Seminars as my main lead generator

Date: Mon, Oct 6, 2008 Internet Tournament

I personally believe that you need 3 ways to generate leads going at all times. I had gotten a little side tracked for a while but I back to doing my seminars as my number 1 lead generated. The other 2 ways I am getting leads are by going business to business with flyers and purchasing internet leads.

Why did I go back to seminars well the ROI is enormous. For me to do a seminar it roughly cost me 100 dollars a seminar at the most. I usually have anywhere from 20 to 40 people there so you do the math and these are exlusive leads.

I have been using a system called HSA Success now for awhile. But I have ramped up my seminars for this month I have 4 scheduled and 1 scheduled for next month my goal is to have a seminar a week.

If you are interested in the system I use click on the image below:

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WSOP and Update on July's Goals.

Date: Sun, Jul 20, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well I went and played in the WSOP and had a ball made it through the first day then came the second day of a small 1500 dollar event that I won online so I was having a free roll. So that fatal hand I had KK player to my right pushes all in so I call instantly he rolls over AK you guess is A on the turn out of the tournament I thought I played well got the money in and protected my hands when I needed to. What hurts is I get up and one player told me he had an Ace that he through away. So the guy was drawing to a two outer before the flop.

As far as how is July going my goals for the month were 12 individual apps and more cross selling so far this is what I have done:

10 Individual Apps
4 Accident Plans
1 Group Plan
2 Dental Plans

My main goal of cross selling was for life insurance which has not been as successful as I would of thought.

Well this month has been real exciting because I have a new website up www.westcoasthsaplans.com and also have been training agents across the country. That leads to this past week were I went to Indiana to learn products from Conseco Insurance where I am now an IMO. Which means if people want to sell Conseco products they have to find an IMO to get them the contract they do not appoint carrier direct. So I have started an agency to recruit agents underneath me to market Conseco products and they can continued to be independent agents. The products that Conseco represents are mainly supplemental health products such as: Medicare supplements, accident plans, cancer policies, heart/stroke policies, and also these products can be sold on the individual or group basis. They are a competitor of Aflac, Colonial the difference being I believe you can receive higher commissions from Conseco then you can through the other two carriers.

If you are interested in Conseco's products contact me at hart4insurance@gmail.com

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July Is Here

Date: Wed, Jul 2, 2008 Internet Tournament

Ok the year is half way over and I have set a goal for myself for 12 applications this month. Today was great I drove out to pick up an application on a web conference appointment that I presented the plan but he was old fashioned and wanted to do the paper app and have me come out an help him so I obliged.

So I have 11 more applications to get for this month. I have four web conference set up for tomorrow. Looks like 2 deals for sure and the other are first time presentations. How do I look for the rest of the month. Well I have one seminar set up for July 9th and looking to get 3 more set up. I have referrals and leads coming in daily so the pipeline is filling up so I think I will hit my goal.

On a side note this weekend I will be going out the World Series of Poker to play in a couple tournaments The tournament is scheduled to end July 8th the day before my big seminar.

The following week Conseco wants to fly me out on their dime because they gave me a IMO contract and want me to market their accident plans so I will probably be going to that.

Today is Canada day I bring that up because my wife is Canadian so we celebrated their birthday today.

Other plans for this month which is going to be really busy is I have started a consulting service helping agents all across america learn how to sell health savings accounts. Contact me for more information. I am the HSA Sales Trainer for IHIAA an association for independent agents. You can get more information about the consulting at http://hsasalestraining.blogspot.com.

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Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

Date: Tue, Jun 17, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well what is every agents problem finding qualifed prospects. Well I have been trying different things of late to get more leads. What I have come up of late is doing educational webinars for prospects, clients and anyone interested learning more about health savings accounts. I will be doing my first one on June 23rd.

I have also just found a neat new thing that internet marketers have been using for a while now and that is adding audio to your websites, emails, newsletters. So I am doing a 21 day free trial. To check this out click on the image below:

What can you do with this you can record audio to send to your prospects in an email, newsletter or a postcard. You can promote something them email out to all your clients. Now you have the ability to tell your clients about it instead of writing about it. Your email length will be shorter you give more of a personal touch. How about sending your client an audio birthday postcard. You can even promote someting on your website by telling them where to get there quote explaining about yourself and what you do for your clients.

A question to ask yourself? What makes you stand out from the ordinary agent?

How has business been great, I have done a seminar this month got 4 more deals from it. Also been doing a lot of rewrites with rate increases. But I am getting really excited about my big seminar in July.

Lots of things plan for the rest of this month and July with my webinars rolling out putting out flyers in the community and back using the HSA success system and working on getting presentations.

