Managing and Calling Health Insurance Leads
So are you ready to start calling your health insurance leads? There are a few things you need to get squared away before you start. You will need to set up a file system for your health insurance lead disposition and you will also need to develop a call script that will work. You will want to do this before making the first call.
Setting up your file system:
Many of the health insurance leads you will initially get may be through the internet. I strongly recommend that you print a hard copy of your health leads for several reasons.
You can write on them while calling and you also run the risk of losing them by mistakenly deleting them from your insurance lead management software or email.
If you do not have a file cabinet, an accordion folder will do for keeping your printed health insurance leads. The files I suggest you keep are:
1. New health insurance leads not called yet.
2. Health insurance leads called this week-call me backs
3. Health insurance leads called this week-no answer
4. Week old health insurance leads-no answer
5. This months health insurance leads-call me backs
6. This months health insurance leads-no answer
7. Any call me backs over 1 month old-filed by date they wanted to be called back
8. Personally generated health insurance leads
9. Referrals
10. All health insurance leads over 1 month old-no contact. These I would file by month recieved. Save these for a rainy day. If you run out of leads to call open this file and call a few. You might be supprised! I actually made a health insurance sale off of a two year old lead recently.
Making Calls to Health Insurance Leads
My first experiences calling health insurance leads were absolutely terrible. I had to try a lot of things before I found out what actually worked. I was fortuneate enough to have a more experienced agent help me with this after a few months of misery. He gave me some immediate advice that helped me greatly:
“The phone is not your enemy but rather like a drunk friend hanging out with you. He may get you yelled at or make people walk away from you but will also get people talking to you too.” being that talking to live people is the only way you can make a living, the phone is not so bad.
“Keep score of how many calls you make each hour, this will help you compete against youself.” It was supprising how well this worked. It is human nature to get distracted or to procrastinate. This helps couteract those tendencies because it is also human nature to want to do better and accomplish something.
“You can be who-ever you want to be on the telephone, remeber they can’t see you.” With this one I am in no way suggesting that you pretend to be someone you are not, but rather that you must keep in mind that a prospect cant see that you uncomfortable on the phone, have had a bad day, are tired, or frustrated. Always try to project youself as confident, knowledgable, happy, and interested in them.
“He who asks the most questions wins.” When calling you must maintain control over the conversation to be able to set an appointment. The only way to do this is actually let the health insurance prospect do most of the talking themselves. Remember that most people are on the defensive and are resistant to being “sold” on somethig. The best way to overcome this is to present the attitude that you are there to help them with their health insurance needs. To do this ask open ended questions only.(can’t be answered yes, no, or I don’t know. This will keep them talking about themselves and allow you to find out most of the information you need without them asking too many product specific questions themselves. I am not against telling a health insurance prospect about a product, but you must realize that they are looking for a reason to say no, and you will find out that this comes harder for people if you are meeting with them face to face.
“Don’t waste to much time talking to answering machines, they usually don’t talk back.” There are many opinions on this part of calling health insurance leads. Allthough I have gotten a few sales from leaving answers, they are not worth investing too much time. If you do leave answers keep it short and simple, like “hello, this is ____, please give me a call when you get a chance at #, bye. Any longer than that and your answer is erased before they even listen to the whole thing.
Now the other thing you need to do is develop a working call script so you can set good health insurance appointments.
next: Developing a Workable Health Insurance Call Script
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