What phone system do you use to call your leads?

Hi Ethan,

I am going to market outside my home state for the first time. I know you do this as well in Texas. Do you call out with your Utah number appearing on their caller id or do you use some type of virtual service? What do you recommend?

Thank you,

Dave

Dear Dave,


I always try to call using a local number for my prospects. I used to use Skype but I recently converted over to Vonage because I was spending too much time trying to figure out all of the add on features and it was slowing my computer down. I have one Vonage box with 2 lines included in the service for $14.99 each. I use the Mojosells.com autodialer with both numbers in the caller id. I like to switch it up sometimes if I am having trouble getting a hold of people. I will call from a different number just to get back in touch with them but primarily I use a local number to call my leads. If you end up getting vonage please put me down as the referrer on their website. I would appreciate it.

I recently found out that you can have any type of lead directly imported into the Mojosells.com website for free! They give you an email address that gets uploaded into the system every 90 seconds. I wish I would have known about that when I was buying leads.


Ethan

How do you convert old leads into sales?

Hey Ethan,

My name is Devin and I’m an  Insurance agent in FL. I saw your speak at the Norvax University in Orlando and thought you were excellent. Since then I have been following your blog and implementing some of your strategies along the way with great success. However I was hoping you could give me some additional advice on what to do with some old leads. I have a database built up of approximately 4,000 unsold leads since 2006. I was wondering what would be your best recommendation on how to attack these old leads and convert them into sales. Whether it be put them on a drip email campaign or send them personal post cards etc. I’d really like your personal advice on this matter if you don’t mind and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks so much,

Devin

Dear Devin,

I am glad that you are having success with the information on this blog and my trainings!  In the next few weeks I will be putting some youtube.com videos up on this blog.  Hopefully that will help you sell health insurance as well.

I am not really sure of the age of the unsold leads but regardless of the age I still think that it is important to contact them.  The easiest most cost effective way to contact them is to import all of the contacts into your auto dialing system and spend about 2-3 hours a day at least calling them.  I recommend www.makemycalls.com for this.  The cost is around $150 a month and you would see a huge increase in sales from this. 

If you try to send them an email even through Constant Contact it has to be very slight.  That means an email once a month.  Being labeled as a spammer is very easy if you send out an email all at once to thousands of clients.  Pretty soon you will notice that "no one" is getting "any" emails.  Yes it has happened to me. 

I wouldn't send out a mailer just yet until you are able to track the success of your phone campaign.  Once you have done some tracking then you could forecast some projections based on a 1-2% closing ratio.  That is pretty decent/average for mailers.  If you want a quick easy way to send out some cards I recommend sendoutcards.com.  This is what I use for delinquent accounts, renewals, and thank you cards.  Spend around $150 for the auto dialer and go through the full training session with them and you won't be sorry.  If you do go through www.makemycalls.com please put me down as a referral before purchasing on their website.  I would really appreciate it.

Ethan Selph

What is your closing ratio when selling health insurance?

I really like your information about getting to the 5,000 lead mark into your database as stated in other blog posts.  What percentage of the 5,000 health insurance leads do you have as clients?  I'm assuming those 5,000 are people who have not told you to get lost but would like for you to keep in touch? In other words what are the quality of the 5,000 leads in your data base?

Dear Shane,

  The database that I created took me about 1.5 years to put together.  I have a closing ratio of about 3.5% in selling health insurance.  That is a pretty low ratio but you have to remember I didn't really start doing auto responders or auto dialing until about 11 months ago and I haven't bought any leads since October 2009.  If someone tells me they are not interested in buying health insurance right now I plan on contacting them 11 months from that renewal date.  I always have about 2000 leads in my database that are not interested at a given time.  This low closing ratio should give great hope to those that are aren't closing most of your leads.

What do you do when a client you sold health insurance to claims there was a billing issue?

1.  Verify the information by having them fax you a copy of their bank statement over to you.  Over half of clients figure things out without you having to go any further.  I can't begin to tell you how many times the client has been wrong.

2.  Review the companies billing procedures to make sure that you didn't make any mistakes in signing the client up according to their billing policies. 

3.  Contact the insurance company if there has been a mistake.

4.  Remember that it is never worth hurting or ruining a relationship because of small mistakes.  Everyone knows that everyone has made a mistake in their life and that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt.  The way to not make very many mistakes is to never assume anything until you have all of the facts.  Assure the client that you will resolve the issues in a timely matter and that this is of the highest priority for you. 

5.  Keep the client posted of any progress good or bad from the insurance company.    Let them know that we don't make any assumptions about anything.  EVERY insurance company has made a billing mistake and I guarantee you this client has had other billing issues with other companies outside of the health insurance industry where there was a billing mistake. 

6.  Remain calm during this whole process.  If they notice you getting frustrated they too will get even more frustrated as this is often a way to test your ability to deal with stress.  If they see you getting frustrated or taking sides with you on the phone by bad mouthing the insurance company, before getting documentation of the mistake, then they will discredit you for encouraging them to get the policy.