Final Expense Leads - Which Are the Best?

I speak with insurance agents in the Final Expense market all the time and a common question is "Where can I get quality final expense leads"? Well, first you have to decide what kind of lead you are looking for, because there are several different ways of developing leads. The first type and most widely used lead is called Direct Mail responder leads. The second most widely used is telemarketed leads. Third is internet leads and lastly referrals.

Direct Mail Responder Leads

Direct Mail Responder leads have been widely used in the final expense market for a very long time and the people who buy final expense market receive these mail cards on a regular basis. Every agent and his brother mail these cards to this market and saturate it every day. With the average direct mail response rate being about 1 1/2 percent it makes it difficult to get a good return on your money. Let's do the math. Let's say you spend $350 per 1,000 pieces of direct mail sent out, that means at a 1 1/2 percent response rate, you will get approximately 15 responder leads back. That means you are spending at a minimum of $23 per lead.

Telemarketed Leads

Telemarketed leads have also been around for a long time. However because of the do not call list and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act or "TCPA", it is more difficult and more expensive than ever to get these types of leads. By the way, beware of leads developed using automated dialers with a prerecorded message. Read the TCPA (47 USC Sec 227), nowhere does it talk about the caller pressing 1 to opting making it legal. Then you have companies out there using call centers located in India. A total waist of money. These leads can cost anywhere from $15 each to $35 each, none the less very expensive.

Internet Leads

First of all, I have been working the final expense market for a long time and I can count on one hand the amount of individuals I have come across in this market that have internet access let alone own a computer. Even if these leads were prevalent, they get sold to a handful of agents at the same time. Not only do you have to call to see if the prospect is interested in buying your product, you have to race to the prospect to beat the other agents there. Although these leads can be the cheapest upfront, they end up being the most expensive.

Referrals

Referrals are always the best type of lead that you can ever get. There is nothing better than Mrs. Jones referring you to her sister or best friend. Referrals produce the most sales and the best thing is that they are FREE! Here is the problem though, how do you get Mrs. Jones to give you a referral. Most people do not give referrals because there is nothing in it for them. Mrs. Jones will give you many excuses for not giving you a referral. The trick is showing Mrs. Jones how it will benefit her to give you referrals. I am not talking about rebating! You should never do anything to jeopardize your credibility or your insurance license. I use one specific way of getting Mrs. Jones to open her address book.

I offer a FREE REPORT that explains everything if you are interested.

Conclusion

I doesn't matter which leads are the best. The only thing that matters is that if you are paying for leads, you are paying too much!

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads   How A Bank Took Over The Relationship From My Financial Advisor   

Protect Your Business From Liability Claims Using Public Liability Insurance

Businesses that are directly associated with public are prone to liabilities as there are chances of accidents, even after making a conscientious effort to avoid them. If your customer or any other person sues you for death, injury or property damage at your premises and if you do not have public liability insurance, you may face significant costs that can cripple your business.

These liabilities pose a severe financial threat to the businesses. Apart from the claimed amount, the high legal costs incurred in defending the cases filed by the third-parties are also to be paid by the company. Hence, having public liability insurance is very important to get out of these unexpected heavy expenses.

Read on further to know about the frequency of personal injuries at business places and how the public liability insurance helps in protecting your business from these claims.

Statistics of injury claims: According to the reports released by the Injuries Board of Ireland, there were 8,645 personal injury claims lodged in the year 2009. Among them, one in six (17%) were related to public liability, with an average award amounted to 23,143 Euros for each claim. Nearly 51% of these accidents took place in privately owned establishments, 25% in retail/shopping outlets and 19% in pubs/night clubs or restaurants. With this high rate of accidents, businesses are required to take a public liability insurance to stay guarded of future legal claims.

Listed below are the benefits of having public liability insurance.

Reimbursement of claimed amount along with legal fees: Public liability insurance compensates you with the amount of reimbursement claimed by the third-party and also the money paid as legal charges for fending such claims. This is especially significant since you are required to pay large amounts of money as legal fees.

Covers expenses related to property damage: In addition to death and injury, the damage or loss caused to the property of the third-party is also covered. Hence, a public liability policy provides the third-party with the repairing costs of the damaged property or the cost needed to buy a new property.

Offers recovery expenses: Another good thing about the policy is that it offers recovery expenses. Along with the claimed amount and legal fees, the policy also provides medical aid to the injured person. This insurance covers costs related to hospitalization, treatment cost, medical bills, rehabilitation, and other damages. Some policies also offer domestic help and other aids to help the victim recover quickly.

