How to use your local newspaper as a prospecting tool.

Your local newspaper is full of prospects that you need to contact.

The best time to talk to someone is during a life changing event. Like getting married, having a baby, or someone that has just lost a family member. The newspaper has all of these things.

I guess this would be part of the buying on emotions that I have talked about before.

I will first talk about the baby announcements. Having a newborn baby is like no other feeling in the world. It is a happy and scary time all at the same time for most parents. Agents have been contacting new born parents for ages about life insurance. Some even go to the hospital and bring the new parents a gift and talk to them about life insurance. I can tell you that this does work also. But I'm going to stick with direct mail pieces at this time. I want you to think just like a new born father thinks. You want the best for you child. You just want to protect that new child from the world and make sure that nothing bad ever happens to the child. You are even thinking about if your child will go to college or not. One thing that you are not thinking about is what will happen to this child future if and when you die. You have a new responsibility to protect this child from this event. If something happens to the new father or mother, the child should still be able to go to college and maintain their current lifestyle. I think it is important for the new parents to buy life insurance on themselves and the new born child. It is something that no parent ever wants to think about, but it does happen. As insurance agents we see this all the time.

Another life changing even would be just getting married. This is in the newspapers wedding announcements section. It is important to protect the person that you just married with life insurance. It is something that we must make the clients think about. A lot of people that just get married also buy a new home. Buying Life Insurance is an important step to any marriage. At least the wife's think so. Trust me; the wife's are already thinking about it. I don't blame them.

Okay, I'm going to talk about the obituaries for a second. I want to stop and say, that this must be done in a tasteful manner. There is no bigger life changing even then losing someone that you love. There is no bigger time that people think about death then at a funeral. The last thing anyone should have to worry about at a funeral is bills. I wish that everyone had life insurance but they don't. We have all been to funerals where they had to pass the hat to collect enough money just to pay for the funeral. It is sad and no family deserves this. I'm also going to stop and say that you want to just write down these names, and have a waiting period before mailing these clients. You do not want to tell them, that you got their names from the newspaper. There are several different methods that agents use. One is to act like you are just mailing them randomly and do not know they just lost someone. Another way is to approach them about losing their loved ones. Again in a tasteful manner. I purchased my own personal life insurance on myself, before I was married or a life agent, when I lost my brother at 26 years old. I thought a lot about dying and death at the time. Every funeral I go to, I think about death. I've even been to funerals where I thought to myself, I'm glad this is not my family that doesn't have enough money to pay for the funeral or take care of the family. I've even heard others say, that the deceased should have bought life insurance so his family would have not had to go through this. If you could be a mind reader at a funeral, there is no telling what thought you would hear. I'm not trying to make a joke on this either. I don't think I need to stop and tell you about emotions at a funeral or losing your loved one to death.

I know someone will ask me, so the answer is yes. I have done all three of these methods in the past. The answer is yes, they all three worked for me personally. This was something that I was trained to do, and at the time the insurance companies would even give us what to mail to them.

A lot of the clients that I helped were grateful that I was there to protect their families and they wanted to make sure, that if something happens to them that their loved ones would not have to worry about money.

I wanted to share this with you all. This may work for someone of you.

Direct mail is the best way to contact these people, but is not the only way.

You can brainstorm with this idea and I hope others agents can add some positive ideas to make this idea even better. I'm trying to bring some old school sales ideas, to some of the new agents. I did not invent this idea, but was taught it in my early life insurance days.

No one likes to think about death, but it is our job to make them. It is also our job to protect them and make sure they have a plan of protection. 

<< Previous    1...   7  8  [9]  10  11  ...27    Next >>