Blog

Prospecting can be the most difficult part of an insurance agent’s job. You can do it actively—scouring places like LinkedIn or visiting your local business organizations to find those who need the insurance you sell—or you can do it passively, with a properly SEO-optimized website and a good referral program, among other ideas. Here are a few tips for driving insurance prospects to your business.

Know who you’re looking to work with. Before you can build a good prospecting plan, you need to know who you want to attract. No doubt you offer more than one type of coverage, which is good business sense—but you’ll want to attract different types of prospects for different insurance products. Instead, position yourself as a specialist in every type of insurance you sell.

Develop a plan for generating referrals. If you’re good at what you do, chances are you’ll get a trickle of referrals through happy customers. But many people would happily refer you if you specifically asked—and even more if you asked and offered a reward for those who do it. Make sure your existing customers know all about your rewards program—feature it prominently in all your sales and marketing literature, on your website, and in your email signature, among other places.

Find out where your prospects hang out. This is crucial to do both online—where your prospects might be found primarily on LinkedIn, Twitter, or other places—and offline, at local business and insurance organizations. It might take some time to figure out exactly where to go to reach the people you most want to sell to—but the effort will be worth it.

Follow up on your leads. The difference between successful and less-effective prospecting can often be found in the follow-up. Always follow up on prospects quickly—no more than a day or so after your first conversation—with an email or phone call that demonstrates you remember what you talked about originally.

Prospecting can be difficult—but with some work beforehand and a solid plan in place, you can both bring in passive leads and attract prospects through your active efforts. Know where to go to target your leads; follow up quickly; develop a formal referral program; and know exactly who you want to target. With these steps, prospecting is likely to get significantly more effective.