My insurance career started in a regional office of a large life insurance company. I was one of 30 or so agents recruited to sell life insurance and annuities. To say that we were a little inexperienced would have been an understatement. Most of us had just passed the state insurance exam, and most of us knew next to nothing about marketing or sales.

Our manager quickly introduced us to what he thought were the most efficient marketing and prospecting techniques for new agents. The first technique consisted of compiling a list of of our friends and family members. We were to call each person on the list and let them know about our remarkable career transformation, and presumably setup appointments that would lead to sales. The second technique consisted of a hundred cold calls per day.

I quickly (instantly) realized that neither of these two prospecting methods would work for me.

I then decided that my niche would be mortgage protection insurance. I created a daily list of 15-20 leads from new homeowners information at the county assesors office. I visited homeowners in the early evening. I had some limited success with this method, but there were days when I rarely saw a homeowner. The 10-15 people I saw per week only translated into 2-3 appointments. Not Good.

It wasn’t long before my appointment with this insurance company was terminated due to lack of production. I wondered what had gone wrong. I knew that I wasn’t seeing enough prospects, but cold calls were out of the question, harassing my friends and family wasn’t something that I relished, and door knocking was too just too inefficient. I tried Internet leads, direct mail leads, referral systems, insurance marketing systems, and spent thousands of dollars without much to show for it.

Finally, on the verge of giving up on my insurance career, I found a system that could position me in front of a larger number of qualified prospects: Seminars. Seminars seemed to fit my requirements. A lunch or dinner seminar could attract dozens of prospects and lead to many followup appointments. It seemed like the perfect system…

I kept digging, though, and found that while the “perfect system” had been successfully used by large producers, seminar attendance had fallen off dramatically in many parts of the country, and that regulators had come to regard the freebie lunch or dinner events as nothing more than creative bribery. Even worse, many seniors and baby boomers had become wise to these thinly disguised sales presentations, and many only came to eat the free food.

I then discovered that some financial advisors were conducting worksite seminars. These were primarily educational events taught by financial advisors, estate attorneys, tax, and health and wellness professionals. The sponsoring organization wasn’t charged a fee, and no sales were allowed. Another plus was that some seminars could help the sponsoring organization comply with 404c requirements.

Gary Rockwell is an insurance agent who works for the Society for Financial Awareness (SOFA). SOFA (http://www.sofausa.org) is a non-profit speakers bureau whose mission is to end financial illiteracy. SOFA members conduct free seminars at companies and other organizations. Gary can be contacted at grockwell@sofausa.org.