Prospecting Among Your Own Clientele

Now that the busy holiday season has passed and before we enter the sometimes dreaded tax season, it is the perfect time to stir-up insurance business among your own client lists. Believe me, there are plenty of potential sales and premium awaiting you in those old files. Familiar names and faces make for great clients, repeat customers and excellent referrals.

Use the start of a new year as a timely excuse to review the insurances owned by your clients and to request a meeting, to get back in front of them so you can illustrate where their coverage may be insufficient or even non-existent. It doesn’t matter if they are medical, business, disability or life clients; getting a fresh chance to pitch them and show them that you care about their financial protection is what’s most important.

Here are some points to keep in mind while prospecting among your own clientele:

• Refrain from feeling like you are imposing on your clients’ time. Yes, many of them might be busy doctors, attorneys, accountants or executives, but your goals for them are important and could be life-saving/life-changing economically. You are a licensed expert in your field and your guidance is imperative to the financial protection of your clients’ families.

• You’re not a faceless, cold-calling salesman out to make a buck. You know the persons behind the names in your files. You have proven yourself to them in the past, and they have previously chosen your services. They should be more inclined to trust that you can help once again.

• Refer to current events to get yourself back in the door like the upcoming change in political administrations and how it will affect the insurance market. Or mention the inevitable rise in interest rates and its probable effect on life insurance programs.

• Use hot-button topics like guaranteed-issue disability insurance or changes in ObamaCare regulations or opportunities in the annuity market to drive renewed interest from your clients. Show them that you are on the cutting edge and have access to the most progressive of insurance products. You have fresh, exciting ideas that will further secure their lives.

• Don’t hesitate to cross sell. Now may be the opportune time to prescribe key person or overhead disability coverage to your personal life clients. And vice versa, introduce your disability clients to key person life insurance.

• Be sure to up-sell. Most Americans are underinsured when it comes to life and disability coverage. As an insurance professional, you owe it to your clients to familiarize them with the inherent risks of not having at least 65% of their income insured as well as having sufficient levels of life insurance to protect not only their loved ones, but also their businesses.

The best sales leads can be found amongst your current clients. You are already familiar with their financial, health and social backgrounds, and these prospects know you. As long as your previous interactions were successful, you should have a downhill journey to making more business come from these comfortable relationships.