Cold Door Prospecting

Hi All,

We today I hit a local nieghborhood and cold door knocked trying to sell life insurance. It's Saturday so a bunch of folks were home.  Made my job easier and got to meet some nice people.

I picked an area known for having lots of children and family oriented. The object was to find a need for term, UL or IUL.

I have one particular prospect that claims to be an occasional cigar smoker, so I will have to figure out how to rate him.  My other prospect looks like a clean deal that should fly through underwritiing quickly. If it does and gets approved commish should be about $650.

Not bad for 2 hours of work!

I am also licensed in property and casualty. I am curious to see how many knocks it takes to get a sale on the P&C side. One agent I heard of average 20 knocks, gives 4 quotes and sells one policy. 20/4/1  Problem for me is I am not contracted to offer P&C products at this time.

November Update

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I plan to spend the afternoon visiting a suburban community of Dallas TX. Middle class, but has a large "family" demographics. I'd bet every third home probably has children living there.

So selling life insurance to this targeted market seems to make scene to me. The local police dept. made me get a solicitors permit. I am in possession of it now. I just hope wearing this ID does not make me look like the IRS and no one wants to answer their door!

I have had this blog up for 6 months now and have only done just a little bit of cold door soliciting.  It takes a certain mindset to do this.  But I want to have fun doing this so I am going to make it fun. I plan to do live video shoots in the field as well as take photos.  I will tell you numbers of appointments set, what i sell and how much I make.

My guess is new rookie insurance agents may take interest in this so they can get ideas on how to generate their own free insurance leads.

This weekend I am looking for term and UL prospects. My job will be to show prospects the need and to get them to understand why they need it. Basically if I can get a conversation started at the door about life insurance, half the battle is over!

Go to my twitter page for updates: https://twitter.com/txlifeinsure
Follow me too.

Videos and images will be linked from here and there for your viewing. Stay tuned and tell your fellow associates about this.  Subscribe to my blog too.

Thank you.  Gary

Door to Door Sales

Well, it has been a while since I last posted which was during the summer time when it was hotter than F*** here.

The door knock marketing that I had intended to do was suspended due to the weather conditions here in Dallas. Next summer, I will have an alternative marketing plan in place to sell life insurance.

Anyway, now it is November and the weather is descent. I have someone who can watch my 2 little kids during the day, so I am getting ready to hit the streets once again!  I got my pitch ready and I feel more confident about discussing life insurance with a complete stranger that I do not know. Knowing the underwriting guidelines for insurance products is very important.

Heres the plan and what you could expect. Knocking on someones door does not seem like an enjoyable task, but other have informed me that it works and I could make alot of money. So here we go...

As an added twist, when I am out in the field, I will be using my Blackberry to do some live videos as well as capture photos of this experience...

You can watch the show, if you want to call it that on my twitter account:

Click: Insurance Door to Door Sales Which is: https://twitter.com/TXLifeInsure


I will also upload content here as well. be sure to follow me at twitter though, as I will follow you too.

Insurance Door Canvassing in Hot Weather

Door canvassing for insurance during the month of August in Dallas still continues to suck. 104 degrees to day and looking at 106 on Tuesday. The rest of the week looks nasty too. So in the mean time I have decided to do some online marketing and SEO for my life insurance lead generation website. It's getting a little bit of traffic now, but I think I should step it up and begin using it as an additional funnel of life insurance leads.

I don't remember if mentioned this in another posting but a few weeks ago I passed out 150 door hanger flyers and placed them on houses in North Irving. I got 1 phone call from those. The door hanger flyer was on yellow paper, the next time I am going to use a different color. Some say 150 is not enough to know what a good pull rate would be, but I do have a good feeling that this particular flyer could pull 6 calls for every 1,000 passed out. Hitting a thousand doors is alot of work though. At least one sale from those 6 calls is definitely achievable.

Ideally I'd like to see 1 call for every 75 flyers passed out, considering just about every third house, on a given street has no or inadequate life insurance.