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HSA Seminars for Real Estate Agents

Date: Sun, Jun 8, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well I have been getting some emails from people since doing my webinar for IHIAA members on the marketing system I use for presenting to real estate agents.

The emails I have been getting ask what companies I use to do my flyers and brochures.

I use Vista Print click the images in the business links section to get free business cards, brochures, and flyers.

Also I have been ask how I automate my messages I use Aweber also have set up a free trial for you by click on the image to the right.

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Back in Full Force

Date: Fri, Jun 6, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well have completely recovered from my illness and back ramping up business like never before. It is busy time here in California with the majority of carriers having rate increases on July 1st. So between existing customer annual policy reviews and people out shopping their insurance it is a good time. I have big plans for the month of June and it has already start off big.

I have added life and dental to one of my existing groups. I have added a non-resident license in Utah been doing some business there. So far this month has been good. I can't complain and finally healthy and out prospecting, lining up seminars. I have a 2 set up for this month and my big one coming in July. I have been out doing B2B a lot and that has been working for me passing out flyers and have been getting a lot of referrals.

I have made a lot of changes to my main website and has been doing well for me getting people to subscribe to my newsletter and being able to market to them through email. I want my website to be a lead generator for me not just a kiosk stand. So I am trying to get a name and a email from everyone that comes to my website.

Married life is great my wife got another promotion and is running her own store so she is making more money and very happy. As far as poker goes been playing quite a bit at night to unwind after a long day. I have working at growing my business 10 to 12 hours a day. So I need some fun time to. So right now I am grinding away at .25/.50 NO Limit 50 Dollar Buy in games and building up my bankroll should be up to .50/1 No limit By August I usually like to have 20 full buy ins to play at a giving level. WSOP is right around the corner will be heading out there for a few days and be playing in a few events this year should be wild and crazy times until next time.

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Sick and Vegas

Date: Sat, May 17, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well as far as business I have been sick off and on for the last few weeks so have not been doing much prospecting at all. I have had the flu and been pretty much bed ridden for a few weeks. I have been able to do business thanks to referrals. I am going to suffer from not being able to prospect so I just sent out 20 flyers to businesses to call next week to see about going in to do my presentations and will be getting some internet leads here to try to get some sales.

Last weekend I manage to go to Vegas for a coaching clinic since I still coach boy's varsity basketball. Went to listen to a few speakers and played hold'em I played 4/8 limit hold'em with a 1/2 kill. I played approximately 10 hours for the weekend and lost 10 big bets over the course of the weekend could not get anything going. I lost 80 dollars for those that don't know what big bets are. A big bet is the minimum bet on the turn and river. A lot of people refer to that because you should make 2 to 3 big bets an hour if you are playing well or running well at poker. Lately I have been running horrible.

Well that is all for now will update you this week and let you know how many seminars I will get out of the 20 flyers I sent out. I have been getting a lot of questions on the system I use you can find it at: www.hsasuccess.com.

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How to generate my 45 leads a week.

Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well after some debate on cold calling I still despise it and have looked into alternative ways of generating leads. At this time my main ways of lead generation are as follows:

• Referrals
• Seminars
• Business to Business Flyers

What I want to be able to do is generate at minimum 45 leads a week. For me to do that I believe I have to do two seminars a week and do 10 hours of B2B. Which is all doable. So what I am planning on putting into work is.

I feel if I can generate 45 leads a week I will close 3 to 5 deals a week after the pipeline is full. I do close some within a week but usually takes roughly two weeks to get a deal.

Mail out 20 flyers a week to introduce myself and follow it up with phone calls to set up my seminars. In the past my numbers for every 10 flyers I mail I get 1 presentation. Also so far for every seminar I have had no less then 20 people attend. I have had no less then 12 request quotes.

As far as referrals are concerned I have been getting 3 to 5 a week for the past two months and closing 80 percent of those. The people I can't close are usually uninsurable.

What I planned to do to offset my local marketing is purchase leads in other states.

I really enjoy getting out of the office and meeting people. I do like the convenience of doing presentations online but that gets boring sitting in the office all day. Of course if you are doing 7 presentations a day online and closing more than half it would not be boring. So it all comes down to lead generation again. I feel I have the game plan and going to run with it. This is the beauty of this business you can try different marketing techniques for little overhead and see what works for me.

At the moment I am scrapping cold calling who knows I maybe be back to doing at so point.

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Marketing-Niche Markets

Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2008 Internet Tournament

I have been doing a lot of thinking about marketing of late and I am going back to what I like to do and what I feel mentally works for me. I have never been much of a cold call, telemarketing guy. The way I generate business is by doing seminars, referrals, buying internet leads. I have done very little cold calling and whether I use a dialer, manually dial calls I just don't like doing it. So I was wondering if I am alone here or others feel the same way?

