The Senior Annuity marketplace landscape has changed significantly in the past twenty years. This is due to increased competition as more agents enter the lucrative Senior market. The birth of the EIA annuity brought a whole new prospective to annuities, and their uses in the financial planning field. Informational Seminars, and now free dinner seminars are still popular but the wind is being taken from their sails. It is my belief that using direct mail to obtain qualified annuity leads is the most cost efficient method available to day.
We understand that a seminar lead has a perception of being a better, more solid lead because the speaker has bonded with his audience. However most of the appointments that are booked don't turn out to be a solid annuity lead. Why, because in most cases the seminar attendee feels embarrassed for taking the free meal, so although they have no intent nor need they still agree to meet with the presenter. How many times has this waste of time happened to you? I know it has happened to me all to many times. Annuity leads can be obtained a heck of a lot easier and for less money than the typical seminar obtained annuity lead. Annuity leads purchased from Premier Annuity Prospects will change the feeling of wasting your time, and money.
You will get a true value that is much less expensive than an annuity lead received from a seminar annuity appointment. Not only that, as a person you can take on a much better quality of life with direct mail annuity leads. When you run leads from a seminar there is a constant sense of urgency that needs to be given. Why, because in order to keep the steady flow of appointments there has to be the steady flow of seminars in order to keep up the annuity leads. This takes its toll on you and takes away from the quality time you can enjoy in your life with your family, golfing, fishing, exercising, etc. With appointments booked by Premier Annuity Prospects annuity leads are now annuity appointments without lifting a finger. They send the mail, book the annuity leads into annuity appointments for you, and that's all you do is show up to work meeting with qualified annuity appointments just waiting for you.
A direct mail annuity lead that is booked into an preset annuity appointment has better quality than a seminar appointment. The person whom the annuity lead response card is mailed to is asking for more information about the bullet points. They have filled in their name ages and signed the card. They return the annuity lead card and they take the time to place it in the mail box themselves. Just think about it, they filled out the annuity lead card and then brought it to the post office, or mail box. They had to put an effort into sending the annuity lead card back to Premier Annuity Prospects.
These annuity leads have been obtained by people that made a physical effort to receive information. This is not like a Seminar annuity lead that a person dresses up to go out for a nice free meal. Everyone likes to go out for a free meal, and why not listen to this presenter while I get what I truly want, a free meal. The preset annuity appointment has the best quality you could want, however along with the quality comes the problem of having enough territory to meet your desired level of people to see. Premier Annuity Prospects only has a few territories left.
Newspaper advertising is also a method that has been tried from all different angles and let me give you my take on what's going on. Before I write about the subject let me preface this by saying I have been marketing in the annuity and life insurance business for 30 years. I have tried everything. I myself have been running a 1/4 page add each week in the local newspaper ( Fall River Herald News ) for the past 8 weeks. I pay $488 each week and I run an add for Standard Life's Total Command 5. This is a nice compliant add that has in big letters 5.40 percent interest.
I don't know if I should be happy because it proves my point that direct mail annuity leads are easier, better and more cost efficient, or be upset because I have not got one call in 8 weeks. I'm not kidding and this information can be verified. I figured that in this interest rate environment I would have the phone ringing off the hook. I figured they could be pretty much phone interview leads and if they were good I would go see them. Not so, I did not receive one phone call. I will be running this ad until the end of June, as I'm hoping to be somewhat wrong and at least get one sale to pay the $3,000 I owe.
How about running the disturbing ads in the newspaper. The lazy guy who sits at home in his underwear making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.I have done it and they don't work. They have a very negative effect on your future renewals and the ability that you have to keep a good perception alive of yourself with the public. Negative advertising sometimes has a certain stigma attached and I choose to stay away from this method. Part of the problem that exists is that you are publicly bad mouthing what you sell, while trying to sell them the very same thing that your bad mouthing. It doesn't work with repeat business and it doesn't bod well when your current clients want a copy of the report. This method doesn't have any legs to it. Obtaining a good annuity lead is more than just getting in the door. There are plenty of other ways of disturbing without doing it in your local newspaper. This only a temporary fix for someone who is at the end of his rope for getting annuity leads.
While I'm on the subject of negative annuity leads how about the system that went out of business in February and after bankruptcy reinvented itself under a new name. This was by far the largest annuity lead system known. It had people who loved them and people who hated them. The majority hated them however the majority of successful agents using their annuity leads said that it was a numbers game. It only took one sale to make their money invested in the lead program a value of 8 to 1 of dollars spent in the annuity lead program Case to the income that was earned. It had its faults but it truly was a numbers game. It is my opinion that there was no integrity to the program and that it was oversold to agents around the country. It was to often when agents were calling on the same annuity appointments within 3-6 months.
