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.