Insurance Agents’ and Brokers’ Guide to Affordable Insurance Leads
As technology has changed and insurance buying practices have adapted, insurance agents have struggled to follow suit. They have done their best to find sources for leads to supplement the traditional referral method (referrals are still the best do not provide the required volumes). They have moved from cold calling and traditional advertising like Yellow Pages and classifieds to e mail marketing campaigns and automated calling. Only a few of them have bothered to try buying online insurance leads which are still the most effective form of generating leads on the Internet.
Lead providers vary in the methods they use to generate and distribute leads and the quality can be variable. However, affordable does not equal cheapest and you should not be guided by price considerations alone. If you spend $50 on leads that don’t pan out, your return on your investment is zero. On the other hand if you spend $100 on leads that generate $300 in commissions, your return on investment is 300 percent. You should therefore look to maximize your return on investment while striking a balance between price and quality. Here are some things to look for:
The data provided by the lead. Are you going to get only the merest name address and phone number kind of information or are you going to get other personal information that will help you in your approach? Ask for some leads so that you can examine what you’re been offered. If the provider refuses to provide samples, you are probably better off without him.
Lead delivery. Unless you are specifically buying old leads for a project, you should settle for nothing less than live transfer leads delivered in real-time. This will give you the opportunity to contact the lead when buying interest is at its height. If you consistently find that reads that you are being provided with have already been contacted by other insurance agents, maybe it is time to you to change your lead provider.
Filters. Does that lead provider provide you with adequate filtering options so that leads meet your specifications? After all if you are selling long-term care insurance, the last thing you want is a bunch of leads that are in their 20s. Geographical filters are a must because you can hardly sell insurance to a prospect in Florida when you are licensed to practice in New York.
Overselling leads. Some lead providers can sell leads to 10 or more agents with the result that when you contact the prospect, several other agents have already made contact ahead of you. Look for a lead provider who sells leads to an average of between two and three agents.
Lead cost. As we said earlier, cost should not be the overriding consideration and all the factors that we have mentioned above should be taken into account. The best way to find out if you’re getting a fair deal on price is to talk to several lead providers who fulfill all these criteria and then compare the quotations.
You could either waste a lot of time and effort researching lead providers on the Internet or you could come to us. We pride ourselves on our reputation as one of the leading online lead providers in America and hundreds of insurance agents can back up this assertion. Not only do we meet all of the above criteria but we can offer a lot more. Call us up today so that we can demonstrate the benefits of working with a partner like ourselves. Take your Internet insurance business to the next level immediately by calling one of our lead management specialists.