Provides assistance in legal dealings: The main advantage of liability policy is that the business owners do not have to constantly worry about the legal fights. The insurance company deals with all the legal complexities associated with the claim. For instance, if you lose the case, the insurance company pays the compensation and the legal fees, and if you win the case, it collects the legal fees from the injured party. This way the insurance company eliminates your legal hassles.

Protects the employees: Public liability insurance cover helps and protects the employees in case they are responsible for any accident that injures or damages a third-party or his property due to negligence at work. As they represent the company, the policy indirectly protects them from legal costs. This shows the company's concern towards its employees.

In order to survive in this litigious society, every business needs public liability insurance to protect itself from the risks, costs and compensations associated with accidents.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads   How A Bank Took Over The Relationship From My Financial Advisor   

SR22 Insurance 101

What Is SR22 Insurance?

SR22 Insurance isn't actually a type of insurance, it's simply auto insurance with an SR22 Filing Attached.

What Is an SR22 Filing?

SR22 Filing is an endorsement on an auto insurance or a non owners auto insurance policy. It's a form that is filed with the DMV by your insurance company that let's them know that you are carrying the state required liability insurance.

Why is an SR-22 required?

A filing is required by the Department of Motor Vehicles in order for a particular individual to be allowed driving privileges. The DMV will require an SR22 for individuals that pose a high risk to motorists. In most cases, this filing is required for an individual that has been convicted of driving under the influence or if someone gets into an accident while not insured. It's mainly a way for the DMV to insure that a high risk drivers carries auto insurance to protect the general public.

How long is an SR22 required for?

An SR22 endorsement on your policy is usually required for a term of 3 years, after which the Filing will no longer be required and the endorsement can be removed from your policy.

How Much is an SR22 Policy?

Since SR22 insurance is just a filing attached to your auto insurance, the cost of an SR22 policy is the same as the cost of an auto insurance policy plus about a $20, one time, filing fee. Other than the fee to file an SR22, no other additional costs are associated with having an SR22. However, the reason you need a filing, such as a DUI, will affect your rates.

What happens if my SR22 filing is cancelled?

While you're in the 3 year period where an SR-22 is required, if your policy that has the SR22 filing is cancelled for any reason, the DMV will again revoke your driving privileges. In this event, you must obtain an SR22 policy again and also reinstate your license with the DMV including paying the DMV reinstatement fee which is usually around $55. If you have a lapse in your policy due to a late payment, your SR22 may be cancelled and your driving privileges may be suspended once again.

What companies offer SR22 filings on their policies?

The best way to find SR22 Insurance is to simply type in " SR22 Insurance ", or "SR22 Insurance Quotes" in a search engine that will provide you results of insurance companies offering SR22 Insurance. It's recommended to shop around 3 companies to ensure you're getting a competitive rate.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads   How A Bank Took Over The Relationship From My Financial Advisor   

Still Using Spreadsheets for Managing Risks? - Switch to Risk Management Software

Managing risk is essential in every organization to accomplish its key objectives effectively. Risk management not only requires a reliable process to capture risks, but also needs a mechanism to document and administer the organization's response.

An appropriate risk management tool always helps the risk managers to identify, assess, and prioritize the risks which can be prevented. Here, we will discuss about spreadsheets - commonly used risk management tools and their true costs. We will also know about the best tool to replace spreadsheets for effective risk management.

Spreadsheets are commonly used management tools because they are • Convenient to use: Many people believe that spreadsheets are convenient to collect, code, sort and analyze data. Yes, they are better than paper based management systems, but they are risky.

• Flexible to enter data: With some basic encoding, spreadsheets offer flexible arrangements of rows and columns to enter data. They allow the user to configure and enter information in a way that suits his unique needs. But risk management involves analysis of various factors and a spreadsheet may not be helpful.

• Low cost or free option: Spreadsheets are either available as freeware or at low-cost. That is why organizations use them extensively. But they fail to understand the fact that the true cost of a tool should be defined by the operational costs that affect the business on long-run; not by the initial cost of the tool.

Are they really beneficial? Many business owners and risk managers today are using spreadsheets as risk management tools unaware of the risks involved (however some are aware). Here are the risks involved:

• Inability to process huge amounts of data: Although spreadsheets are a good solution for small volumes of data, the processing and calculation will become complicated with the continual growth.

