.  This will also let you start to establish a relationship with the person.

That is why I have a big problem with having quote engines on insurance websites.  They are throwing out numbers to people who don’t have a clue what they need.  They just know they need something, and in many cases would appreciate someone helping them understand what it is that they are purchasing.  A website usually can not do this, but if you can get basic contact info from a visitor, you can give them this info directly.

Anyways, here is a link to the article:  Glen’s Little Black Book of Insurance Leads

Although it is three years old, it should be required reading for any agent starting to set up a website.  The only thing I think has changed is getting an e-mail submit, because you can have an auto responder set up to drip market, but the whole article is right on target.

Thanks For reading my article on insurance sales leads generation.

Win

BLBX

What Browser are you Using?
Your web browser is the single most important piece of communications software on your computer. It is not only your window to the internet but also a great tool for organizing the websites that you use daily to market, to do sales presentations and to track your business.

To me, the best browser to use for online business is Flock. It is a version of Mozilla Firefox on steroids.  The thing I really like about it is the ability it has to effectively organize all of the websites you use, keeps up with all of your social media, like
Facebook, and is extraordinarily user friendly and also compatible with any operating system.
I could go on and on but it is best for you to try it yourself and see. I just don’t know how I got along without it before I found it.
Download Flock Browser

Download Flock
Version: 2.0 for Windows
Language: English

Most of the Firefox add ons work seamlessly with flock and there are several that I highly recommend.

Google Notebook

SEO for Firefox/Flock

Search Status

StumbleUpon

Twitter Bar

Congratulations! You have taken the first step to building your online presence.
This powerful browser will help you immensely in your online efforts as a health
insurance agent.

Cheers

Mac

Selling Health Insurance Online 101 for New Health Insurance Agents:  Getting Set Up to Sell Health Policies Online.

In this article I am going to be talking about hardware and getting set up to sell health insurance online.

1. Do not panic if you are technically challenged.

Lets look at your hardware first:

Your computer is the one of the most valuable assets when selling health insurance online.  If you have an older laptop or desktop this process might be pretty stressful to it (and you too) if you do not have it functioning where it will perform well.  In many cases you will have it doing more things at one time than it is used to, and believe me, there is nothing more frusrating than going through a health insurance sales presentation only to have technical difficulties and losing a sale.

On the exterior of your computer:

Look for the fan vents and make sure they are dust free.  Buy one of those cans of air to blow it out if needed.  If your computer is on constnatly you might want to do this on a weekly basis.  This will prevent overheating which will slow down or even lock up your computer.

Under the Hood:

You might want to consider upgrading your RAM (random acess memory.)  This determines how much your computer can do at one time and is fairly cheap to upgrade.  You might also want to have the thermal paste replaced on your processor chip. (again this prevents overheating, kind of like oil does for a car engine)  You can get all of this done at your local computer dealers like Best Buy or Radio Shack.

The Operating System:

One of the last steps you will want to take is to clean up your operating system so that you have a business like look to what you are doing.  File away or delete any unused icons on your desktop.

Set up a folder to keep everything organized for health insurance presentations:

You can see that it contains folders for each company (that contain sales materials and rating software) also shortcuts to various website I use for presentations, and some of the presentations tools I use such as ShowMyPC.   It is really important to keep this stuff well organized so that you do not have to fumble around during a presentation.

I now primarily use this as a place to store pdf files of advertising materials from the various health and life carriers and to keep the offline rating software, but in the beginning you need a good place to store everything you need in one place.  That way when you are ready to take the next step and set up an online health insurance sales presentation page you will have everything ready to go.

p.s. Click on the picture to ge a better veiw…

Set up a seperate e-mail address to keep track of everything:

This is really important.  You do not want to use your personal address that has personal and business email getting mixed up.  You will also want to turn off spam filters on your new email account becaus you do not want it to mistakenly catch leads, corespondence from clients, or notifications from carriers.  You can set these up at yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc.

Buy a Headset:

I would strongly suggest buying a headset and setting up with SKYPE to make calls through your computer.  Remember that you will be using your computer doing a health insurance sales presentation while on the phone, and trying to hold a handset between your shoulder and ear can get quite uncomfortable.  If you have an unlimited plan with your mobile phone be sure to get a Bluetooth Headset to save you from neck cramps.

That about does it for getting the hardware set up, next article will go over setting up your online health portals,  webconferencing tools, and setting up your health insurance sales presentation webpage.

Thank you for stopping by New Health Agent Solutions: Online Health Insurance Sales 101.

