Prospect Qualification and Appointment Setting to Land More Meetings

This article was published on December 21st, 2020 in Insurance Journal.

The objective of prospecting is to find quality opportunities to narrow the sales funnel, and then consistently target that focused group with marketing messages to get noticed. For insurance brokers, you have the luxury of finding third party list sources that start you off knowing key data about your prospect universe. Instead of chasing non-qualified prospects — or worse, not even knowing who your prospect universe even is — prospecting followed by properly executed appointment setting leaves no rock unturned.

Every prospect on your list is a new opportunity to qualify, disqualify, set a callback or land a sales meeting for a producer. Phone outreach is the best way to land more sales appointments and the only way to determine if, in fact, the opportunities in your local universe or target industry are sellable. Phone outreach is also one of the only ways to incite two-way communication between a buyer and a seller, which will then lead to more closed deals.

What Is Strategic Prospecting Through Appointment Setting?

Appointment setting, also known as telemarketing, is based on strategically conducting calls in order to schedule introductory sales meetings with decision-makers. For best results, the prospects are pre-qualified through a qualification process, based on specific parameters set by your agency. Typically, to get in the door with workers’ compensation or property/casualty insurance, the qualifier is either total premium, or at least, staff size. Chasing opportunities that equate to less than $1,500 in annual commission is not good use of time or marketing dollars. Instead, reserve those opportunities to close for inbound only… Read more