• Time consuming: Risk management requires collecting great deal of information, which often results in huge number of spreadsheets interlinked to each other. A little change to the data structure becomes a great task. This makes risk managers spend countless hours validating data, double checking formulas, and updating values, which is as a time-consuming process.

• Complex to find mistakes: It is quite difficult to find mistakes in a spreadsheet with lot of data. It is often time consuming process to find where exactly the mistakes have occurred.

• Limits the depth of risk analysis: With each change made to a spreadsheet, links between the information are lost making it difficult to analyze relationships over time. Without these links, it becomes tough to link risks and their controls. Also they offer limited access to past and current data making it difficult to compare data overtime.

• Intensive labor: The process of risk management involves continuous updating of data and it increases day by day. Updating data and using spreadsheets effectively requires lot of time and effort. So intensive labor with good knowledge of using the shortcuts and formulas is compulsory.

• Lacks security: A user can accidentally or intentionally delete vast amounts of critical information. Spreadsheets are highly vulnerable to virus attacks, hard disk crashes, and other unexpected disasters.

Underlying costs of using spreadsheets In general, people think that spreadsheets are free, but they never calculate the underlying costs that can impact the business. Following are the true costs of using them.

• Labor costs: As discussed earlier, it takes lot of effort to create, maintain, organize, and report using spreadsheets. However, the fact that these things require labor, which in turn results in huge costs to the company, is often ignored.

• Opportunity costs: Spreadsheets consume lot of your time and effort, which you can productively use for adding value to the organization. Many business owners, in fact, lose many opportunities hanging around with spreadsheets.

• Risk and non-compliance costs: Spreadsheets lack in company wide visibility, accountability, security and control which results in increased costs in terms of failed audits, unforeseen events, increased insurance costs and so on.

• Scalability costs: A small company can manage and use one spreadsheet to track all records. But as the business grows, the effort of maintaining and consolidating these records increases exponentially. At one point this process fails and negatively impacts the business.

• Human error costs: Spreadsheets are vulnerable to manipulation, which can dramatically impact the company. Moreover, with the increasing chances of human errors, it is difficult to consider that the data is valid and reliable. These human errors can cost a lot to the company.

Effective tool to replace spreadsheet - Risk Management Software After seeing all the risks and costs involved with spreadsheets, one would certainly ask for a better tool to manage risks and here is the solution - the Risk Management Software. It can effectively replace spreadsheets in the risk management process. Following are the benefits of using risk management software.

• Effective control over GRC processes: Risk management software helps in the effective control over the GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) processes with proper documentation and work flow. They also help managers in risk assessment and analysis, visualization and reporting.

• Data security: User can limit the availability of data by creating passwords. He can also give full access to all the data to a particular group of people within the organization. This feature eliminates the risk of manipulation of data.

• Real time recording: Recording and updating information regarding risks is easy using this software. You need not spend hours to update the data.

• Reliable audits: This software offers full protection to all the data in the system with fully automated backups. This allows auditors to extract robust and reliable audit trails without unnecessary effort and thus it helps them in identification of risks, and creation of risk management strategies.

• Automated risk reporting: It provides the user with clear information on their objectives and risks associated. It also informs about the required actions and scheduled dates to implement them to prevent risks.

• Clear and consistent reports: A unique feature of this software is that it provides clear and consistent reports making it easy for managers to view the risks in real-time.

How to choose effective risk management software With growing demand of the risk management software, many companies offering this software evolved in the market. Therefore it is important to choose the effective one to reap the maximum benefits. Following are some tips to choose a good one.

• Reputed vendor: A well established and experienced vendor definitely offers standard products as he fully understands risk management standards.

• Maximum features: Before buying the product, make sure that it has all features to help you in managing the risks properly.

• Customer service and tech support: As this product is new for the organization, it is important to choose a company that offers 24/7 tech support and timely customer service. Moreover, as risk environment demands a constant change of compliance, make sure that the vendor is offering regular product updates and maintenance releases.

An upgrade in the existing technology never says that the existing product is of no use, instead offers the user with more useful features. Upgrading to latest tools like risk management software enhances the organization's capabilities in managing risk.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads   How A Bank Took Over The Relationship From My Financial Advisor   

If Cold Calling Makes You Feel Dirty Do This Instead

If Cold calling makes you feel dirty you should listen to your gut. In this article I'm going to explain why cold calling isn't working for you. Then I'm going to share what does work and explain why.

