Use Appointment Setting When Marketing B2B Travel Insurance

Posted on August 22, 2012 by

“Business or pleasure?” On the subject of travel, you may have already heard this line a few times. If you’re in travel insurance, however, it should give you something to think about when it comes to targeting a market. Are you still mainly catering to tourists or have you realized you could also target business travelers? If it’s the latter, you should know that appointment setting will play an important role in your marketing campaign.

The B2B market for travel insurance can be reflected in the possible risks that occur in travel. If you’re still not sure there’s not enough demand to warrant B2B appointment setting, take a look at this excerpt from FoxBusiness:

“Many health insurance policies don’t cover medical costs incurred overseas, and for as little as $100, travel insurance can cover where you’re health insurance leaves off.”

Illnesses acquired while in the middle of a journey are just one of the many risks that business travelers take. The rising costs of healthcare (and to an extent, healthcare insurance) could be pushing the demand for alternatives such as those mentioned in the article.

On the other hand, don’t forget that when marketing to businesses, they could be more scrutinizing than even the most well-informed consumer. Therefore, make sure that your marketing agents are equipped with sufficient information and execute proper targeting. You might not even require them to have specialist knowledge but simple capacity to take the following steps:

Step 1 – Identifying Industries

As stated, proper targeting will be important and a good place to start is by identifying industries that are likely to employ many business travelers. Airlines are one good example but if you still want to go down to the individual level, you can still target CEOs or other company positions that are likely to warrant much time on business trips. Also, another important fact about appointment setting is that you should really take note of their preferences for communication as well as the appointment itself. These are busy people so you don’t want to be an inconvenience.

Step 2 – Basic information

Giving basic information is not only impressive, it shows that your marketers are capable of something that more technical experts might not: presenting your services in ways that another decision maker can understand. If you’re contacting a prospect for medical travel insurance (be it via B2B telemarketing or email), your marketers should know a few tidbits like this:

“There are two kinds of medical travel insurance: travel medical and medical evacuation. Typically they are sold as package policies and also include trip cancellation and trip interruptions. Travel medical insurance generally covers medical bills up to a certain amount while medical evacuation picks up the tab if you need to be transported from a hospital, removed from a cruise or evacuated from an emergency situation.”

Step 3 – Clarification

During the conversation, there are still clarifications that need to be made. Your salespeople would probably want to be the ones covering that given that it needs a lengthy discussion. Therefore, why not have the marketers relay that same message? This helps measure their interest and brings them closer to becoming qualified insurance leads.

Travel isn’t only for tourists. Many in the business world do it regularly as well. And despite their different reasons, they all face the common risks covered by travel insurance. This makes them a promising B2B market for insurance appointments so start marketing businesses today!

3 Steps For Addressing Insurance Concerns (And Benefit Business Lead Generation)

Posted on June 28, 2012 by

It’s popular opinion that the insurance industry is rife with complications and loopholes. Then again, it’s not like it’s entirely untrue. That’s why it’s always good to address the concerns of confused clients and have things clarified. This goes for insurance as well as any other industry. Good customer service will always benefit any type of business relationship whether it’s between a business and a consumer or between businesses themselves. (In your case, it could be both ways!)

Bad customer relations could mean bad referrals and bad referrals only spell trouble for future marketing efforts.

Therefore, here are three steps to address the insurance concerns of your prospect that can also prove beneficial to lead generation.

Step 1 – Improve the system that receives inquiries. These inquiries can come in many forms and from different parties. These could be current clients wanting clarification about your coverage. These could be new business prospects who want to know more about your business. They could even be complaints from companies whose workers in turn are complaining about the insurance policy! A system that does a poor job of receiving these inquiries does so by limiting the options of the inquirer. Don’t force these people to file only through the phone, email, or online forms. Don’t force them to walk all the way to one of your offices either! They could have other things on their schedule! Allow them to contact you in the way that best suits them.
Step 2 – When you receive these inquiries, you obviously have to pay attention to them! On the other hand, a swarm of complaints can’t be handled by a single person. Make sure that you work together with your people and properly assign certain inquiries to the right areas. Beware of tossing them back and forth. You’ll be keeping the inquirer waiting!
Step 3 – Set an appointment when you clearly need more time to discuss all the questions and concerns. Some incoming prospects might not just have one question but several! However, since they’re busy, it’s wiser to set an appointment that they can fit into their own schedule. It’s the same with complaints. If some things need clarifying and re-negotiating, give your client a time and place to meet so you can hear the whole story. There are just some problems that cannot be relayed through regular channels of communication.

