Small business is big business —
and getting bigger! LIMRA places the number of businesses in the United States with fewer than 100 employees at 4.5 to 5.6 million; and, according to the latest Global Entrepreneurship monitor of entrepreneurial activity in the United States, 10.5 percent of Americans either launched their own companies or worked for new businesses in 2002. Moreover, businessowners and professionals make up the most lucrative markets for your products and services.
The business and professional market is good news for other reasons:
- Daytime activity — Most business sales are made during the day, which leaves your evenings free for family and leisure, as well as for prospects and clients who can only see you then. Personal needs and wants may be solved with business dollars. It's easier to get businessowners to pay for insurance and other financial products with a business check than with a personal check. When you show them how to meet their personal needs and wants with those business dollars, your prospects will be even quicker with a pen when you ask them to sign the application.
- High persistency — businessowners and professionals are interested in buying solutions to problems, not products. They understand what they're buying and why they're buying it, so this business is more likely to stay on the books.
- Client-building opportunities — Because business needs and wants are not necessarily separate from personal needs and wants, working in these markets gives you a chance to deal with a wide-range of concerns and objectives. If you provide good service and keep client relationships healthy in this market, you can reintroduce your clients to the sales process, again and again.
- Networking & on-profile referrals — Most people in this market expand their businesses or professional practices the same way you do — by introductions or on-profile referrals from satisfied customers. Moreover, businessowners and professionals are often "influentials," that is, they're leaders who know and are known by other members of the community. A business client or center of influence can provide many referrals to other qualified, on-profile prospects in local business and professional networks.
- Prospect nests — The employees of a business can be a natural "nest" of prospects for resourceful advisers. The bigger the business, the larger the nest. Working with a businessowner can lead directly or indirectly to individual sales to on-profile executives and other employees, and will give you additional opportunities with the company's employee benefits and qualified retirement plan.
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Ohio National is not affiliated with, nor does it endorse or sponsor, any particular prospecting, marketing or selling system.
