The world is going digital. Are you? We are used to the old methods of prospecting, which have their strengths. After all, the older methods brought you to where you are – a successful life insurance agent. But the business environment is changing. Just as many things are changing very fast in the world around us, so is the world of prospecting. Today most Indians have smart phones. The growth of social communication sites such as Whats App and Facebook in India, are noticing the highest growth rates in the world. People take whatever is presented as news or information in these sites as confirmed. In fact the very source of information is now social communication websites and not so much newspapers or TV.

Go Digital

In a world where the communication technology is turning digital, we too should learn how to master it for our business. Prospecting for customers is one way of using digital methods.

Digital methods include a combination of emails, SMS, posts on blogs or websites and social media accounts.

What should you do to go digital?

• The first step is to have a social media account in Whats App, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
• You need to post information or articles of interest to your customers (not necessarily what you are interested in) on the various social media platforms on a daily basis.
• The information or content you post should be focused on a few topics, so that you soon build a good base of followers over a period of time
• You should never miss out on the regularity – that is daily posting
• The content should be written in an easy to understand language
• Encourage your followers to add to the content you have posted
• Encourage your followers to communicate with each other so that over a period of time you like one big family.
• The more focused your topic and how well you understand what will interest your customers, the more followers you will get.
• In case you want to communicate longer articles, you may want to start a Blog and post your articles there, and use the social media sites to publicize the article and provide a link to your article in the WhatsApp or Facebook or Instagram account.
• Link to other accounts on the social media to widen your list of followers
• Encourage existing followers to add/ recommend more followers

What you should not do

Just as it is important for you to have a strategy of what to do, it is equally important to know what you should not do. The following points are examples of what you should not do

• Do not promote your products, followers will not come back to your account
• Do not restrict the group’s activities to “Happy Birthday” and “Happy Anniversary” and other similar wishing
• Do not only post pictures or videos of interesting things in this world, after some time people loose interest
• Do not open a social media account and remain inactive on it.
• Do not keep praising yourself or your company all the time
• Do not believe that a IT expert/software consultant/website designer will develop this system for you and you will have to do nothing. Technology part is only one part. The more important part is content. What are going to communicate to your customers on a daily basis?

It is big business

If you select your topics for posting, and develop good content through research, and post on a daily basis, soon you will have thousands of followers. Depending on the topics selected and the quality of the post, collecting thousands of followers can take anywhere between 6 months to 1 year. If you are irregular in your postings, you may never collect a significant number of followers.

Your business starts once you have collected a significant number of followers. Do not expect to sell to everybody. You will have the same ratio of number of prospects to close as you have had in your business earlier. But you are now reaching out to a new category of customers who you could not reach earlier. Importantly you are building trust in them by minimal personal visits. Over a period of time build a strategy of meeting each and every one of your followers by scheduling a meeting in advance. The purpose of the first meeting is to introduce yourself and not to sell a product. Establish personal rapport. Let them see you as the author of all the lovely information they have been reading and getting the benefit of. Attempt selling to them only after you have established this rapport. Once you reach this stage you are ready to take off in the digital marketing space.

It is worth the effort

It takes a bit of effort, but the advantages are much more than the efforts put in. After a period of time, you will get more and more prospects from the expanding follower numbers. Even housewives, with no exposure to internet or to the outside world have started promoting their recipes through You Tube using social media sites and have managed to get lakhs of followers. So much so they are drawing advertisers and it is giving them lakhs of rupees as income.

It is time life insurance agents also learn to use the digital space for prospecting and getting new business.