All posts with the tag 'Prospecting'
I am a big fan of the soccer team FC Barcelona. I have always respected their approach to developing talent, and love to watch their style of play. I make an attempt to watch as many of their matches as my schedule allows. Last night, I watched a replay of their Champion's League massacre of Shakhtar Donetsk. While preparing for a free kick from just beyond the penalty area, three star players gathered to discuss who would be taking the kick. The announcer proclaimed this to be "an embarrassment of riches."
I thought to myself "an embarrassment of riches? That's it! That's the key to marketing success!" So I immediately went out and hired three of the worlds best marketers, signed them to eight-figure salaries and began shopping for a new yacht. Just kidding. Sort of. Kidding about the eight-figure marketing assassins and the yacht, but not kidding about the embarrassment of riches being the key to success. Let me explain.
Barcelona had three players with unique and distinctly different styles circling this free kick. Dani Alves who delivers powerful strikes, Lionel Messi who often curls a ball into the upper corner, and Xavi who might lob the ball over the wall onto the head of a teammate. All different, all effective, all with certain potential to score a goal.
When attacking your marketplace, it is extremely unlikely that only one marketing initiative will be the key to success. But fully developing three (or more) unique and distinct campaigns will provide a much greater likelihood of market penetration. In my case, this consists of 1) eMarketing & Webinars 2) Blogging & Social Media and 3) Referrals and Cross-Selling. Three groups, each consisting of multiple elements. This creates a multi-dimension approach that touches prospects in a variety of ways, giving them many opportunities to respond to my messaging.
A properly executed integrated marketing campaign generates sales activity in many different ways with a variety of prospects - and hopefully leads to an embarrassment of riches for your business.
Tags: B2B Marketing, Blogging, Cross-Selling, Dani Alves, eMarketing, FC Barcelona, Insurance Agency Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Lionel Messi, Prospecting, Referral Selling, Social Media, StartUpSelling, web seminars, Xavi
Posted in B2B Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing, Sales, Soccer | Leave a Comment »
Earlier this week I speaking with our CEO about the status of our referral pipeline. We briefly discussed who we thought our best referral opportunities are and how we could best approach them. I spent a couple of hours planning, calling and emailing clients – then I went back to work on our primary marketing channels.
For reference, those primary marketing initiatives are: 1.) eMarketing and web seminars, 2.) blogging and social media. I invest approximately 80-90% of my marketing efforts cultivating those channels. Referral are the third component to our strategy and occupy only 10% or so of my marketing time. Athough important, they are third for a reason.
I believe that focusing on referrals as your primary source of new business will create limited opportunity. Prospecting your clients sphere of infulence will deliver incremental growth. Those of you interested in exponential growth will need to find your most effective and efficient lead generation solutions and focus on them.
For more detailed information about this theory and its specific application to the insurance business, please view this blog entry:
Posted on May 19th, 2010 by John Scranton
Referrals have traditionally been a premier source of new business for insurance agencies. When I was an agent, I loved referrals. It was an opportunity to build my business without actually selling. Just visiting with somebody who would likely buy. A great tool that all salespeople need to take advantage of and cultivate consistently…
Tags: Blogging, eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Prospecting, Social Media, StartUpSelling, web seminars
Posted in Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday we spoke with an agency who explained that they focused solely on referral selling and have been operating that way for many years. We then asked if they were happy with their current pipeline and growth rate – after hesitating, they answered no, not even close. In a soft market with shrinking premiums and other aggressive agents chasing your accounts, focusing on only one avenue for new business is a recipe for disaster.
That is why we suggest that referral selling be only one leg of your three-legged stool. Prospects know the P&C market is soft and have heard that savings might be available. You need to expose your agency and present yourself as the logical place for them to find that savings. Referrals will not accomplish this on a broad scale. A few new prospects from the country club or chamber of commerce is not a pipeline that will sustain you through the soft market.
Here are the other two legs of our recommended Insurance Agency Marketing three-legged stool:
* eMarketing & Web Seminars: Building a following within your prospect universe can be very powerful. A successful eMarketing and web seminar series can achieve this cost-effectively. When you already have a reputation and presence in minds of your ideals clients, they will be much more receptive to listening to your value proposition.
* Social Media & SEO: In 2010, we estimate that 35 to 40% of our business will come from SEO and Social Media. The two primary sources being LinkedIn connections and Google search results. When prospects find us on LinkedIn, they have already seen our expertise and often buy quickly. When prospects search for our carefully selected keywords on Google, they are highly interested in a specific service that we offer.
In a soft market, your Insurance Agency Marketing plan cannot solely focus on referrals – otherwise your boat will be taking water faster than you can bail.