Also the message on the door hanger has to be tested too, to get an idea of response rates and tweeking it to improve those response rates.

I don't mind passing out life insurance door hangers / flyers. The walking is great exercise. I really need to get rid of by small beer gut! The other benefit to passing out flyers to houses in regards to this door knock canvassing project, is that when you pass out flyers, it makes you more comfortable walking up to the doors and approaching homes. Kind of reduces that cold door knock reluctance.

Life Insurance Sales

A career in life insurance sales can be rewarding in several ways, as well as it can be lucrative!  And I mean lucrative. But there is a catch and if your in this business you already know what it is... It is being able to prospect and see the people. Then see more people. Talk to them and find out what is going on with them. According to LIMRA 41% of people in the USA just do not have life insurance or have little coverage. To me I look at it as every other person really needs proper life insurance coverage.

 I chose life insurance sales to help me learn about how to properly protect my family and to discover how to use it as a college funding and retirement planning vehicle. 

 I am not interested in gambling my money in: the stock market, 401ks and mutual funds. Every time I do, even in up markets I always lose money on those things. So safe investment vehicles is the only way I will put my money. However life insurance is not an investment, but when utilized correctly, I can find many advantages to use it to my benefit!

This is one of the many reasons I enjoy selling life insurance policies. Because when you really understand how they work financially, there are many benefits and protection to be had. However an experienced life insurance salesman can explain your options, once you explain to him what your financial situation is.

Another thing about buying life insurance for you, your family or your business. Do not wait and try to figure out when a good time to buy it is. At least fill out an application with a life insurance sales professional, get conditional coverage while the life insurance carrier does their background check and medical exams. This way you'll at least be covered and thinking about it, in case something happens. Once your application is approved, then you'll have the protection your loved ones deserve.  I really like life insurance sales as a career.

August - Dallas - Working Outside

OOO Doggie it's HOT outside! 


Try 106 degrees for the past few days with a heat index of about 112 degrees. It's days like this that have me seriously considering cold calling to generate leads. (Personally I hate telephone work, as I was once a call center telephone reservation agent for SouthWest Airlines and took over 100 calls a day to take reservations from people I really would of preferred not talking to.) 

Anyway..  It looks like this heat will continue into the second week of August here in North Texas. I've heard that Oklahoma is just getting hammered with heat. OKC I believe hit 111 today and that does not count the heat index.


I am so frustrated and want to get out there and meet the folks. I have a great pitch (in my opinion) that I feel will build relationships, but not necessarily result in a one knock sale. But that is OK. I am looking for long term stable results. 


Yeah anyway this really heat sucks. I don't think it is appropriate for me to knock on someones door, when I, as an insurance professional, should wear shorts and a t-shirt or polo, dripping in sweat, feeling dizzy and knocking on doors looking ridiculous. This is where the line is drawn.


Safety and health always come first. Secondly, I do not want to look like a desperate idiot when introducing myself as the local life insurance agent.


Looks like I need the evening temperature to be below 95 degrees to avoid the sweaty desperate look. So, for now life insurance prospecting door knocking here in Dallas / Irving is still on hold.


However, being smart, I am leveraging my free time in the evenings to learn about life insurance products and underwriting guidelines and I am starting to seriously look at selling annuities too.


When I am able to hit the streets and sell, I will be posting my results. For now I am expecting for every 60 door knocks to result in a life insurance sale. I have been holding back on my pitch and flyers. But What I plan to present to prospects will really capture their attention and hopefully wake them up from their day to day trance. Stay tuned. Next update will be in about 7 days unless the heat resides.

End of July Update

Well, door knock reluctance still continues. I am working on that. My wife is being a pain in my ass and being unsupportive in this venture and method of marketing. She feels it is time for me to get a JOB.


