Lead Closing Strategies Blog

Employers are shopping their policies.

60% of all small firms (3-199 workers) offering health benefits say they shopped for a new plan or insurance carrier in the past year.

24% of all small firms that shopped changed insurance carrier.

31% of all small firms that shopped changed health plan type.

Source: Kaiser/HRET Survey of Employer Sponsored Health Benefits, 2005
http://www.kff.org/insurance/7315/sections/ehbs05-sec12-1.cfm

Individual coverage is purchased by people of all ages.

43% of single policies were held by people between 25 and 44 years old
25% were held by people aged 45-64
32% were held by people aged 24 and under

60% of family policies were purchased by families headed by a person aged 25-44
33% were held by families headed by someone aged 45-64
8% were held by a family headed by an individual aged 24 or younger

Source: AHIP Center for Policy and Research Individual Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Survey of Affordability, Access, and Benefits, 2005
http://www.ahipresearch.org/

These days leads are all over the map quality and price-wise. Is your lead company offering you a smart investment for a fair price or just wasting your time and lead budget? If you want the best ROI for your leads, here are 5 things you must demand from your lead company:

1. Leads Are Actively Searching. You want leads that are actively searching for insurance, not people haphazardly checking off boxes to get their free screensaver download. The best internet leads start their search by typing insurance-related keywords into popular search engines like Google and Yahoo. A good lead company must have highly competitive pay-per-click campaigns and search engine optimization that consistently positions their websites into the top 10 rankings. Good positioning is what attracts serious insurance shoppers, and weeds out the free download crowd.

2. Clean Company Background. A company with a record of poor or illegal practices isn’t the smartest choice for a business partner. Your lead company should be held to the same high standards you have for your own business. Look for a lead company that prominently displays the Better Business Bureau Online logo on their site, and is able to demonstrate a clean complaint record.

3. Get A Guarantee. Some companies promise exclusivity, but when you call the lead they’ve already spoken to 10 agents, and you get the cold shoulder. Your lead company should guarantee to never oversell leads, and that their exclusive leads stay exclusive. If you’re buying shared leads, look for companies like ProspectZone, which guarantee shared leads will never be sold to more than you and four other agents. Your lead company should also readily disclose how many times shared leads are sold so you know exactly how many agents you’re up against. For example, out of the 49 states ProspectZone sells in, their leads are only sold an average of 1.98 times.

4. Instant Delivery. What good is a lead if you don’t know how long it’s been rotting in someone’s database before it makes it to your inbox? You should be getting your leads the instant an online shopper that meets your criteria submits a quote request. Look for a time stamp: Marking the exact moment when the lead clicked the “submit”button ensures no lapse in when they are interested in insurance and when you get their information.

5. Honest Return Policy. Don’t get burned by a company that arbitrarily refuses to credit you for their invalid leads and never returns your emails and phone calls. A good lead company never holds your money hostage: they take back their bunk leads and credit you instantly. Look for companies like ProspectZone, that have a real person monitoring returns, ensuring you get the credit you deserve.

You’re always doing 10 things at once –where do you find the time to follow up with the valid leads that just weren’t ready to buy? Don’t bury those potential profits.

In just 3 short years, Joe Stevens of TX Insurance has become the Top 3 producer for UnicareTM and a Top Ranked Blue Cross / Blue Shield Individual Producer. He’s always been a big believer in technology, but until he utilized an email autoresponder program, he was letting cold leads slip through his fingers.

Autoresponders turn tire kicker into buyers by sending persistent, personalized follow-up emails, automatically. It’s like keeping in touch with dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people with just a one-time setup.

For insurance agents, autoresponders are an excellent way to maximize the profits on your lead buys. Not every valid lead is going to be a sale, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be down the road. Autoresponders take the work of following up out of your hands and let your leads take action when they’re ready to.

Real Success With Autoresponders

Joe chose LeadMiner to warm up his cold leads. LeadMiner is a unique autoresponder program; it’s the only one that can email custom insurance quotes to your prospects. When a prospect is ready to respond to your email, they already have your new proposal in front of them, making your follow up and the sale easier.

During Joe’s first 21 days as a LeadMiner subscriber, he was able to confirm 10 policy sales (worth $4,000) that would have never happened without a persistent, automated follow up.

Independent agent Bill Scholz has seen business increase well past his expectations in the last 8 months, in part thanks to his autoresponder tools: “Autoresponders are terrific. It’s a nice way to drum up business from people who visited my site 6 months ago, and I don’t have to go through the trouble of sending it to them because it happens automatically.”

Autoresponders ensure that no lead goes to waste, effortlessly mining lead databases to squeeze out every last potential sale.

3 Quick Tips For Getting The Most Out Of Autoresponders:

1. Make it personal. Your prospects are more likely to open and respond to your email if they feel like you’re really talking to them. Craft an autoresponder for each of your lead vendors so you are effectively targeting your different markets.

2. Construct a campaign. You can never predict when a lead will be ready to make a buying decision. Some people will reach the final stage in three days, others many months down the road. An effective campaign is constructed to touch as many points on the buying timeline as possible. Set up your campaign to last at least 6 months to a year.

3. Quote your prospects. Don’t pass up on the opportunity to interest prospects with an updated proposal. Your proposal could be the final push a lead needs to make a final buying decision. LeadMiner is the only autoresponder program that can send new quotes to your prospects, and it integrates perfectly with your ProspectZone leads.