Tags: eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Prospecting, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media, StartUpSelling, web seminars
Posted in eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Seminars | Leave a Comment »
Our CEO Alan Blume recently published an Ezine article titled Minimize Insurance Agent Cold Calling by Maximizing Insurance Agency Web Seminar Marketing. This is a great topic that I can personally relate to – I have cold called as an agent, and used web seminar marketing. In my experience, there is no comparison between the results achievable by each method.
During my time as an insurance producer, I cold called just like everyone else. On the phone and in person, I asked people out of the blue if I could have a look at their insurance. Almost surprisingly, some of them said yes, and some became clients. However, this was time consuming and challenging.
By leveraging the technology available today, we believe we have found a better way: building an eMarketing and web seminar campaign to fill the pipeline with quality leads. I employ this method at StartUpSelling, and the return on my time investment has dramatically improved. In fact, we have had a record year despite the poor economy.
In the Ezine article, Alan discusses how we have successfully designed and managed web seminar marketing campaigns for many clients. He offers tips and best practices to develop a webinar series that will continually yield dividends. This includes the program we manage for KCI Insurance that was recently featured in Rough Notes.
Tags: eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Prospecting, Virtual Business, web seminars, Your Virtual Success
Posted in eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Web Seminars | Leave a Comment »
No, I am not talking about the king of beers. I am talking about the BUD qualifying tool. For those of you not yet familiar with this concept, please refer to my recent blog post: http://startupselling.com/blogs/johnscranton/the-prospect-scorecard-%e2%80%93-a-great-tool-that-saves-your-valuable-time/ or the book Your Virtual Success. The BUD qualifier is something we use to analyze all of our prospects. Do they have Budget? Do they have Urgency? Do you have the Decision-maker? If you answer yes to all three, you have a great prospect.
This simple tool has repeatedly proven to be a great indicator of how likely prospects are to buy. Recently, we had an in-profile prospect that we determined to be BUD qualified – and they signed with us in 5 days. Since I knew they were BUD qualified, I invested significant time and energy in this prospect, and was able to shorten the sales cycle to less than a week. If they had lacked any one of the BUD qualifying characteristics, it would not have been possible to sign them this fast, and I would have needed to manage my time and efforts accordingly.
Using the BUD qualifier in an honest manner is a great way to analyze the likelihood a prospect will buy. A very simple tool that will help you manage your time, effort and the ascertion during the sales process.
Tags: Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Prospecting, StartUpSelling, Virtual Business, Your Virtual Success
Posted in Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan | Leave a Comment »
During my days as an insurance agent on the road – I often found it challenging to balance all the requirements of the job. Sales meetings, staff meetings, servicing clients, preparing for renewals, reviewing quotes, presenting renewals… I did not struggle with all of these things because I have poor time management skills (that is actually one of my strengths) – I struggled with all of these things because I tried to complete all the tasks effectively without sacrificing any sales time. Sacrificing sales time will eventually lead to less new business, which means less income.
So I invested more time to make sure I completed all the critical items of the job – and still hit the phones to find some new prospects. Most days were filled with meetings, renewals and travel. Sales time was regularly an evening affair. Cold calls and night meetings Monday through Thursday. A typical day was 7am to 9pm. However, this quickly led to 60+ hour weeks, high stress and too much time away from my wife. Other than missing my wife, I never really minded this schedule and workload. But someday soon we will have kids, and leaving before they wake up and coming home after they are in bed is not going to be acceptable. Fortunately, I was offered an opportunity to change.
Now I am working with a boutique, virtual organization. We are highly flexible, highly responsive and do not suffer from any of the lethargic processes of a traditional company. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to our CEO that I was feeling some time compression and that it was creeping into my sales time. By the end of the day we had re-allocated our resources and responsibilities and solved the issue before it became a problem. Now we anticipate reaching record numbers in the 4th quarter.
As your client base grows, it is easy to become spread thin over your vast array of responsibilities. Find a way to manage your business that allows you to remain focused on closing business – and never become too busy to sell.
Tags: Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Prospecting, StartUpSelling, Virtual Business, Your Virtual Success
Posted in Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Virtual Business | Leave a Comment »
I am often asked what services and solutions StartUpSelling provides. Here is a brief 2 page summary of what we offer:
StartUpSelling Marketing & Lead Generation Solutions
Please feel free to contact me with any questions at johns(@)startupselling.com or www.startupselling.com.