Selling health insurance via the internet is rapidly becoming a necessity for new health insurance agents to become and remain competitive in this industry. The next series of articles will address how to get started selling health insurance online, the various tools you will need, organizing the various portals and online resources for your health insurance presentations, actual new call scripts that lead directly into presentations (rather than just setting appointments), and a set of sales tips you can use to become more effective in online health sales.

I haven’t posted in awhile because I have been working hard to get this new process down to a workable system since August. This has been a long and drawn out process for me because I have always done face to face sales, but gas prices were killing my profits and this seemed like the logical way to go with my business.

Selling health insurance online has a lot of potholes to fall in for a newbie and I fell into about every one of them. On the outside it seemed like it would be much easier (and after you get to know what you are doing it actually is) but it comes with its own set of challenges. My purpose of writing these articles is to save you some of the pain I had to experience. I am going to start with a list of pros and cons so that you will have a good idea of what is involved with internet based health insurance sales v/s face to face sales:

Pros:
1. Saves a lot of gas.
2. Saves a lot of driving time.
3. Because of the above factors you are more inclined to write those smaller policies (that add up especially for your renewals) that you might of considered a waste of time and gas money.
4. If someone puts you off or refuses to buy you havn’t had to plan your whole day around them, it is easy to just say “NEXT!” and move on.
5. You can get to your real time leads much quicker, and edge out those that still rely solely on face to face appointments.
6. MY FAVORITE: You can go to the fridge when you are hungry or thirsty, (not to mention the toilet, one of my whacko friends actually sold a policy while sitting on the throne, is that nuts or what?) After a few years of riding all over my state it is nice not having to find some hole in the wall to get something to eat, not to mention that fast food and mountain dew was killing me (and costing me quite a bit also.)
7. Aged leads become much more profitable. (More on this later)

Cons:
1. Attrition can be fairly high, especially if you are used to only setting appointments via the phone.
2. Competiton is intense on fresh leads, you have to focus on being first in line and convert the conversation into a presentation and sale for those who are ready to make a decision.
3. Some people are still scared to business online.
4. You have to have your presentation well organized on your computer.
5. Technical difficulties (on your or the customers end, that last Facebook virus screwed up two of my customer’s computers and I had to put off presentations, two other agents got it on their computers the same week and almost crippled them for a few days)
6. Your potential client is more likely to lie to you or hang up on you. Just think about it, you can’t see if they weigh a lot, smell if they smoke, or see their pill bottles. It is also a lot harder for someone to tell you to get of their house that to just hang up a phone.

Don’t worry though. In the next few posts I will show you how to set up everything right, show you the strategies I have come up with to overcome the obvious problems, and give you some interesting tips that my mentor has come up with so that you can hit the ground running.

So with that, I am wrapping up this first post, Internet Health Insurance Sales 101 for New Health Insurance Agents, and hope to see you back as I get the other articles published for you.

Are you considering becoming a health insurance agent, or a new health insurance agent just getting your feet wet? I am here to help you succeed.

Just feel free to browse around and read my posts and hopefully you will pick up some good ideas about what it is like to work as a health insurance agent, or if you are already started use this as a resource to get on the right track.

Being a health insurance agent is very challenging, but if you can learn to do it well it is very rewarding.  The best reward is knowing that you are providing people with a product that protects them in their times of greatest need.

Thanks for stopping by and have a look around!

Categories

• 1. my story
• 2. Getting Started In Health Insurance
• 3. Health insurance Lead Generation
• 4. Health insurance Prospecting and Sales Presentations
• 5. Running your new Health Insurance Business

In helping new agents to succeed in the health insurance business I realized that it would be good for them to have a source of reference to look at to get ideas and develop better methods of doing business.  Many new agents do get initial training but are so overwhelmed by new information that they can not possibly retain all the information they are given to start off with.

I have been reading different insurance forums for awhile such as ampminsure to find out information on different health insurance topics.  This was a very good source of information but I also wanted to have a lot of good information all in one place for new health insurance agents.  I started out by publishing a small website but I had no real way of promoting it and the design part was very tedious and time consuming.  I started realizing that a blog would be the way to go.

I have been reading different insurance forums for awhile such as  to find out information on different health insurance topics.  This was a very good source of information but I also wanted to have a lot of good information all in one place for new health insurance agents.  I started out by publishing a small website but I had no real way of promoting it and the design part was very tedious and time consuming.  I started realizing that a blog would be the way to go.I have been reading different insurance forums for awhile such as  to find out information on different health insurance topics.  This was a very good source of information but I also wanted to have a lot of good information all in one place for new health insurance agents.  I started out by publishing a small website but I had no real way of promoting it and the design part was very tedious and time consuming.  I started realizing that a blog would be the way to go.