When the company did send mail, and that wasn't often, they sent out a extremely controversial annuity lead card that made it look like the person receiving the card had an annuity that they didn't know they had, or may have forgotten about. The card said. You have or may have an annuity that is at or may be at the end of it's surrender period. Please call for more information. Nothing else! They got about a 13% response rate to this card. The best part is the people called in themselves. You didn't have to call them. Just figure 13% response rate to annuity lead card, calling you. The operators ( telemarketers ) just sit there and book appointments for you with these people. So easy that the telemarketers would average a successful annuity appointment made for you in one out of three calls. Now comes the ugly part, this company made millions and millions of dollars but got shut down for a number of disturbing reasons that if the agents who were purchasing the annuity leads understood, would have never bought them.
The people who called in from these lead cards, were most often dead broke, destitute, down on their luck people who were hoping that an old insurance agent made a mistake, or that an insurance company did an accounting mistake and that there was some free money out there. The marketing company in question just simply made a bold calculation and a gutsy business decision of mailing out this particular card. Sure they were able to book appointments for a good price, but what you had to deal with was not particularly professional. Just figure that they were receiving a 13% response rate. That is almost 5 times the normal response rate for an annuity lead card. So if you calculate the factor of the response rate and the quality of the people who called, along with the reason why they called in, it added up to a lot of wheel spinning and a great loss of quality time.
All in all this company had a glow about itself, and that glow was negativity. And the shocker is the reason why I understand it so well is that I tried it myself for 3 months. We sent out tens of thousands of cards on a weekly basis and had a room full of appointment setters. Booking the appointments was like shooting fish in the barrel. The appointment setters did a great job of asking qualifying questions, but in the majority of the cases the people who called in were often dead broke and would say anything to get an agent to come by. This program truly had the opposite effect of what I was looking for. However there was the occasional miracle of a good annuity lead that netted a huge annuity sale, surely for the only reason of it being a numbers game.
This program was ran separately of our standard program and was only offered to a few dozen preferred agents. "I'm not so sure that they felt they were preferred after this program". In my opinion it was a great learning experience for all who were involved, and it would have been a tremendous loss to my integrity if I were to have brought it to the entire public. If you think I'm crazy, their back in business and you can find them under a new name.
Internet annuity leads are just what they are. I'm sure that some of them are good but this is where internet fraud rears it's ugly head. It takes no capital to start these businesses. Anyone can do them by just making up a name and purchase a URL. There are countless companies starting in this business as well as going out of it on a daily basis. There is no stability. The even larger issue is the audience involved. Your typical annuity buyer isn't surfing the internet for information. Let's face it, getting annuity leads for $8 to $10 would be a great price to pay, but for what. I will agree that there can be a place for some of these, but availability is to few to make any significant headway.
It has been and always will be that the best way to get a annuity lead is a referral. Everyone should be scheduling annual annuity reviews with their clients at this time. Any excuse can be given, annual review, anniversary of a EIA annuity review for investment options, tax free withdrawals from their annuities using the zero tax method, IRA tax free ROTH conversions, or one of the many options available at the annuity education center. You have gotten in the door and its time to get the annuity lead along with the sale your about to make.
There is no reason that you shouldn't make at least a 10% of their entire portfolio sale at least once a year. It's simple and I will talk about it in detail on a future blog date. During the review just simply ask for a referral. There is no secret to it. These people are your client. They respect you, have trust in you and there is no reason why they can't give you multiple referrals and annuity leads. This is the best way to get annuity leads and there will never be a better way. You can't beat the cost and you will be paid as you get them
Peter has thirty years experience selling annuities and is one of the most respected authorities on marketing annuities and life insurance in the Senior market. Peter first made a name for himself back in the early eighties for his ability to sell 150 plus universal life policies per year using a very simple telephone prospecting system. In 1990 he started selling annuities and from then on it was a seven figure income with a complete change in the way he and his family were able to live.
Beautiful homes, fancy cars, Ocean front home overlooking Marta's Vineyard, two boats in front of the house, world class vacations with the family, and no worries about where money was going to come from. All of the business written was from leads generated by a simple 4x 8.5 card which mentioned some very simple yet powerful topics.
In 1997 Peter began to think about Seminars and in late 1998 he dove into the very easy at that time senior seminar market. His first seminar he wrote 1.2 million dollars of annuity premium and over $40,000 of target UL premium.
In 1998 he wrote 18 million of annuity production and hasn't looked back. In 2004 Peter decided start his own Annuity and life NMO National Annuity Brokers http://www.nationalannuitybrokers.com , and at the same time seminar attendance had slowed dramatically so he decided to go back to his prospecting methods of the early 90's and revisit the method of sending out cards to seniors and started another company called, Premier annuity Prospects
http://www.premierannuityprospects.com
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