I might have to if I don't start hitting this hard. I am in Dallas TX. It is 100 degrees every day, One problem I am having is... how would someone feel when a sweaty 48 year old man shows up at their door pitching life insurance? In a sense, seems kind of strange. This is the thought that is not making me too excited to go out and door knock, but I should! Plus sometimes I wonder who in the heck is going to awnser the door!


So lets examine whats really going on here:


My subconscious is finding ways to inhibit me from achieving sucess, by keeping me safe (staying in my comfort zone - because that is what subconscious is comfortable with) and secondly...


Fear!


Being afraid of the unknown. However, once known, fear will be gone. So I have 2 choices at this point. I can let fear win and start getting a secure hourly wage / salary position which will provide me and my family a mediocre life.


OR


I can just walk up to a door and knock on it and introduce myself! Plus the more I do it, law of large numbers suggests that success will be achieved. Meaning if I knock on 60 doors and make one sale and earn $700 then...Every time I knock on 60 doors I will make $700!  For the most part, give or take a few doors. However in life insurance there are a lot of unhealthy people in the United States and smokers so commissions could be much more like $1000 to $3000 or more for just one sale. If you smoke, expect to pay double for individual life insurance coverage.


There is surely potential in door knocking and door canvassing for life insurance sales. I have been researching others who do it (door knocking for sales) and those who don't do it, who reject the idea.


Those that don't do it have alot of reasons why they don't do it and they feel superior for some reason. Some of the reasons are quite convincing on why one shouldn't be doing it, but I don't buy it.  Seems these guys have bankrolls to spend on advertising, leads and rather people come to them.


Those that do door knock or do door to door canvassing for life insurance sales do get rejected by people, but when they do find a prospect, that prospect is exclusive. There is NO other agent calling them. I am hearing stories of agents knocking 30 doors and getting a sale in 2 to 3 hours!


Imagine making $600 for 3 hours of work!  Well it is happening every day. It's happening every day. You just don't know about it, because these guys really ain't sharing their stories. But I can find them.


This is big and important stuff. My neighbor told me that they know of a guy here in Dallas who is a body builder and trainer who also sells final expense (burial insurance) only by knocking on doors. He earns $2000 a week doing this. Works about 4 days a week.


** If you are just starting to read my story about my adventures in selling insurance... Let me briefly mention that I am a stay at home dad, with two little kids and my wife works during the day. So this really restricts my ability to go out and hit the streets to do what I need to do.


I told my wife that we really need to get a baby sitter so I can do this full time and work the business real hard. But of course she gave me grief tonight about that and doubts my selling abilities and the need for life insurance for families and even businesses.


This is a big problem...


The story continues, find a way to subscribe to this rss feed.

Door Knock Reluctance

Door Knock Reluctance Sucks - But it Happens

I set out to knock on doors last Saturday where I would introduce myself and provide the prospect with my 4 question self review survey. But it did not happen, Door Knock Reluctance kicked in. I did not expect it. I believe in what I offer, which is life insurance and basically everyone should have it, but I could not present it.

That's OK, back up plan in place. that is to go out again and knock on doors. But now that I know more about what to expect, it seems easier this time.  So as I mentioned before, this up coming Monday, I plan to hit the streets and see what happens with door knocking to sell life insurance polices.

End of June Door Knock Update

Well I got approved for my door to door solicitors permit for the city I live in. Having a government issued ID, in my opinion will add credibility when I greet home owners.

The door knocking should start around the 2nd week of July.  This week I was invited by by IMO to do some cold calling on a dialer as well as receive some training on how to handle the calls.  So I think I will learn a lot about over coming objections and building relationships.

Stay tuned, subscribe to rss feed.

Delays

Looks like there may be some delays for what I set out to do. Looks like were about to get 2 days of rain and thunderstorms her in Dallas TX.  I don't even have my permits solicitors permits yet and there are few other issues that I need to tend to. Stay tuned. As a licensed insurance agent I do not take chances and always comply with the law. When permits arrive, I'll start bruising my knuckles!