I then started researching ways to set up a blog and promote it.  The internet was full of ways to set up blogs and promote them, but a large percentage of what I found were site promoting the general theme of “become an overnight millionaire blogging on the internet.”  Being that that is not my purpose in doing a blog for new health agents, I started looking for real information on how to make this work.

I then started researching ways to set up a blog and promote it.  The internet was full of ways to set up blogs and promote them, but a large percentage of what I found were site promoting the general theme of “become an overnight millionaire blogging on the internet.”  Being that that is not my purpose in doing a blog for new health agents, I started looking for real information on how to make this work.I was looking for information on another health insurance subject and found InsuranceMaze’s insurance blogging blog, which provided me with all the answers on doing this that I needed.  This blog is a easy to understand, soup to nuts blog that gives you all the steps to start your own insurance blog.

So now I have started this blog to provide new health insurance agents with solid information on getting started the right way and will continue to post new articles weekly for your use.

Last month when I opened my cell phone bill I was shocked.  I had went over my minutes by a few hours and my bill was well over $400 dollars.  I had been using my mobile phone for my health insurance business from home and had reserved the land line for personal calls.  I am also stuck in a cell phone contract that will not let me switch to an unlimited plan for several months, so I had a dilemma as to how to reduce my communications expense.

After looking for alternatives I decided to give Skype a try.  It was one of the least expensive programs out there and I could make unlimited calls through my computer for $3 dollars a month.  I downloaded the software and signed up for the $3 subscription and tried it out by calling several friends.  I also purchased a headset (I found a cheap one at Big Lots for $4, Wal-Mart and Best Buy have nicer ones starting at $15).

The first thing I noticed was how clear the calls were.  The headset also cut down on the background noise and left my hands free to use the computer.  One of my friends made me aware of one problem though, when I called my number showed up on his caller ID as unknown caller, so he had now way of calling me back.  After looking at my account at Skype I saw what I had missed.

I needed an online number, which Skype provides for $30 per year or $12 per 3 months.  (you can choose any are code in the US so that it matches the area codes you are calling, and this also will give people a local number on which they can call you back at).  This also sets you up with an online voice mail in case you miss an incoming call or are on the line with someone else.

I then wanted to try this out by calling some of my leads.  When I opened up a lead in my in box the coolest thing happened…   The phone numbers on my leads were hi-lited with a little phone sign beside them.  I clicked on the number and Skype instantly dialed the number.  I noticed it was doing the same thing on websites I visited.

All being said, Skype is a very useful and inexpensive tool that is saving me both time and money.  I was actually able to reduce my cell plan minutes, and I can call more leads in a shorter amount of time.  Best of all is the reduction of neck pain coming from trying to hold my cell phone between my head and shoulder while trying to run a quote or do a presentation.

click here to download and sign up

As a new health insurance agent your budget is usually very tight and your schedule is packed full of new things to learn, new prospects to get in contact with, and having to fit in personal time so that you don’t get burned out, and, by the way, you need to fit in some time for making income.

Nothing is more frustrating than slotting a time in your busy schedule to drive and see a health insurance prospect, do a full presentation, and return home, just to have some inconsiderate person not even bother to show up (or even worse, be in the house and refuse to answer the door). The wase of expensive gas certainly does not ease the pain either…

In this article we will go over a few tips that work well to reduce no shows.

1. Do you ask for directions?

It is now so easy to find our way to a potential health insurance prospect’s home or business.  All one has to do is mapquest or rely on a GPS device.  Remember when you had to ask for directions to get where you were going?

Now imagine giving someone directions to your house from a town at least one hour away.  I bet you could visualize each turn and some landmarks along the way.  The same is true when you ask for directions from a health insurance prospect.  They visualize the trip you will have to make to get to them.  This makes them realize to a greater extent the time and effort that you are putting forth to help them and to make a living as a health insurance agent.

It also doesn’t hurt to ask if there is a gas station nearby because you might need to refuel on the way home.

2.  Do not give your health insurance prospect an instant out when giving your contact info.

This one is simple.  Too many time I have heard new health insurance agents make the mistake at the end of setting an appointment:  “here is my cell phone number xxx-xxx-xxxx.  Please call me if anything comes up.”

This gives the health insurance prospect an instant out.  Instead give them your contact info in the following way: “here is my cell phone number, xxx-xxx-xxxx, please call me with any questions you might have for me, or better yet write them down so i can answer them all when I get there.  That way nothing gets left out.”

This sets the expectation to the health insurance prospect that you intend on seeing them and that you will be there to help.

3.  Don’t make confirmation calls too early.

Wait until you are actually in the car and have just cranked it up to make your confirmation call.  Tell the prospect you are in the car and on your way.

This also creates a visualization for your health insurance prospect of the effort you are putting in to come and help them.

