Jeff: Hey, life insurance agents, you’re listening to the Modern Life Insurance Selling podcast where we provide the tools to help you grow a more profitable life insurance business by selling online and over the phone from anywhere with an internet connection. Even if you’re alone in your quest to build your life insurance business, just know that there’s a community of life insurance agents at SellTermLife.com connecting and helping each other grow their business from home offices, coffee shops, [inaudible 00:00:30 ] all across the nation.

Jeff: Welcome to episode number thirty-eight of the Modern Life Insurance Selling podcast. I’m your host, Jeff Root. Today will be a solo podcast talking about the current state of life insurance marketing and the magnitude of the opportunity in front of us for 2015 and beyond. As we close out 2015, there’s a few opportunities agents haven’t fully grasped that I’ll cover in this episode, but first, like always, if you like what you hear and are listening in iTunes or Stitcher, please leave us a review. Also, if you have any questions or want any topics covered please use the send voice mail tab over at SellTermLife.com.

All right, there’s a lot of life insurance agents out there taking baby steps or on the fence to making the move to bringing their businesses online. If the latest LIMRA stats saying that eighty-five percent of consumers do some sort of research online and fifty percent of consumers purchase online and over the phone don’t convince you, let me reframe it for you. Agents are grossly underestimating what’s actually happening in technology today. We are experiencing the single biggest culture shift in US history. It’s going to change the way we sell life insurance and it’s already happening and agents are taking advantage of this today.

In every industry, not just insurance, there is wealth being created like we’ve never seen before because of the massive shifts in the way business is done and technology advancements. Any time there’s big societal shifts like this there’s a lot of money to be made. Decades from now, in my opinion, agents are going to look back at our time period and comment on how lucky we were to be able to take advantage of these shifts.

In the life insurance industry agents are either thrilled with what’s happening with technology or scared out of their minds. I could hear it in their voices when I talked to you agents on the phone. I can sense it in the emails I’m getting. No matter what side of the coin you fall on it all comes back to value. Do you provide value for your client beyond anything else out there? Do you value your client’s time? I can preach about the opportunity and spit out LIMRA stats about the opportunity ahead of us for hours, but it all comes down to you and what you can provide your clients.

Let’s get down to how to take advantage of these big shifts. There’s a lot of agents make the move online with nothing that differentiates them from the rest of the industry. It’s scary for me because a lot of these agents are going to fail. It’s just like the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Simply building a website with no marketing direction is a waste of your time and money, and I see agents doing it all the time, spending a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars on a website, adding some content and waiting three, six months and saying, “Hey, why am I not getting any leads?”

Before you make the jump to get in front of this tidal wave of consumers headed online to research life insurance, think about what value you’re providing. Why would a prospect choose you over any other agent out there without ever meeting you face to face? What makes you memorable so they’ll come back to you to purchase life insurance when the time is right?

I like to compare it to a social outing. When I’m introduced to five new people and ten seconds later I couldn’t tell you’re their names. Even after I shook their hand, looked in their eyes and said, “Nice to meet you” I forget their names. However, if there is someone that stands out from the crowd because of a common interest I always remember their name because I have a clear motive why I wanted to remember their name.

Make sure you have that differentiating factor that will make a consumer remember you when they’re ready to purchase life insurance. What do you do well? What segment can you serve best, and can you articulate clearly how you can help that segment? What are you doing that no one else is doing? Highlight and focus whatever value you provide. That’s how you set yourself apart. Simply putting up a generic website saying you can get the lowest term life insurance rates, that’s been done. It’s been done. It’s out there. That’s not going to set you apart.

Beyond the value you provide it’s important to value your time and your prospect’s time. Beyond the health of my family and friends my biggest asset is my time, and I bet it’s the same for you and your prospects. Let me ask you an off topic question, and this will all circle back, it will make sense. Do you get annoyed when somebody calls you on your cell phone?

Think about it, you’re going throughout your day. Somebody calls you on your cell phone. You look at it. Are you a little bit annoyed that this person is actually calling you? If you’re one of those people who get annoyed, and I would hate to admit it but I’m one of those people too, I would guess that you’re up to speed with technology, because technology is in a place where somebody shouldn’t be bothering you on your time.

Think about that. This is what’s happening right now in our industry. People aren’t as receptive to phone calls as they used to be. I remember in the ‘90s loving to get phone calls, but now the telemarketing has jaded our view of answering our phones, and it’s so easy to communicate on your own time online via email or text, or whatever your preferred communication method is, it’s harder to get people to open up on the phone. We need to communicate with customer two-point-oh differently and on their time.

We now live in a world where information is available twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. People aren’t communicating only during business hours now. I can’t tell you how many after hours email conversations with clients I’ve had this year. Guess what? I email them back immediately, even if it’s after hours, because I’m working on their time. They’re ready to communicate so I’m ready. I know I will get their business because I communicate on their time.

It’s almost like consumers are beginning to expect us to be available on their time, and if we’re not they will find someone else who is. I think that’s one of the reasons why [Leeron 00:06:51 ] from previous podcast episodes, he pulls in several applications per week, and even more leads from his website chat from the weekends and late in the evenings, because he understands and respects other people’s time.

We’re also having luck contacting people who never pick up their phone or return emails or phone calls by texting them. That consumer obviously prefers to communicate by text and so that’s what we have to do. Is it convenient? No, we don’t like it but we’re on their time now and technology is pushing it so that we have to communicate on their time. Am I saying you need to be on point twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year? No, but you should figure out a reasonable way to be accessible to your prospects and clients on their time.

The internet has made it so consumers almost expect a live person to be available by phone, chat, or email at 8:30 at night after their kids go to bed. That’s when they are able to go their research. That’s when they can get online. If you don’t do it someone else is. Think about how you’re communicating with prospects and be receptive to their preferred mode of communication.

Let’s shift gears a little bit and let me respond to the question, how are these independent life insurance agents crushing it online while I’m struggling to generate a few leads? It’s something I talk about with agents daily. Right now there’s a widening gap of successful agents becoming even more successful. Then on the flipside there’s even more agents struggling to make it.

You want to know that one theme that makes one agent better than the other, why these successful agents are becoming more successful and more and more agents are struggling to make it? Besides work ethic and investing in their business, they actually market in the year we live in.

Most agents aren’t marketing in the world we live in today. I look at agent’s websites and rarely do I see a mobile optimized site. We’re seeing over thirty-five percent of our traffic to our life insurance websites from mobile devices, tablets, smart phones, whatever. I see general rehashed content everywhere. Nothing is new anymore. Everybody is just rehashing, rewriting the same thing and ripping each other off, rewording it.

I have agents emailing me from their Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo email accounts. I see websites that look like they’