Sales Presentation Preparation

Ok, It is the weekend... and this morning I started getting all of these thoughts in my head that knocking on strangers doors is dangerous.  Then I started thinking maybe this isn't a good idea and perhaps I should seek another prospecting technique. But I have no money to do marketing, either I knock or look for something else to do. Then while having these doubts, I was thinking maybe I should delete this blog so I don't look like a fool.

Later in the day I was thinking about my purpose and what I wanted in life and then I came to the realization then my mind is F***ing with me and not to listen to it.

My mission: Stay focused.
My objective: for prospecting: 1. Knock on doors in both bad neighborhoods and upper income neighborhoods. Track results. Discover both what Im prefer and which may be more lucrative. (I offer everything from final expense to SPWL to IUL) Not doing medicare for now. But may.

My 1st goal: Set appointments from door knock marketing. This means the person who answered the door likes me and may even trust me, to some limited degree for now. As such, this will get me in the home soon, like a day or 2 and hopefully sitting at their kitchen table.

If I truly find their needs and I am able to help them with the life insurance products I have, I will find a way to put some ink on an application.

Here is where I am at as of now... Next week: Tuesday and Wednesday June 12 and 13, When it will be 99 degrees outside in Dallas TX, I plan to it the streets in the North Central Dallas TX area. I'm 100% sure that I will be the only life insurance agent in Dallas knocking on doors, If I see another agent knocking on doors... It will totally blow me away!!!!!!!

Anyway, I am nervous about this and feeling anxiety. However, this project that I am about to embark and implement could be the biggest waste of my time  and effort ever or I could discover something in the next few days that is going to bring my career the next level which is... I found a great way to earn an income and help people who really need my help. Rinse and repeat as much as possible.

I have a 6 page article that I keep bookmarked in my browser that has given me a totally different opinion on insurance sales and made me realize why I was failing in the past and what I can do now to become a success. The article is called: The Common Denominator of Success


If you sell for a living click the link, opens in a separate window and read the article, it will change everything you believe about selling. Changed me enough to give me enough confidence to create this blogger blog and enough balls to start door knocking. Check it out.

Lastly, back to the first paragraph here... It seems only in the mornings, I get these feelings of insecurity and self doubts, but later in the day, I feel more confident about decisions I make. For now I am going to try hard to ignore insecurities and self doubt thoughts. Seems like another force is in action trying to prevent me from potentially achieving success which this  potential will hopefully be discovered in the next few days.

Stay tuned. 

Getting Set Up

The time of this posting is June 8, 2012 and I am preparing my life insurance door knocking strategy. Apparently just walking up to any door and not having something planned out like what to say and do, may not be a good idea.

Having a great though out plan and working that plan will yield much better results. My first objective when I door knock and talk to someone is not to sell a policy then and there, because in most cases it wont happen anyway.

At the door, the following goals are needed to be achieved:

1. Introduce my self and get a flyer into their hand. (more about this "certain flyer" later but it could be the center piece for a conversation then and there!)
2. Engage the person I just met with friendly chat and get them to lower their force field by letting them know I am not selling anything.
3. If I am able to get them to talk about life insurance, then my next objective will be to get them to answer a prospecting questionnaire (simple needs analysis) to see whats is going on with them. They may or may not qualify for what i can offer.
4. If successful filling out the questionnaire, I will set up an appointment for the next day to present quotes for coverage, the insurance companies that they may qualify with (especially final expense cases) and try to get them to fill out an application for life insurance.

In real life It's probably not going to happen like I outlined above. That is why I am posting to this blog. It is to post what I discover works, when I get out in the field next week doing this.

The reason I post this information is because it creates accountability. Here I am posting what I do to generate business for selling life insurance door to door. Once my readership builds up, I will become accountable for what I do when I prospect, otherwise I will look like a failure if I posted all of this stuff and did not do anything.