These three tips combined every time will greatly reduce the number of no shows you have and make your health insurance business more profitable by not wasting so much gas and your most valuable asset: TIME

This past week I had a health agent contact me about the difficulty he was having explaining the benefits of association group health insurance coverage to a potential health client.  He ended up losing the sale to a individual health policy that was only $10 cheaper on the monthly premium.

I know that a majority of our readers are health agents who write health insurance policies for the large captive agencies that offer association group health insurance policies, so I wanted to share a cool visual that really helps a potential health client to fully understand the benefit of association group health policies.

In most states , when presenting an association group health policy, the health insurance must present the association group first.  The biggest benefit to association group health insurance protection offers is that the member’s premiums are determined by the usage of the entire group (risk pool) whereas an individual policies premium is determined by the individuals claims.

The way that health insurance premiums are determined is:

rate (regulated by state DOI) x  risk pool (there can be up to seven on individual policies, only one on association group) = premium.

Ever had a health insurance prospect unable to grasp this?

Here is a good visual to add into your presentation to give your health insurance prospect a much better way of understanding the benefit that association group health insurance will have to them over the long term.

First pull out the book that contains the association benefits and place it to the side but in the health insurance prospect’s immediate view.  Proceed to tell your prospect about the association and that it offers many valuable benefits outside of the health insurance but the greatest benefit is in the group health protection that the association offers the ask this question exactly this way:

What is your understanding about how group protection works?

Most will answer “I don’t know.” Any answer is good though.

Now pull out Seven of your business cards and place them on the table longways side by side and ask the health insurance prospect if they know about risk pools.  After they answer tell them:

rate (regulated by state DOI) x  risk pool (there can be up to seven on individual policies, only one on association group) = premium.

Then ask them what risk pool they start out with and point to the first card.  Ask the health insurance prospect witch one they would be placed in if they had a major ($50,000) claim.  Point out the fifth card and ask if they would be willing to pay five times as much for their insurance.

Now stack up the seven cards and tell them that this represents the protection of association group health insurance.  There is only one risk pool.  Ask them the same question, which one would they be placed in for a $50,000 claim.  Point at the stack.  A $100,000 claim? Point at the stack. A million dollar claim? Point at the stack.

You will see that they really get the point.

Then hand them the stack and tell them if they know of anybody they know of would like the same sort of protection that they are about to get (remember to assume the sale) you would love to hear from them, because you are there to help.

You will be surprised at how this closes your sales from the start and also generates great referrals.

Good Luck

As a health insurance agent you see and hear all the economic adversity there is in the health insurance marketplace.  Prospects have much less money to go around and often health insurance is one of their last priorities.  Gas and food prices are much higher making it more costly for health insurance agents to business.  You may be feeling like throwing in the towel and giving up but there is hope…

Have you ever heard the saying “when things get tough the tough get going?”  Of course you have. Don’t worry, this is not going to be some motivational fluff for health insurance agents, but rather some real world boots on the ground ideas that can help you grow your health insurance business while times are tough and others around you fail miserably (because they are buying into that excuse).

Tip 1:  Increase your health insurance marketing efforts because your competiton is lessening theirs.

Lately I have run across a new situation when calling health insurance leads.  I seem to be the only one calling them or one of a few health insurance agents calling them.  Just a few months ago when calling internet health insurance leads I was competing against at least five to ten other agents for every single prospect.

Another thing that is happening is an increased level of calls from prospects in response to my signs and other health insurance advertising.  They are getting noticed better because of decreased advertisement from my health insurance competitors.

Tip 2:  Diversify your health insurance portfolio

Lately I have had an increase of products beside the core health plans I carry.  These include cancer, disease, accident, disability, and discount medical plans.

One reason for increased sales in these is that they are usually much more affordable than underwritten core health insurance plans and people are buying what they can afford in order to have any kind of health coverage.

Another reason is that many larger companies are doing away with these type benefits just to cut costs enough to provide a group health plan.

Tip 3:  Look for employees at companies that are under financial duress.

Many of these companies are doing away with their group health plans altogether just to stay in business.

Last week I came across a Major US company that is starting to provide a fixed amount to employees to purchase their own insurance because their group health policy was endangering their profitability.

Tip 4:  Look for individuals who own businesses in industries having tough times.

Good example right now:  Mortage brokers, real estate agents and contractors.  Many of these people have expensive individual health policies and need to cut back on their premiums in order to weather these tough times.

Okay, here is one motivational saying that is true:

Often the only difference between those who succeed and those who fail is that those who succeed hang on after everybody else lets go.

Don’t give up and don’t let go.  Let adversity be your opportunity.