Saving You Money For Life

I’ve been in my career as a marketing professional for a little more than 10 years. Six of those years have been spent leading the marketing team at AccuQuote.

Marketing life insurance is not easy. It’s not a product that has applies to everyone like toothpaste, cereal, or orange juice. Life insurance is a product that primarily applies to adults who have someone else that relies on their income. Also, research has shown that most people in this group only think about life insurance once every few years. This pretty much limits the universe of people who are going to be receptive to our message.

So… given the limited audience of people receptive to hearing about life insurance, how is it possible for a marketing guy to get passionate about marketing life insurance?

This may shed some light on it…

Here is a recent email string that involved one of our Case Managers, our CEO, and one of our Account Executives. I’ve cut and pasted it so you can read this in chronological order:

From: Peggy

Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 1:24 PM

To: Byron Udell

Here is an example of bad timing.

This client was approved at preferred best and for the amount he wanted. The policy was sent to him on 12-16. I continued to call him to see if he would return the delivery requirements. He informed me that he wanted to lower the face amount as he did not think he could really afford the policy. On 1-2-09 he decided on the new face amount he wanted. I ordered the new policy for him and it was sent to him on 1-7-09 by priority mail to the PO Box as requested. I called him today to make sure he got the policy and remind him to please return the delivery requirements as soon as possible. He advised me that he was just diagnosed with Cancer last week and will have to withdraw his application but has decided to continue the application on his wife.

From: Byron Udell
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 4:15 PM
To: AE; Case Manager

Let’s all remember why we do what we do, and how important it is that our clients NOT procrastinate any step in the process!  The following is a real case.  I removed the name and case number, but I just got this today from Peggy.  Thanks Peggy!

From: Tim
Sent: Tue 1/13/2009 5:56 PM
To: Byron Udell

Just to follow up with that I had a lead back in Oct. that said he wanted to wait until after the Holidays before he decided on anything.  I explained to him about not knowing what will happen with your health during that time but he still wanted to wait.  I followed up with him late last week and he told me he had been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer.  You could tell in his voice that he knew he screwed up, I couldn’t help but think the same thing about myself for not making a better argument for him to proceed back in October.

Tim

From: Byron Udell
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:37 PM
To: AE
Cc: Case Manager

If you stay in this business long enough, it happens to all of us.  We have a responsibility and ethical obligation, as I see it, to be GOOD at this.  That means learning the right words for every situation, and communicating the passion for what we do…  so that no one who reaches out to us for life insurance is allowed to slip through our fingers without the coverage they need.   Even then, some of them will get away.  When they do, and we reflect upon whether, if they had landed in the hands of a more skilled life insurance agent, they’d be covered, it can be very difficult to deal with.  For me, it’s one of the things that drives me to sharpen my axe every chance I get.

How many of you are fortunate enough to say that you surround yourself every work day with people that have this much passion for what they do? The people at AccuQuote, from the CEO, salespeople, case manager, and throughout the rest of the organization have a tremendous amount of caring and passion for helping everyone they talk with get the life insurance they need to take care of their family.

The joke that I often make with my team is that if you can market life insurance, you can market anything. Well… I think that I’ll stick to marketing life insurance.

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