Everything

Well, I had a goal this year to finally hit 1 million in business - 20K a week, which I've never done before. I've always been over $700K a year but never hit my ultimate goal.

This year, however, I'm tracking 1.4. Why? I have basically everything in place:

• Flyers to businesses
• Flyers plastered up on community bulletin board
• Norvax quote site
  
• Shared leads
• LeadPod
• Referrals (I'm staying in touch much better with clients)
• Constant Contact following up with old leads

I will say this to anyone getting into this biz: This is a phenomenal career. It is well worth the hard work and patience needed to get off the ground.

I spent a lot of years in sales and not too many days pass when I don't really appreciate what I'm doing for a living. Let's compare this to other sales jobs:

• No credit checks - which normally kills most sales (car, home improvement, etc...)
• No driving to see clients - totally unique to insurance sales
• Can sell all available products unlike other sales were you represent one company
• Renewals - totally insane. The 8th wonder of the world is compound interest - renewals are just like that. Name me a sales job outside of insurance were you continue to be paid on past business
• Economy proof. Check out the out-of-work real estate agents and mortgage brokers. That industry collapsed. However, when the economy tightens more people need a rate reduction. I'm doing more business now then ever. Everyone needs to save.
  
• This will never go away (despite for the "universal" people may dream about)
• You are truly helping people
• Six figures is relatively easy if you don't pack it in too soon and give yourself a chance
• Almost no start-up costs compared to running other businesses

Today's just one of those days where I appreciate what I do. I just came up from watching the morning news and the Baltimore beltway is jammed. I just watched, though "damned" and went back upstairs with my coffee and cranberry muffin.

Norvax - sometimes you don't know what you're not getting

Of course I always knew Norvax existed but never really gave them too hard of a look before. I was in the "if it's not broke don't fix it" mode - been making great money without it so why mess with it.

Also, as any other biz owner, I'm always trying to maximize profits and minimize costs. However, in this case it not what I was making it's what I was losing. Obviously if you're making $500 by spending $100 more you can make $1,000 it's a no-brainer.

I've now had Norvax for two weeks and it's an amazing and noticeable difference - absolutely increased business and easier. My site's www.mdhealthquotes.com - if you want to run a quote just enter "test" as your name and a MD zip code - 21113 will do. Put in your real email.

Now I can do company side-by-side comparisons - which I've done so far for every prospect and absolutely amazes people. They also get an email shot out with quotes and the auto responder keeps in touch by email at times you set.

I use to follow up by Constant Contact or simply manually sending emails - now it's set for me. Follow-up is crucial in this biz and it's one less thing I have to do.

Norax also alerts me by email when someone's in my site playing around and also shows me the specific plan they're looking at. Basically, when I give prospects my web address and go over some plans the shopping stops. They can now play around in my site on their own and look at plans - which they do.

I bought it since it's a tool and from running the association I'm basically comparing all tools and lead sources. I want to see what's a waste of money or "fluff" and what's legit.

Norvax is one of those things where if you don't have it then it's not what you're saving, it's what you're losing.

You'll pay what I pay - it's $75 a month for the engine/broker office and $50 if you want auto-responder - so it's $120 if you want both which is a $100 per month discount if you're a member. If anyone wants any details just contact me.

Sorry for the down time!

A week and no blog update - I apologize but it's been absolutely nuts. Most of my time is now spent on the association with about 6 new members per day on average.

Marketing and leads are obviously everyone's biggest issue and members are looking to me for legitimate sources. As everyone knows, I'm not an internet lead guy - been off them for 2 years.

So let's cover this first:

I feel the best way to build your business is local marketing; telemarketing, BtoB, flyers, chamber of commerce, etc...I'm still a fan of Marketing Campaign Solution's auto-dialer CRM. I think new agents need to learn to get comfortable on phone and spend as little money possible on leads while generating a lot of leads.

Telemarketing accomplishes that - $300 a month for the dialer (for members) and you should be spending at least 10 hours a week on it - 15 for newbies. That's the lowest cost-per-lead you'll find in the biz....and obviously the leads are exclusive.

That being said, it's not a perfect world and many agents simply do not want to telemarket. Fine - not an issue. They're looking to buy leads so I've been busy testing out lead sources. I'm not going to recommend lead sources that I can't close. Not to blow my own horn - but if I can't close 'em I doubt a new agent would be able to.

So I'm running the alossociation and dealing with shared leads....doing decent with the BETTER sources. And there are indeed good and crappy sources - the difference is immediate and apparent. Hardly anyone answers the phone on the crappy sources:

• Too many agents calling
• Lead generated by affiliate spam or incentive ads
• Leads target the broke: "guaranteed issue for $29.95 a month!"

Decent lead sources don't use affiliates - don't spam, don't use banner or incentive ads, aren't sold and re-sold 20 times and people actually answer.

I also just started using LeadPod a few days ago - they call my leads for me and transfer the prospects to be so I don't have to plug away on the phone all day. So far so good but too soon to post actual results.

But yes, there are indeed still some fantastic shared lead source out there.