A business without a list of prospects is a business in trouble. Getting people to sell to you can be one of the biggest challenges you face as an insurance agent or financial advisor. However, there are three ways to get a prospect list.
First, I would like to make one thing clear. The purpose of any lead generation system is to produce a list of leads who are either ready to buy now or ready to buy soon. If you target leads like these, qualified leads, you can’t help but make money. Conversely, if you focus your time and energy on people who aren’t ready to buy now or aren’t ready to buy soon, you’ll go broke no matter how hard you work.
When it comes to building a prospect list, there are three ways to get that list.
The first way to get a list of prospects is to buy the list. You are actually renting the list. There are a couple of challenges when it comes to buying a prospect list.
The first challenge when it comes to buying a list is the fact that you can only mail the list you rent once. That’s why if you rent a list, it’s extremely important that you follow a two-step process. For the first step, your goal should be to do nothing more than generate a qualified lead. Once the prospect responds to your offer, that prospect is on your list so you can email them as often as you like.
The second challenge with renting a list is the fact that you probably don’t know much about how lists are generated. You probably don’t have a relationship with a listing broker who is focused on helping you rent the best listing. Unless he does, he probably won’t rent a good list.
Finally, you must rent a minimum of 5,000 names when you rent a list. That’s a big problem for two reasons. First, unless you have a tried and tested piece, you should never drop 5,000 pieces of anything. Second, unless you mail out all 5,000 names, you can’t really gauge how good the list is or isn’t.
The second way to get a list is to borrow a list. For example, if a local business owner had a list of customers, that business owner might allow you to mail something to their customers. As you may have suspected, there are also some challenges to borrowing a list.
First, you’ll be surprised how many business owners don’t have a mailing list for their customers. Second, unless you have a client list of the same size, most business owners will not allow you to email their clients in exchange for allowing them to email their clients. However, some will allow you to mail to your customers if you send in an offer such as a ride on something the company is already mailing and you pay all postage.
The third and best way to get a list of qualified prospects is to create the list yourself. To build your list, set up your own lead generation system to capture and qualify your leads. Once you have your system in place, you will always have quality leads to sell to.