First, cold calling doesn't work the way you are doing it now because you are an uninvited pest. The people you call didn't ask you to call them. They're busy. They don't want to talk on the phone to people they don't know. Plus, most people only use a landline telephone to screen the calls they don't want. Anyone they actually know and want to talk to calls them on their cell phone.

Second, what you say isn't relevant to the person you call. When you answer the phone you expect the person on the other end to be someone you already know. If the person on the other end isn't someone you already know you expect that person to have something very important to say. What you consider important is something you are already looking for or have a particular interest in.

Few people wake up and jump out of bed screaming, "I have to get me some insurance today!"

Next time some clueless soul tells you "cold calling is a numbers game"; recognize that statement for what it is. That statement is a stupid platitude spouted off by people who don't have a real prospecting strategy.

Finally, you present your prospect with the wrong offer. Prospects expect your offer to interest them, bring them value, and be non-threatening. The idea of sitting down with a pushy insurance agent (they believe all insurance agents are pushy and obnoxious) is definitely threatening. An offer like that is definitely something they DO NOT want to do.

Bottom line cold calling doesn't work because you call the wrong people, say the wrongs things, and make the wrong offer. When you make a cold call it's like searching to find someone at a University of Nebraska home football game to buy insurance. At the game you could introduce yourself to as many of the +60,000 fans present. You could ask if they'd like an insurance quote. But, you wouldn't enjoy much success.

That brings me to the biggest reason cold calling isn't a good prospecting strategy. Even though cold calling isn't a good prospecting strategy you can make it work. You can learn a much better way to make those calls. But, you'll never make a lot of money doing it.

Here's why. Cold calling is a one-to-one marketing technique. It eats up your time, erodes your ego, and yields few results for your efforts.

An effective prospecting strategy is one-to-many. You do one thing and get your offer in front of many people. Of those many people the ones who are likely to actually buy contact you. When those likely buyers contact you, you give them an offer they want to accept. Because those prospects feel you've given them an easy way to take you up on your offer they are very likely to accept.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads   How A Bank Took Over The Relationship From My Financial Advisor   

The Overall Benefits Of Using Insurance Brokers

The process of maintaining coverage on anything within life is often considered to be a mandatory for many items and in many respects. This is a process that is usually considered quite critical from the stance of keeping everything as successfully maintained and carefully considered as possible throughout the entire ownership process of various products and services that are continually in use. People considering this issue should know the overall benefits of using insurance brokers to ensure they receive the guidance they are seeking.

Most providers that offer coverage of this kind to interested consumers have a host of employees available for consumers. These are typically employees that fulfill a specific role and are maintained in order to make sure that all complications that could arise are successfully kept up with. Brokers are typically the professionals that are sought after in order to tailor all insurance based need for the consumer that utilized their expertise throughout the coverage process.

Many people simply utilize an online or telephone based format in order to make a policy based purchase or decision. This is usually seen as more convenient and effective from the stance of time and efficiency whenever this process is under consideration. Consumers that know the advantages of utilizing the services of a broker are usually able to make sure their coverage experience is a success.

One of the main benefits of utilizing this type of professional is the personalized approach to service that is offered. The ability to simply receive a personal approach to coverage and having any issues resolved is always seen as a major benefit. These professionals are usually very well versed in all aspects of coverage and should be taken advantage of.

This is also a professional that provides assistance with any type of claim that must be filled out. The claims process is always known to be complicated and may require some type of guidance and knowledge base from trained professionals. This helps make sure that all aspects of coverage are fully understood at all times.

Any questions or concerns about coverage are able to be answered and addressed by this type of professional. The entire industry of insurance is known to be quite complicated which may lead to various questions and concerns throughout the entire coverage process. This type of professional is usually able to make sure these questions and concerns are effectively dealt with.

Consumers also often find that these professionals are very local and conveniently located. Professionals are usually situated throughout local offices and are able to be accessed whenever they may be needed. This provides the foundational ability of making sure that they are readily utilized whenever they may be needed.

A final benefit of using insurance brokers is that they are usually free of charge to consumers. Most people feel as if the use of this type of professional is associated with some type of service fee that is built into their monthly premium base rate and plan which is not correct. These professionals are made available by the company at no additional cost to consumers.

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Contacting Insurance Leads   How A Bank Took Over The Relationship From My Financial Advisor