I am self employed. I do not have a boss. (Thank God!) But I feel that if I tell a bunch of people of what I am going to do, then the better I do, so I do not look like a fool. If I do what I set out to do in my door knocking prospecting mission, it is possible that I could achieve some amazing financial rewards, that being commissions. I got to make a living and pay the bills, just so happens that I genuinely like the life insurance business and I am my own client. I buy everything that I sell.

My wife says I'm worth more dead than alive!! But that's just the term life policy. Soon I will be using indexed universal life insurance to set up a tax free retirement. There is something very interesting I recently found out that a bunch of the haters to IUL's are not aware of and if they were, their opinions would change. More on that soon. Not prospecting for that type of product yet, maybe in the fall, when I have totally learned and mastered that niche and available products.

So what will I be pitching door to door?

Two  life insurance niches....

The First; Final expense / burial insurance in low income neighborhoods.

The Second; Term life insurance. It's not that I want to sell term life, it is cheap, takes long to underwrite and it can get me into a home for a needs analyses to find out if other types of life insurance products may also be a good fit for that prospect and their family.

Life Insurance Door to Door Sales

This is the first posting to this blog about selling various types of life insurance polices door to door. For starters I plan to lead with term life insurance and from that point find out more about the potential prospects insurance needs.


Just an up front warning... If you are picky about one's writing style and 'grammer' and prefer Harvard University quality writing style, this site may not be for you. I'm just an 'Average Joe' with to beautiful young kids, trying to make a living. I'm willing to share my struggles and achievements with you. If you are a life insurance agent, you may find this content valuable.  If you like rags to riches stories you may find this entertaining. However I'm still poor and that is why I am having to step out of my comfort zone to make money.


And when I say Comfort Zone... I mean I am really comfortable at home spending as much time as possible with my kids.


Lets quickly create a baseline of who I am and where I want to go... I am a 48 year old male living in the Dallas TX area, married and have a 4 year old boy and a 3 year old girl. I love my kids, but I am getting older and this is causing some stress on my family. I am a stay at home dad, barely selling life insurance "very" part time. Production is almost non exsistant at this point in (June 2012). Those that are parents, know what I mean, because taking care of young kids is a full time job in itself. However I prefer to be the bread winner and I am taking advantage of the opportunity I have now to transition into full time life insurance sales.


My wife, Blanca, works full time, she works real hard and has to put up with alot of crap. If I could go to her job, pull out my d.ick and piss in her managers coffee cup, I would. And I do it with a smile on my face. Her job sucks and does not pay well. We currently are in a hardship situation. However we are getting the bills paid, the kids are well fed and well taken care of.  We just want to move up to the next level, and the better we can improve the quality of our life style, the more I want to get going on this life insurance selling project.


Recently I had ask some other life insurance sales proferssional acquaintances to help me in getting a leg up and producing some sales. As it turns out these folks whom I ask for some support, really were not very helpful and seemed to have had their own agenda for making more profits for themselves while utilizing my efforts. When I first got my license to sell life and health insurance, I quickly found out that in most cases I will be on my own as an independent broker, which I understand since I am licensed as a general agent. But the problem is that there are alot of ways to get sued by clients in this business, if life insurance coverage is not placed properly.


So how am I going to know how to chose the right policy with the proper amount of coverage, for a proposed insured, if I am not able to get advice from someone who is experienced in this business. The answer is get what you need to know from the insurance underwriter of the life insurance company you plan to place the business with, because no one else is going to help.  No one. And I mean Noone. If you are reading this and are wanting to enter the business, then after you get licensed, and an IMO, sponsors you, do not depend on them. Your relationship must be with the insurance carrier that appoints you.


Its All Good. As such my policy now is to get the highest contract I can get, above street level, because it is the insurance carrier that will be supporting me, not the IMO or FMO (sponsor).