Now my question is how many of you target niche markets? In the past I have done seminars for real estate agents. Speaking of that I just landed a big one for July in my local area for association of realtors where I can have anywhere from 5 to 90 show up. So for an hour of my time I can pick up a lot of leads. What I have done with these is I mail out a flyer to office managers of real estate offices and then follow up with a call asking if they received my flyer and then tell them what I do which is roughly save my clients on average at least 30 percent or more a month on their health insurance premiums and I would like to share this information will their agents.

Places where I send these flyers are: century 21, remax, and so forth. I am getting usually 1 seminar for every 10 flyers I mail. I will be sending stuff out to local small independent agents soons. I am not sure if it is me or not but I feel like I can call these people without a problem because I sent them a flyer in the mail before calling. I just think I need to get over cold calling but at this moment I just don't enjoy so I will be trying to book a lot of seminars here in the future. I have started with real estate agents. I will do chiropractors, dentists, lawyers next. I like to do seminars makes you feel like an expert on the situation.

What I will be doing to supplement my marketing is walking and talking going business to business and looking to buy internet leads in other states. I want to take advantage of the time zone.

I would like to here what you all think on my fears of cold calling why I don't like it and maybe how I can overcome it?

I also just ordered postcards from Vista print which I may incorporate into my walk and talk because it has stuff about Health Savings Accounts. I want people to know me as the HSA expert in my area. I really concentrate on these plans because I feel for the most part they are the best plan for almost every situation.

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Dialer Review

Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2008 Internet Tournament

Ok some of you have been asking me about the dialer I demo'd I did not get a chance to use it nearly as much as I hope for a couple of reasons. We had a problem setting up my form but we got that straighten out and the time that I put on in seem to be valuable. What I want to let you know is that it is a web based dialer with a crm. You customize any way you want and once you have it set up correctly it runs smooth. That being said I used it only for 3 to 4 hours and didn't find any problems with other then things I did not the dialer there is definately a learning curve. The dialer can go up to 4 lines at once. I was using 3 to 1 much like other dialers but I noticed that I was not dispositioning the calls fast enough so at the beginning I would get dropped calls but quickly fixed that by pausing the dialer. The dialer as a couple of neat features it records all calls so you can go back and see how you did. I would definately recommend this dialer to people the cost will run you $200 a month for analog and $ 180 a month for voip.

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Lead Generation / Got the poker bug again

Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2008 Internet Tournament

Ok first off in this post I am going to go over what is my main problem in this industry is finding qualified leads. When I say qualified I mean has interest in and has pain so there is a possible deal there. I am not counting leads as hey send me what you got. I need to hear pain to consider it a lead because if they are not bitching about something there is usually no deal there. I don't sell I advise people. At least that is what I believe anyway.

So what do I do to get leads: My main lead generator right now is referrals and networking I have a few fellow insurance buddies that do not do Health insurance so I am their health guy. Also I have paterned with an employment agency and am offering health insurance to people they are putting in permanent jobs educating them on why individual insurance is better then group. So I have really not been doing any marketing I have been living off referrals for the last few weeks writing between 2 to 5 apps a week.

So what I will begin doing tomorrow is writing down everything so I can track my activity. I will be doing in an hour increments.

I know I don't work a full 8 hour day tomorrow I plan to change that and plan on marketing myself 6 of the 8 hours a day.

I am planning on doing presentation the other 2.

What I plan on doing this week:

4 hours a day on dialer
2 hours a day going B2B, Mailing Flyers out for my seminars, Calling old leads.

I am going to be using a script of telling them I am local agent in the area and that I talked to small business owners on a daily basis about their concern over their health insurance and how the premiums are out of control and ask them if this is a concern of theirs. I know I will probably only be getting 2 leads or so an hour. The dialer I will be using has the ability to dial 4 numbers at once. I know other buddies have been using a dialer that 3 to 1.


So that is my week plan to generate a bunch of leads and fill up the pipeline and just get more consitent at that so I don't look at my pipeline and say crap where is my next deal coming. I am also looking into revamping my website and making it look better to hopefully get more leads genrated from my website.

Well has the title indicate I have the poker bug again over the weekend I played over 1500 hands playing low limit holdem and killing the tables. I was actually really enjoying playing and was a real outlet not thinking about business. I plan on playing an hour a night to wind down before bed each night. I really like holdem and can make money at it just really trying to build the business really limits the time I can spend towards so for now its more of a release. I will be playing some tournaments again here shortly to make another run at a wsop seat.

