Mortgage Protection Sales: Rewarding and Challenging

June 26th, 2009 by stevenlocke

You may be a mortgage insurance sales person who is frustrated with how hard you have to work to get new clients. Having covered hundreds of miles by car to arrive at your prospects residence then finding they aren’t there is small when seen alongside the discomfort of numerouse evenings in prospect homes unsuccesssfully attempting to convince them of numerous reasons they should commit to your product.

You surely won’t want to feel the irritation or the expense of going out of your way to obtain mortgage protection insurance leads ahead of your competitors and then finding they were bad leads. Believe it – time is valuable for both you and for your prospect.

Client’s Point Of View
Most of your leads may have come from people who received promotional pieces in the mail and responded to them. Direct mail campaigns are sent out to motivate prospects toward fast action and prospect will often interpret these differently than the facts would indicate.

For example, they may see the offer that promises that a medical examination is not necessary to qualify and think that because of that a pre-existing condition is not a consideration. In that instance, you will have labored on these mortgage leads only to discover that the prospective client is declined.

It is possible that some individuals will have been declared non-insurable because of the work they do for a living. Likewise, there are some prospects who may feel that they don

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How to create a Sales Forecast

June 25th, 2009 by stevenlocke

sales forecasting software

Gathering the basic sales forecasting information you have to have

Every business should have a sales forecasting process. Sales forecasting should receive just as much attention as cash flow management. Sales are the life blood of any business as cash is the oxygen supply. The cash flow and sales forecast reports are inextricably linked. The adoption of good sales forecasting software and a well enforced sales forecasting policy can make an immense difference to the health and performance of any business.

Key inputs

There are three key inputs or factors to consider when creating a sales forecast. The sales person, the customer and the product. Good sales forecasting software enables you to sort,correlate and present these inputs and give you a clear vision of the activity in your sales pipeline and what is and isn’t going to come in when.

1. Getting sales people to gather accurate sales forecasting information.

Sales people vary in their levels of skills, experience and knowledge of your target market or industry. But with a small amount of training, encouragement and discipline they can be made to submit accurate sales forecasts. Make sure your salespeople are acutely aware of what information you need them to extract from the sales process and make sure they pose the correct set of questions to the correct people at the correct time in the correct way. Therefore the first discipline sales people should have drilled into them is planning. It’s vital that every customer meeting or call is carefully planned. The plan should contain what information is needed and what questions will be asked in what order. Their call plan should be recorded in the sales forecasting software for later review. Sales people who don’t take notes or come prepared without a structured set of questions are wasting everyone’s time.

2. Gathering Customer information

Keeping detailed information about the customer’s organisation, the market they operate in and the progress they are making is really useful when it comes to assessing the basis for the salespersons sales forecast assumptions

A good example of this is the customers credit rating. From the sales forecasting software you should be able to recall every detail about every customer. Therefore every sales person should develop a habit of finding out as much as they can that is in the public domain about the customer. Naturally this information is good content for conversation when the sales person interacts with the customer. It will always lead to questions and most customers are impressed by sales people who appear to have a genuine interest or good working knowledge of their customers. Remember the art of the sale is about solving the customer’s problem. The more problems you can spot in your customer’s business, the more creative you will become and the more you might sell if what you have can address these problems.

3. Educating the Customer

This is where the third factor, the product comes into play. The easiest way to sell a product or a service is to make sure your customer is educated as much as is possible about what you do. I am not talking here about thrusting brochures into their hands. Here I would recommend using the timeless art of the story. Great story tellers will always engage an audience. Stories about how other customers have uses your products and services to solve their problems are invaluable. Testimonial or case study or reference doesn’t have the same appeal as the term story. These terms are tired and worn. You will get so much more information back from a customer if you tell detailed and carefully woven stories as they paint good pictures of the possible outcomes of using your product or service.

All of this information rigourously fed into a good sales forecasting software system should give you the vital data to make better decisions and avoid errors of judgement in cash management.

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The Basic Facts of Car Insurance Quotations

June 4th, 2009 by stevenlocke

Have you ever wondered how insurance companies come up with your Car Insurance Quotations? Though it may looked random, but the truth is a few factors are taken into consideration. While there are some factors you can change, others are really out of your hands. Here are a few of the factors that go into the calculation of car insurance quotes.

Your Age

Older people will have lower car insurance ratings than teenangers who just earned their licenses. This was figured as young drivers have higher rates of car accidents.

