This year has been unique in many respects, including changes to how we do business in our industry. With face-to-face contact difficult, prospecting virtually for new clients has been challenging.
But even in the "new normal," there are ways to dynamically grow your business in 2021. In this blog post, I’ll show you a couple of ways you can achieve your life insurance goals in the coming year …
Meeting a prospective financial services or insurance client for the first time in a virtual setting can be hard to do. So, many financial professionals are looking to their existing clients as a source of new business.
Existing clients in the life insurance space have been open to virtual meetings, electronic applications, and non-medical underwriting. Fortunately, because they’re warming up to this new, easier way of securing protection their family needs – it opens the door for prospecting opportunities.
How to leverage your current client base
You’ve probably seen the messages out there about how you need to "mine your existing client base" for business, but how do you do that?
That’s what we’ll cover in this blog post. I’ll walk through how to explore your current client base to narrow it down to the most qualified prospects to approach.
The first step is to make a list of every client and people you personally know that are not yet clients.
Next, assign a “tag” or “tags” to each client like in the following examples. Each tag will be something you know about that client that would give you a reason to reach out to them.
Below I’ve provided some examples of tags you might associate with a client, as well the concepts you would discuss, and what you could say to initiate a conversation:
Owns a Business
Concept(s): Buy-Sell, Key Person, Executive Compensation
Conversation Starter: “I have helped many business owners build a succession strategy with tax and cost-efficiency.”
College-Bound Kids
Concept: College planning with life insurance
Conversation Starter: “I know college can be an expensive proposition, have you considered how you’ll make sure the needed funds are available when the time comes? I have helped many families with a tax-efficient strategy for covering these costs.”
Needs Retirement Income
Concept: Lifetime-income retirement strategy
Conversation Starter: “Most people believe taxes will increase in the future. If you have retirement assets that will be taxable during retirement, we should talk. Let’s set up a meeting to discuss an alternative that can help you potentially save taxes in retirement.”
Term Conversion Potential
Concept: Convert term insurance to permanent life insurance coverage
Conversation Starter: “Now that we’ve locked in your insurability, let’s discuss a reasonable option with additional benefits.”
High Net Worth or Income Tax Concerns
Concept: Smartly funded IUL
Conversation Starter: “Many of my affluent clients are concerned about taxes, especially in the future. There is one asset that offers tax efficiency and many other advantages, let’s talk.”
Spouse Needs More Coverage
Concept: Career, Kids
Conversation Starter: “Let’s review your protection needs now that your spouse has started working again.”
Major Life Change
Concept: Job change, change in marital status, children, received inheritance, started a new business
Conversation Starter: “Let’s review your protection needs now that you have started your own business.”
Referral Potential
Concept: Satisfied client, annual review
Conversation Starter: See below
Once you’ve tagged your existing clients, you’ll give them a “relationship number.” This is a 1, 2, or 3 based on the relationship closeness -- with 1 being the strongest relationship.
You’ll want to reach out to the tagged clients with the highest relationship score first to address their needs.
After you’ve explored the needs of your clients you have the strongest relationships with, you’ll want to ask for referrals.
For financial professionals to reach their life insurance goals in the coming year, an existing client base is the easiest place to start, but you still want to bring on new clients too.
Once you've done the work of contacting existing clients, one of the best ways to develop business with new customers is by asking for referrals.
Unfortunately, many financial professionals have never been taught how to get quality referrals. So, we’ll cover that next.
Getting good results from referral requests
Many financial professionals don’t ask for referrals or have not had good results. This is because they have not asked the right questions or followed a logical process to gain cooperation.
Start by reviewing services provided to the existing client. Confirm that the client is very satisfied with the service and products you have provided. Segue into your commitment to helping provide financial stability and tax efficiency to a broader range of families. This way, you aren’t just being self-serving. Then provide some guidelines as to who the client might suggest with these memory joggers.
- Affinity groups, work, play, social, school, faith, etc.
- All extended family, on both sides
- Close friends in similar circumstances
Conversation Starter:
“John, I know you play golf at least once a week with a group of friends. If you would provide their contact information and allow me to use your name as a satisfied customer, I may be able to help them protect their family’s financial future.”
Get a jumpstart on the new year…
Now you have a solid prospecting strategy than can help you organize your client lists for action. You know how to explore additional needs and gain referrals to put yourself in a stronger position to hit your life insurance goals as we transition into 2021.
Schedule a call to get help with any of the concepts mentioned. And let’s work together to jumpstart your life insurance business in 2021.