Tags: B2B Marketing, eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Prospect List Generation, Prospecting, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media, StartUpSelling, Virtual Business, web seminars, Your Virtual Success
Posted in B2B Marketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing | Leave a Comment »
Webinar: How to create your Insurance Agency Marketing Plan for 2011
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Join us for this 30 minute, complimentary marketing web seminar. Our team of agency marketing experts will discuss how to build an effective Insurance Agency Marketing Plan for 2011, incorporating both traditional elements and new web centric investments of increasing importance. As agencies face the increasingly difficult challenge of building a marketing strategy within their limited budgets, they must now incorporate a Web 2.0 initiative to ensure maximum exposure and an effective marketing ROI. We will discuss the the most efficent ways to invest your resources for maximum results, using a simple approach to these seemingly daunting challenges. Topics include:* Your unique marketing value proposition
* Effective Website Design and SEO
* Branding and Collateral for a Web Centric Era
* Traditional Marketing, Advertising and Marketing Tools
* Social Media Marketing
* Blogging & ePublishing
* eMarketing, Newsletters & Press Releases
* Web Seminars or Onsite Seminars |
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Webinar: Building your Insurance Agency Marketing Plan for 2011 |
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010 |
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12:00 PM – 12:30 PM EDT |
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Tags: B2B Marketing, eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Prospect List Generation, Prospecting, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media, StartUpSelling, telemarketing, web seminars
Posted in B2B Marketing, eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Telemarketing, Virtual Business, Web Seminars | Leave a Comment »
Or is it a great use of your time? As salespeople and marketers, this is the challenge we currently face. The prevalence and relevance of social media is increasing every day, and building momentum as it moves forward. Like the cartoon snowball rolling downhill, its coming faster and faster and growing exponentially as it progresses.
An experienced and successful social media expert once told me that a good rule of thumb is to invest 1 hour per day in each social media or social networking venue that you would like to cultivate as an effective marketing channel. After I finished laughing, I responded that since I only wanted to focus on LinkedIn, Facebook and my Blog – this would add a mere 15 hours to my work week. No problem if I was looking to sacrifice my weekends for the foreseeable future.
In truth, I spend far less that 15 hours per week on social media / social networking sites. But the time investment I do make – approximately 4-6 hours per week – has worked. Social media marketing has firmly become the 3rd leg of our marketing stool. So how am I able to meet prospects and win business in less time than the aformentioned marketing expert? I would like to say it is becuase I am smarter and more effective, but the answer is that the time needed to successfully use social media is different for everyone.
It depends on your industry, your posistion, your product/solution – and most importanly the goal that you are trying to achieve. My goal is to meet in-profile prospects using LinkedIn, share my ideas and expertise in this Blog, and to interact with friends and family on Facebook. This takes much more time to execute well than it takes a B2B exec who sells a high dollar enterprise solution to meet a few prospects, and it takes much less time than it takes Adidas or Nike to spin the social media web surrounding a new shoe.
My suggestion for each of you is to experiment. The number of social media sites is becoming infinite. Choose 1 or 2 and make a splash. Measure the results and refine your process. If it helps you move toward your goal, increase your time investment. If not, move on to one of the many, many alternatives. Also seek guidance from your competitors. If the industry thought leader you would like to be is all over Twitter and has a great Blog, maybe you should try to do the same. If they are nowhere, maybe you break ground first and stake your claim.
My personal philosophy is that if you open and honest, provide some level of value and expertise, and remain dilligent in your efforts – people will see you are genuine and hopefully learn that you are someone they should be doing business with.
Tags: B2B Marketing, Blogging, Facebook, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, LinkedIn, Prospecting, Social Media, StartUpSelling, Twitter
Posted in B2B Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Social Media | Leave a Comment »
Webinar: Building your Insurance Agency Marketing Plan for 2011
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Join us for this brief, complimentary web seminar. Our team of agency marketing experts will discuss how to build your Insurance Agency Marketing Plan for 2011. Agencies are faced with the difficult challenge of building an effective strategy with an often limited budget. Coupled with the changing face of marketing in our Web 2.0 society, drafting a plan is an immense challenge. We will discuss the the most efficent ways to invest your resources for maximum results. Topics include:* The importance of Social Media Marketing
* eMarketing & Web Seminars for Lead Generation
* Effective Website Design and SEO
* Branding and Collateral for a Web Centric Era
* Traditional Advertising and Marketing Tools |
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Webinar: Building your Insurance Agency Marketing Plan for 2011 |
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010 |
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12:00 PM – 12:30 PM EDT |
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| After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. |
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Tags: eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Prospecting, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Small Business, Social Media, StartUpSelling, Virtual Business, web seminars
Posted in eMarketing, Insurance Agency Lead Generation, Insurance Agency Marketing, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social Media, Telemarketing, Virtual Business, Web Seminars | Leave a Comment »
