Are you closing as many health insurance leads as you want to? Is your pipeline full of health insurance leads? Are you turning consumers with questions into new clients?
If not, you might want to consider these eight proven tips for closing more health insurance deals.
1. Analyze your current portfolio of clients – This is really the most important step, but most often forgotten. Take a little time to really dive into your portfolio of current clients. First to see if there are additional services or adjustments you should be making considering the current market environment. The last thing you want is for them to go searching for insurance. Second, create a good profile of your ideal client. Outline where they came from, what they were looking for, and how you landed them as a client.
Given enough examples this should help you build a good marketing profile and effective sales process.
2. Buy health insurance leads – Now that you know what your ideal customer looks like it’s time to start talking to some of them. Unfortunately, marketing takes time to begin generating customers. You probably don’t have that kind of time. Don’t panic. There is a short-cut to getting qualified insurance leads. It’s really as simple as buying insurance leads that are filtered for your ideal customer.
Insurance lead providers are expert Internet marketing firms that market all day long, spending big budgets, and optimizing messages and conversion techniques to bring you a steady flow of insurance leads. You know what you want–simply ask the experts to bring you a few.
3. Get a lead management system – The one bad thing about buying Internet insurance leads is that they expect immediacy. They’re not going to hand you a phone number and say get back to me when you can. When these folks submit their name, telephone number, and email they expect a response–Now!
To accomplish this you need a lead management system that helps you get an initial email out, tracks your telephone contacts, keeps dripping on prospects with value messages, and continually pushes you to make one more call.
4. Develop a solid follow-up plan – With lead management software in place it’s easy to systematically touch your prospects and current clients. That is assuming you have done a little prior planning and outlined your follow-up plan. What do you want to say to your prospects at various points along the way. Do you need to alter that path is they respond, buy, or even say, “no?”
Outlining this plan into a series of sequential emails and call scripts will help you maintain regular and consistent follow-up. This is what closes lots of deals, consistently, over the long run.
5. Create effective call scripts – Nothing falls flatter than winging it on the telephone. You need to think about what you are going to say before you get on the phone. Take the time to build well thought out call scripts. Think through features, benefits, value statements, differentiators, and objections–before you get on the phone.
And don’t forget to practice them!
6. Make sure your policy processing is flawless – This is the most frequent failure I see in financial services sales processes. The sales part of the transaction is flawless. You get the customer excited, full of great expectations, and committed to your value. Then fulfillment falls flat. Processing the transaction and issuing the policy is a nightmare. You know what I mean: endless phone tag, misplaced documentation, constant requests to fax documents, missed appointments, etc.
They said, “yes” and then you put them through the wringer to get what they paid for–not good. Get your fulfillment as flawless and delightful as your sales process.
7. Design a lead nurturing system – Not everyone says, “yes.” Hard to believe, but true. However, there is a secret here. A very low percentage of people say, “yes” immediately. However, a very high percentage of people will say, “yes” in the next several months. Some studies I’ve read have tracked as many as 75% of sales prospects with convert to sales (somewhere) within twelve months.
That’s why you need to have a lead nurturing system. You need to keep those prospects warm and your services top of mind. They will convert. Make sure they are still in your sales pipeline when they do. Design a plan and execute on regular, valuable touches to every prospect. A combination of emails and follow-up calls.
8. Start a customer newsletter – One of the best ways to nurture prospects is to start a newsletter. Give your customers a regular reminder of how valuable a relationship with you can be. Send them valuable articles and update on the health insurance market. Now is a perfect time to consider this with so much change and volatility in health care and insurance reform.
These eight tips are great starting points to improving your closing ratios. Are you willing to commit for more clients? Which steps are you going to put into place today?