Vehicle Used

Whether your car is used for daily commute or business purposed, it will add up to your annual mileage, and this will take into account to your car insurance quotations. If you seldom use your car, then you will pay less for your car insurance. Obviously, if you seldom use your car in a week, for example, you will be less likely to have an accident than those who are more often use their cars.

The Type of Your Car

When it comes to car and insurance, its safety statistics are important, and the average cost of repairs for your make and model figure in as well. An expensive minivan or crossover vehicle will cost less to insure than an expensive import or sports car.

The Record of Your Driving

Obviously, people with better driving records pay less for car insurance than people with several tickets or accidents on their record. The more moving violations you accumulate, the higher your insurance rate will be when they rate give you your Car Insurance Quotations.

Your Home Address

Many insurance companies want to know how busy the streets are in your neighborhood, they will estimate the population in your home area. If you live in a rural area your car insurance quotations will be lower than you live in a city.

Your Credit History

You may not believe it, but your credit history is truly taken into account when it comes to figuring car insurace quotations. If you have a good credit history, you may pay less for your car insurance than those with bad credit scores. Please note, it is better to get four to five quotes before you decide which provider you will choose for your car insurance, since many of them can be vary.

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Getting The Best Long Term Health Care Insurance

June 1st, 2009 by stevenlocke

Long Term Care Health Insurance refers to the need that many sick or injured Americans are experiencing due to old age, debilitating illness, or due to an accident that has left them unable to care for themselves for a long period of time. This type of insurance will take care of some of the costs incurred in nursing homes. Even in your own home you will get the care and an assisted living facility.

As the American population ages, those over the age of 85 are now found to be the fastest growing group and they almost all need long term cheap health insurance plan. Unfortunately the odds of having to enter a nursing home grow alarmingly high. Very Unfortunate also that the fact of the cost of long-term is already very expensive.

Of course regrettably, Medicare pays some of the costs associated with long term care but they do not pay for long term care, only short term care, however the rules are stringent. The patient will able to qualify for Medicaid because commonly families end up paying for long term care until their money decreases. What the future will hold for long-term care, nobody knows! You will hold Long Term Care Health Insurance because it will be one of the most important policies.

Coverage for long term life insurance policies vary tremendously, but some even have waiver of premium should you need the care. The amount of time allowed to be spent receiving the long-term care can vary tremendously too, as do the initial costs of the premiums.

The long-term care health insurance cover Alzheimer

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Success With Mortgage Protection Leads

May 13th, 2009 by stevenlocke

Mortgage protection leads are important to any insurance agent who wants to do well in the business and who wants to offer good service to their clients.

Not every lead is good however, and the agent may sometimes expend more effort to close a sale than he first imagined. This is because people can change their minds about decisions depending on their current circumstances.

Most agents know that the insurance business is a hard sell and that prospects have the concept that they can get this vital piece of resource at a later date.

It is when they are caught in awkward situations such as losing a job, becoming permanently disabled or dying do they or other family members realize how important it is to get protection.

An agent who does not use mortgae protection leadslikely has to do a good deal of cold-calling. When appointments are set, the agent has to use a personal vehicle to tread the long miles to the prospects home and there are instances where the prospect forgets the appointment and is not home.

If the client is home then the agent can educate and instruct him, yet that does not guarantee closing as a prospect must be ready to accept and decide to be protected.

Other Factors Come Into Play
Current circumstances of the prospect are another factor. The agent can actually use that situation to help the prospect to see the real need for insurance. In the current economy, people have a tendency to draw back and be more conservative with their decisions.

The agent has the task of using that situation to let the prospect see how important it would be to have insurance and what would happen if they did not have that type of insurance.

Having leads affords an agent some flexibility, and results in handling a prospect with increaqsed confidence. An individual would likely have enough information to realize the importance of insurance.

Educate Your Prospects
An agent can make the decision to provide information to the prospect without any sales aggression or coercion. If a prospect is initially reluctant, it does not mean that the agent has to give up with closing the sale. The prospect may need some time to think things over. There may be a spouse involved so the agent needs to make sure that the spouse will be home when the appointment is set. Both parties must agree prior to completing a sale.

The mortgage protection leads allow the agent to deal with prospects that are more willing to work with and are also willing to trust the expertise of the agent.It an agent appears to act in the best interests of the prospect, then the prospect likely will give him the chance to prove it.

People that an agent act with integrity. An agent who provides both the adavantages and disadvantages of owning insurance reassures his prospect who then increases his confidencein in deciding correctly.

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