Strategies for Finding Prospective Clients for Individual Life Insurance Sales

Life insurance is an essential component of people’s overall financial fitness. It protects families and can also be a useful savings and investment vehicle.

Life insurance, as a consumer service category, is a pretty broad one. The truth is, most folks at one point or another in their lives will purchase a life insurance contract. That being said, it is one of those things that although most claim to need it, a significant portion of the masses delays the purchase of life insurance until much later in life.

A 2015 study by Foresters Financial™ showed that while 84 percent of Americans say that most people need life insurance, only 68 percent say they personally need it and only 59 percent own some form of it. The percentage of Americans who own Life Insurance policies dwindles as average age decreases. In other words, younger families are far less likely to own Life insurance policies.

As a Life Insurance Sales professional, you face various advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, you are selling a product that almost everyone is familiar with and knows they need. On the other hand, most will put off buying this product until some life event changes their sense of urgency towards the purchase of your product.

Like any other product, convenience and positioning will ultimately help you acquire clients, even the ones who are disinclined to make that financial commitment at this time in their lives.

Leading life insurance purchase factors in the United States in 2017, by age - statista

Getting more people to buy Life Insurance from you depends on how you market your product to your target audience. And how you position your product to your target audience will greatly, in the case of Life insurance sold to consumers, depend on the average age of your audience.

Younger folks will buy short-term policies when purchasing is made convenient and incidental to some other far more desirable purchase, and older folks will buy from you when you market to them directly and are more likely to buy permanent policies. Your sales approach will also be dependent on the geographical location of your prospects.

What is Life insurance?

Life insurance is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money in exchange for a premium, upon the death of an insured person. According to Foresters Financial™ life insurance is an essential component of people’s overall financial fitness. It protects families and can also be a useful savings and investment vehicle.

Who buys Life Insurance?

A seasoned Life insurance Vet, I sued to work with ones told me that "You buy life insurance, not with money, but with your age". Sounds strange, but he meant was that the cost of life insurance increases as one gets older i.e closer to death and susceptible to age-related illnesses. It is, therefore, optimal to buy a policy while you are young.

That being said, studies show that younger, healthier folks are far less likely to buy Life Insurance as compared to their older counterparts. In 2015, individuals between 18 and 35 overestimated the cost of a policy by 213%.

Among the 57% of U.S. citizens who own life insurance, more than half of those policyholders are 45 or older. With marital rates decreasing 21% from 1960 to 2010, life policy purchases are being delayed despite the inherent advantages of buying at a younger age.

Best ways to sell Life Policies

As I stated earlier, how you choose to find clients to buy Life Insurance from you will depend on two main factors: Age and location. Here are two paths to consider.

Direct Marketing

Although a kind of old school method of marketing, direct selling methods still work fabulously when selling to older folks living in a more rural or suburban area. Older families living outside of city centers are still using landline phones and will still stop to checkout the coupons and offers in their mailbox.

For these guys, they see nothing strange about getting a call from an Insurance sales guy looking to meet with them. For us younger city folks, this would seem like an unusual thing to do, but for them, it's the way they have always done it. Direct marketing does also have some advantages, you can run a fairly low-cost, high profit operation this way, and the satisfaction of helping folks in your community.

Indirect Selling

Indirect or incidental forms of selling Life Insurance is best suited for folks who are younger ( 25-45) living in city / urban areas. These guys, for the most part, grew up in the internet / Social media / App Store age. They will typically only have a cell phone and are not letting you into their home unless to Netflix and chill.

They prefer to go online to shop for an insurance product and prefer to use chat when they have questions. They will not take a call from numbers they do not recognize and they are definitely not returning a sales call. They buy Life insurance online, from their bank, Credit card company, from their employer or over the phone.

The best way to reach these folks is via technology i.e a well-designed website, via active social media marketing, etc. You can also get some great prospects in this market segment by partnering with organizations or well-established professionals in your community to refer clients to your business.