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Tournament and New Marketing Plan

Date: Fri, Apr 4, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well how did the big satelite tournament go to win a seat at WSOP. I have not written about it because I am still frustrated over it. As you can tell by my tone did not make it. I made the final table out of 100 people but finished 7th. I played really well to get that far but just didn't have enough chips to compete with the chip leaders my fatal hand I was in late position with QJ suited with only 5 X the big blind in chips I pushed and got called by the chip leader in the big blind with Q9 had him dominated and he turned a 9 to knock me out don't blame him for calling he had the stack but just frustrating when you get in with the best and he hits a 3 outer to beat you. I hate this saying but that's poker.

On the new marketing front what have I been doing:

1. I was supposed to start telemarketing 10 hours a week has not happened.
2. Sent out flyers to businesses to set up seminars done that. Sent out 20 flyers and only 1 confirmed appointment so far with roughly 20 attendees going to be there.
3. B2B business flyers did that twice so far and have generated 6 leads on roughly 3 hours of work. Of the 6 leads 2 real possibilities.

I have come across a unique opportunity where I am going to be getting a lot of referrals from a staffing agency. My thoughts on this are will have a lot of people with no money, non-insurable but also could be huge.

So I will be selling full major medical to those that qualify, also looking into a guaranteed issue health plan from AIG.

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Business Slowing Down working on marketing

Date: Mon, Mar 24, 2008 Internet Tournament

Business has slow down for me this month were I was averaging 4 apps a week in January and February. Business has slown down to 2 apps a week so far this month. I have noticed the reason you guess it lack of leads generated towards the end of february and early march. Before I was really motivated to be on the phone to generate my leads and this month I have slacked off so do not think that will affect me that much in March but will in future months because I am not keeping the pipeline filled and I do not close on one call. I use a 3 step approach to most deals. I also have put 2 small groups on the books this month.

What I have done over the weekend was reevaluate my marketing plan. What I have come up with for the rest of March and April:

1.Cold Call 10 hours a week
2. B2B with free report flyer for 2 hours a day twice a week
3.Send out 10 flyers to businesses each week to request a first in appointment for my seminar selling.
4.Debating on Pay per click with google adwords local campaign.

My current ratio for closing clients is 1 out of 12 leads generated. I am not a great salesman I do not sell to my clients I advise or at least I try to come off that way. I need to figure out a way to genrate 60 leads a week to get my one app a day for 5 days a week.
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On the poker front I am playing in a tournament this weekend to win my free seat at the WSOP main event. I have a 1 in 100 shot at a seat. I will be playing in some tournaments this week to get my poker game back on to were in needs to be. Well I am pretty excited about this opportunity to play in the big one.

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The Sky is not falling

Date: Thu, Mar 6, 2008 Internet Tournament

Well woke up this morning after not sleeping well last night wondering what I had done wrong this week. It turns out everything worked out find this week. After talking to a fellow agent I just realized I didn't have enough leads so I got up this morning and smiled and generated more leads.

I had one of my appointments today that turned out to be pretty lucrative for me. He is a small business owner that had been paying near 700 dollars for a typical co-pay plan. You guess it he was spending out of pocket 1000 dollars a year. So we discussed health savings accounts and he loved the idea. So off we went to a 7,000 dollar family deductible for him, wife and 3 kids total base premium is 307 told him he is going to get rated for minor high blood pressure on a generic maintenance drug he is looking probably at a 25 percent rate up on his portion of the premium. What came of this appointment though is he employs someone and we signed his family up for a base premium of 215 for the same plan. I added two accident plan policies on the family. We discussed setting up a limited purpose HRA so that he can legally reimburse his client's health premiums. So that was nice little day on that. This is the avenue I want to do with small business owners with W2 employees I see this being huge for me in months to come. It is a win for the business owner cheaper premiums, offers employee health plan, health plan goes with employee if he leaves, no cobra and more tax advantages.

I generated 10 more leads today and have 3 appointments set up for tomorrow and one on set up for Monday. So the pipeline is filling up.

I have generated 22 leads this week with a few referrals.

Also talked to another fellow agent today about HSA success marketing I bought and showed him the power point presentation that they give you to do for the presentation. Got me thinking that I need to incorporate that into my marketing again. I am going to start doing that every week again it is a fast way to get a lot of leads and potentially put a lot of policies on the books. I have done 3 so far had 60 attendees total. Roughly off the top of my head had around 40 quotes that were requested and wrote 10 deals. So I wrote 1 deal out of evey four I quoted. All take that.

So all in all a good day 2 apps in hand with 3 appointments tomorrow if I can close all 3 will hit my goal of 5 apps a week.

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