Given the complexity of insurance, it should give you more reason for your business to have more dialogue with both current clients and inquiring prospects. You don’t have to worry about costs if you’re afraid that expanding your customer services will demand more phones or more call center agents. You have telemarketing services to outsource for that. There’s a lot of good that a positive referral can accomplish for your lead generation. It can spread the word to more promising clients. It reinforces the integrity of your business. It also shows that you acknowledge how confusing your industry can be at times and you’re willing to help guide everyone through it.

Insurance Appointments – You’re Not The Only One Who’s Got To Plan Things Out

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

Constructing (or even just laying) an insurance plan for an entire company will take a lot of time. Now you can’t just take that time up over the phone or even through the course of a dozen emails being exchanged. Whoever you’re targeting, they’ll be too busy for communication to go on for too long. It doesn’t matter whether you outsource professional telemarkters or an online marketing group. They tool will tell you that such time is a luxury that they can’t take from whoever they’re contacting for you.

That’s when you’re generating qualified leads, do appointment setting with them immediately. Follow-ups and undecided prospects are to be expected but once that’s done, hold down their attention with the obligation to meet at a certain time and place. This will give you time to formally lay out what you have in store and use what information you gathered to really close the deal.

However, do you know there’s another good reason to set an appointment?

First of all, you’re not the only one who’s got plans. The person you contacted obviously wouldn’t even want to talk to you if they didn’t believe that you might be the insurance company they’ve been looking for. Unfortunately, not everyone inside a company will be convinced (not even if the person you contacted was their superior).
This is why setting appointments not only benefits you but it also benefits them. It gives them time to use the information you’ve relayed and plan things out with everyone else. The tricky thing with insurance these days that employees do not like a company that’s not transparent with its policies. Regardless of how high you set your sights, the person you contacted and convinced still needs more time and information in order to convince everybody else and tell them what you have to offer.
Of course, this might sound like you’ll have to walk the tightrope between giving information and not overloading the prospect with it. Even should a prospect ask for more, it will only make setting an appointments more appealing because you’ll much to talk about. That time would have to wait though so that the decision makers in turn can discuss it with their own people.

Targeting a business has never been the same as targeting consumers. For one thing, consumers aren’t aware (or even care) that they’re being organized into target markets. Businesses on the other hand stand for entire organizations, groups of people who are connected to the company structure as a whole. Whatever affects the business will affect them and they have a right to know whatever that would be.

Your insurance offer is no exception (in fact, it’s the last thing you’d make into one). B2B lead generation takes time but that time can be more of a convenience than a burden if you know how to manage and draw lines. One of those lines is a set appointment. The deserve to have a set date because you’re not the only one who’s got plans.

Professional Telemarketers – Informing Only Those Who Care

Posted on May 10, 2012 by

It’s not that surprising that when people think telemarketing, they still assume an invasive and disruptive sales caller. However, like much of public opinion, it’s not entirely accurate. With today’s technology in both communication and data management, the only reason that a telemarketer might call for would be to dispense information. As for the people they will call, it’s only the people who would care to receive it.

For instance, B2B insurance companies often need to stay in constant communication with their current clients and inform them of any changes, updates, or even new offers. However, on the part of the clients, only a select few in an organization would care for this information. Those who say that email blasting gets it across more quickly don’t really wonder if they need to go that far just to deliver a message to one or a few select persons.