Now lets get back to selling life insurance door to door.  This is what I have found out after 2 years of wasting my time. Insurance leads from the internet cost an average of $20 each and are share with 5 to 10 other agents. It could be even more!  Placing ads in newspapers won't work. If yours does share it with me. Cold calling could work, if you have money to buy a list and money to pay for an auto dialer. Don't call cold with out a predictive diaer. Your fingers will hurt! I don't have money now to pay for that type of marketing, plus I do not have a phone pitch prepared. Secondly I have no business calling people that I do not know, with my lack of experience and support. While I am currently studying all of my insurance companies products and underwriting guidelines, for a wide variety of life insurance products like term life, final expense, SPWL, life insurance for diabetics, index universal life (tax free retirement) and others. My brain hurts sometimes.


What I need now is to be in front of a prospect. A prospect who will also want to talk with me and find out how life insurance will financially protect their dependents or achieve a tax free retirement.  The more I talk with these people, means the more I will gain confidence presenting information to them on everything I know to help them. I will not sell someone something they do not need.  But I'm feeling that there are alot of Americans who are either under insured or have NO life insurance at all. I'm going to bet that most of the people I start talking to are going to say: "Oh I got a group life policy at work". While a group policy may be something, It in most cases, is NOT enough. It may even be just an accident only policy. Not covering illness, ever think about that? I didn't, until about 2 weeks ago when I read the terms of my wife's group life policy from her crappy job. Accident death benefit only 1 times annual salary. No other options available. If she meets and greets the good Lord tomorrow, Me and the kids get $20,000 if cause of death was due to 'accident only'. Have you read the terms of your employer provided group life insurance? You better, because I already know it is not enough. Period.


OK... Here's the deal. Now that you know a little more about me and my situation. I have no money to buy life insurance leads or spend on any unproven marketing campaign.


About a week ago, I came across a forum posting about a life insurance company that was experiencing dismal sales. So they hired a consulting firm to improve their sales. The recommendation was to door knock and say "You don't want to buy life insurance do you?"


This comes from chapter 23... of the Go For No Book, "You don't want to buy Life Insurance do you?"


"There was an insurance company in Chicago that called in a consultant to analyze why their profits were declining. The company was averaging only 2.5 sales per agent per month, and they were at their wit's end. He tells them, "your only problem is that you are not calling on enough people."...


He took a group of their salespeople, a cross section of the salesforce from best to worst, and told them, "effective today, you're going to start selling policies door to door in neighborhoods where you don't know a soul. There'll be no leads provided. There'll be no qualifying of prospects. And, when the person opens the door you must start the sales call with the following words: "you don't want to buy any Life Insurance, do you?"


Their mission was simply to see how many people they could repeat that message to every day. That's it! Needless to say the salespeople were a bit skeptical.


59 out of every 60 people they approached said, "you're right I don't want to buy Life Insurance so get lost!" But one out of every 60 said, "as a matter of fact, I do need insurance. Come on in and sign me up!"


(You might think)... one out of 60 isn't a very good closing ratio. You'd be right if you took a month to see 60 prospects but with the consultant's approach the average salesperson found that it took only about 8 hours to approach 60 people with their you don't want insurance message. As a result they immediately began averaging about one sale a day!


Approaching enough people with your offer, even with the most negative message imaginable, can save whole companies and entire careers. You see if you truly want to accelerate your sales performance you have to fail faster!"
***


So Here We ARE!


My door knocking adventure begins!  I will be testing the door knocking idea suggested above, but I also have to other types of door knock campaigns that I want to test as well. Details of all of this is to follow. In fact, it going to happen with in days. This is live and in real time. You'll also see videos while I am out in the field. (An internet first!)


This will be the end all of any argument if door knocking sucks or is lucrative. I'm hearing that door knocking selling life insurance policies is experiencing good results. A potential of selling one policy a day is not out of the question. The commission on on life insurance policy can be quite lucrative and making this entire door knock project worth while.


Now is a good time to either subscribe to this blog or bookmark it. Heck, why not share it in the social internet environment like Facebook and twitter.