Have you ever wondered why sales in the insurance/financial industry can sometimes feel like a roller-coaster? At times your prospecting makes you feel on top of the world, while other times you can fall into those long dry spells with not a prospect in sight?
Socialeads is here to remove the uncertainty and nail-biting stress of prospecting entirely. In the past, individuals went about locating their prospects by word of mouth and educated guessing, today we have access to the tools needed that take all of the guesswork out of prospecting to fill your ledgers to the brim.
Read on to refresh your prospecting routine for easy sales
1. Use Technology to Remove the Guesswork
Hubspot Research found that 72% of companies with under 50 sales opportunities per month didn’t complete their revenue goals. As opportunities increased with 101 to 201 new opportunities, only 4% of companies were unable to complete revenue goals.
What does this data tell us? Prospecting starts out as a numbers game. That’s why every agent or advisor is trying to build their book of business 24/7. Assuming we all want the time to live full and happy lives both on and off the clock, that means we need some support to amplify our prospecting pool.
Socialeads’ cutting-edge technology has advanced to ensure you have access to everything you could ever want for successful prospecting. It makes outreach smarter and more relevant with a steady stream of quality leads from your first and second-degree networks, including info about recent life events like buying a home, having a baby, or getting a new job. These milestones require your financial solutions to support clients’ future goals.
What is a quality lead?
A quality lead is a true match to your pre-defined criteria. On Socialeads, you can set your search criteria in areas such as career, salary, location, and more. You can also indicate the specific life event data you would like the AI to investigate so that the leads you are given need your services and want to talk to you, not next week or next month, but now.
Socialeads is able to provide you with quality leads through its unique Natural Language Processing software, which is the best in the business at detecting life events in social text based on activities, personality, sentiment, emotionality, and behaviors available on Twitter and LinkedIn. As Socialeads’ AI works for you 24/7, there is no end to the thousands of quality leads you will have for prospecting– meaning better prospects and more conversions.
Subscribing to Socialeads is also a great way to save yourself time and keep your database well-organized. The qualified leads you are given come with lots of detailed information about their lives and the current life event they are experiencing. It allows you to make lists of similar individuals, and export information for follow-up purposes. Socialeads also provides its users with educational material and provides shareable content for its users.
2. Fill-in-the-blanks on your leads and personalize when possible
Consumers referred by a friend are four times more likely to purchase. 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know.
Now that you know where to find the most ideal leads, how can you personally improve your chances at turning them into prospects? The answer is radically improving the prospecting process itself, which starts with getting to know your lead better and then searching for common reference points.
The more information you have about your lead, the easier it is to start a conversation and get connected. And if you happen to share a contact with someone you know, asking for an introduction or referral can make all the difference. But what should you do if you don’t have the time to wait for the direct referral?
We say take the matter into your own hands. Once subscribed to Socialeads, your feed will automatically tell you your degree of connection to each lead. A lead with a 1st-degree connection means you both have a contact in common. This means that to get the referral here, the easiest course of action would be to request an introduction from your contact or to directly reach out mentioning the contact you have in common.
For example:
If you aren’t getting the responses you want, even after a consistent follow-up, then it is time to flip the script. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes: little free time and constant requests for appointment scheduling. In order to make your initial communication stand out, try to personalize it and humanize yourself when possible. You can also make your communications more personal through image personalization (more info here).
Although Socialeads is able to source a lot of the important details you will need for prospecting, a qualified lead always merits a little extra research. A Google search could be helpful in filling in any blanks on the person, such as achievements, affiliations, and interests, all of which are pertinent as points of connection. This info can even be helpful in determining the right services for the prospect.
For example:
Finally, take a peek at their company’s website to find out what their workplace is like as well as potential stress points your leads currently have, then use the complete file you have gathered on the lead to let them know how you can help them to solve their problems.
The more you are able to personalize, and the more you show your genuine interest in your leads’ well-being, the more likely it is that your leads will regard your emails to be from an individual deserving consideration rather than a faceless corporation, and that’s more than half the battle.
3. Show Who You Are, and Communicate the Right Way
65% of people aged 18-34 believe social media is an effective channel for customer service, while 75% of people aged 55 and over do not.
While some prospects will require that you eventually arrange for a phone call or video chat, others may sign with you through completely digital interaction. Either way, you must learn to express yourself the way that your qualified leads want – which means that you need to be knowledgeable and trustworthy as well as confident and likable. You will also need to gauge the lead to know their preferred form of contact.