But first off, why again would this information be so important? Obviously because insurance is a controversial industry and there are more than a handful of businesses (not to mention labor rights organizations) who scrutinize the policies involving the whos, whats, and hows of insurance packages. Naturally, you’d want to present yourself as reputable and be completely honest with everyone who does business with you.

Believe it or not but maintaining that integrity can be critical for certain B2B lead generation strategies. Particularly, strategies that involve retaining the interest and continued patronage of your clients. Simply put, if you can’t attract new clients, then nurture the relationship you have with your current ones. That will only work though if you’ve established trust and remained honest with them.

Then again, just because you don’t do everything to inform your clients doesn’t mean you do so for underhanded reasons. Business communication takes a lot out of any company’s pocket. In the case of telemarketing, it’s like investing in your very own insurance call center. The costs of office space, equipment, software, and most of all the experience to train them both in proper communication plus knowledge of your own company will consume a lot of time and money.

In such cases, you should try outsourcing. Plenty of companies already outsource for their telemarketing leads, how much more if you’re just outsourcing them to keep the old ones interested? On the other hand, retaining that interest means you need to open yourself to inquiries and keep them informed. Telemarketing isn’t the only industry that’s suffered a blow in reputation. Insurance companies have their fair share of stigmas as well and most of them involve dishonesty with their clients. But just as how telemarketers these days have improved with what has been available, so should you. If you have to outsource, why not?

Take note, there are moments where the economic climate will make attracting all-new clients difficult and it’s during such periods that companies start turning to retaining their current ones to keep work coming in. The sad part is some of the younger ones can neither afford nor have the expertise to do it right by themselves. In your case though, you know it involves not only being upright and honest with your client companies but also informing the right people in charge.

B2B Leads – Don’t Let New Methods Make You Idle!

Posted on April 26, 2012 by

With internet marketing, even B2B insurance companies can benefit from increased online exposure. Corporate packages are a strictly required staple for any company, big or small. A demand for the service is already a given. Putting up a webpage can come both to your convenience and to the convenience of your prospects who use the internet as a fast means to locate solutions. You can also invest in a bit of email marketing and seemingly replace old direct-response methods like telemarketing.

However, if you think that things will be completely smooth sailing from here on, think again. You’d be surprised at how many obstacles have risen along with the birth of the online frontier. This may sound pessimistic but no matter how new an approach seems to be, it’s not without its own flaws and its own obstacles. On the other hand, that’s doesn’t mean you should discard new methods either. You just have to make sure they don’t make you idle and closed off from different ideas.

Still, what are these supposed obstacles faced by those marketing online? Ironically, these obstacles have strong parallels with that of the previous ones (email marketing in particular). Whereas professional telemarketers used to deal with gatekeepers and voice mail, email marketers find similar situations risking the blockage of spam filters. There’s also the threat of unfeeling programs tracking their activities and labeling them as such. And even if you do manage to engage a prospect, what’s stopping their messages from getting swamped out of the dozen other inquiries you’ll be getting? It’s not surprising to find that people find SMS still slower than a live conversation (be it over the phone or face-to-face).

Exposure on the internet also exposes you to hackers just as much prospects. If they hit your website, your lead generation might suffer from the lack of activity (however brief). You should be prepared to have a back up plan that doesn’t rely on the internet too much.

There’s never room for idleness when it comes to getting B2B leads. Do take note that your prospects aren’t just regular people who need insurance for themselves. It’s for every person of their entire department. Planning for even a small business organization takes time. They need to be contacted, qualified, and then set with an appointment. If your appointment setter is exclusively internet-based, you’ll run into the problems cited above because there’s no other way to inform your prospect (or yourself for that matter).

Cost shouldn’t even be an issue. The issue is not allowing new methods be an excuse to lose vigilance. You don’t even have to invest in two separate methods for it. There are telemarketing companies out there who also know how to use email marketing to their advantage (and vice-versa). If you want to get the whole package without breaking the company piggy bank or just want to focus on you main tasks, then just outsource them. Goodness knows you might not regret that you did (especially if you don’t have a lot of experience knowing how to combine the two methods effectively). Again, don’t let new methods be a cause of idleness!