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July 13, 2010 at 08:00 PM
Prospecting for new leads is one of the most important marketing duties performed by health insurance agents. Successful prospecting will generate more leads and potentially more sales.
But successful prospecting requires an effective marketing plan and knowing your target audience. That’s where segmentation comes in.
It’s not enough to say that you’re going after consumers who are looking for insurance. Successful prospecting demands that you get more specific – which consumers, and which insurance products?
Your segmentation will shape the messages you’ll be using and the marketing channels that will best reach your intended targets. For example, toy manufacturers and snack food makers often target young kids who watch children’s television shows. Yes, that’s a simplistic answer, but to effectively generate quality insurance leads for the long term, your prospecting plan must follow these same principles.
So what are these principles, and how do you apply them to selling insurance? Here’s a five-step process for preparing and launching a market segmentation plan that will help you prospect for more leads.
1. Identify your primary products
If you’re like most health insurance agents today, you probably offer dozens of health insurance plans from all the leading carriers licensed in your state. The ability to offer a variety of plans is a good thing. However, you need to find the top products that you want to sell — and that your prospects want to buy.
Take a tip from such stores as KMart and Wal-Mart. They offer a variety of brands for most of their items, but they limit their products to the ones that are most likely to sell or generate the most profit.
That last point is important: Some products may not generate much of a profit, but they can lead to more sales and greater profits. For example, many grocery stores offer discounted prices on milk and eggs. They accept a lower profit margin on these items, and maybe even a loss, because they know that shoppers who buy these items will also tend to buy other products. Similarly, a health insurance sale may lead to more life insurance signups, and closing Medicare Advantage plans may lead to selling Medicare supplement products.
The key goal of this first step is to identify which products deserve the bulk of your time. Your product selection will pave the way for the rest of your marketing and prospecting.
2. Prioritize your product selection
Once you select your primary products, take the time to prioritize them. This is an important step, because this is where you’ll apply the famous 80/20 rule: Almost 80 percent of your effort will be spent on the top 20 percent of your primary products.
More specifically, if you have five primary health insurance products, 80 percent of your time and budget will probably focus on just one of those five products. The remaining four products will have to share the remaining time and budget.