To come across as an expert, take the time to fully understand your product, and when you don’t, there is no reason to express that to your lead, as it could lead to them losing confidence in you. Find a reason for your lead that you can’t give the answer at the moment and will send it later, then find the answers in a discreet way from your boss or a peer.
When you come across as confident and relaxed, that makes a strong impression on your leads. Learn how your product can help your lead with the pain points from their current life event and approach communication with this in mind so that it never sounds like you are asking someone to do you a favor by speaking with you.
If you can place your qualified leads into their generational lists, it is easier to hypothesize how they want to be contacted. If they are a Gen Z or Millennial with active social media profiles, your best bet for first contact would be through their LinkedIn or Twitter profiles. For older audiences, typically Gen X and above, email and a phone call/video chat would be a great first introduction.
Your first thought might be to reach out to all of your qualified leads using all of your communication channels, but this can feel spammy and may get you blocked, so we recommend you play around with your communication methods until you find what works for you.
4. “The early bird gets the worm” and “Try, try again” ring true
35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. “Did I catch you at a bad time” makes you 40% less likely to book a meeting. Asking “How are you?” increases the probability of booking a meeting by a factor of 3.4!
Keep your focus on the short term, and follow up! You know your qualified leads have lots of incoming emails, so if that’s their preferred way of contact, plan to ask them to take action early and offer a special discount or service so that they don’t get cold feet and ghost you. Follow-ups can be annoying for your leads, but if you do it the right way and within a tight time frame, you improve your chance for success. Socialeads takes care of the timing for you by giving you the opportunity to get in contact with your lead at your earliest opportunity, but it is easy to lose a lead without the right type of persistence.
Let go of the idea that you are getting in contact to fill your ledgers as fast as possible, as only having one end-goal probably won’t work. Instead, set your long-term and short-term goals to better stay on track – long-term sale, short-term connecting with the lead, getting the lead to respond, and setting an appointment with the lead; it will keep you focused on the task at hand and yield better results.
Larry Hitchcock (Founder and CEO of Socialeads) advises prospectors to make short and long-term goals not only for their prospects but for themselves, in order to achieve more goals in 2022.
“My advice to people […] who are going to work every day, whether you are in sales or not, is to focus on the long haul, “ he said. “Think about where you want your life to be in 2, 3, 4, 5 years, and the day-to-day will take care of itself. Where do you want your book of business to be, what kind of clients do you want to have, and what kind of life do you want to have for yourself?… That helps you set personal goals you can think about while you are in that middle part, while you are slogging it through.”
After you set your actionable goals, try to lead your conversations toward achieving them without seeming bossy or pushy. Label yourself as a wealth of knowledge who can truly help prospects find the service they need, and then share like success stories from past clients. Learning that using your services was helpful for others, and if possible, actually seeing those success stories via social media is often enough for your prospects to decide they also want to know more about the product and even schedule a meeting with you.
5. Follow up after booking an appointment
60% of customers say no four times before saying yes. Unfortunately, 48% of salespeople never even make a single follow-up attempt.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate the meeting you booked – Congrats, you did it!
The next step is to ensure your prospect makes it to the meeting. Sadly, it is true that many a time, prospects ghost you right when you think things are moving along.
You can avoid getting ghosted by staying at the forefront of your prospects’ minds by establishing a stronger connection with them on social media. Through Socialeads, you can follow your leads on Twitter and connect with them on LinkedIn (if you haven’t already). There, you can always send a quick message that you look forward to chatting the day before the planned meeting.
It’s always good practice to send a gentle reminder email the day before. Both messages can detail the reason the meeting was scheduled along with a plan for what will be reviewed in the meeting (always informative, never pushing). By doing this, you will give your prospect the opportunity to reschedule if their timing has changed, or to cancel and not waste your time if they get cold feet.
6. Practice before the meeting
HubSpot Research’s survey found that more than half of salespeople look to their peers to get tips, while 44% referred to a manager, and 24% to the media.
Let’s jump ahead to July of 2022 when you are a confident insurance or financial agent who has signed lots of clients through Socialeads; you’re feeling pretty fantastic. Does that mean you are ready to head into a meeting cold? Not really.
If possible, always review your prospect’s file of researched data and practice your “pitch” to them with a friend, colleague, or your boss. Work on it until you have a good idea of the way you would address any questions the prospect will have, and look for ways to tweak your conversation so that it will be effective for the specific situation.
What do you do now that you have done your homework, nursed your lead into a prospect, investigated the best way to help your prospect, and practiced how to pitch to them?
Go out there and do what you do better than most. Have fun making your prospect your client.
