Buying insurance leads is an excellent way to find new customers, explore new markets and build a book of business. We asked Hometown Quotes Regional Director Joe Perniciaro to share a few tips on how to make the most of insurance leads.
Purchase SEM Leads
“Your leads need to come from the right source,” says Perniciaro. This means SEM leads, or search engine marketing leads. SEM leads are generated when a consumer is online looking for insurance and is serious enough to fill out a form asking for a quote. If their contact information is vetted and delivered to you quickly (as is the case with Hometown Quotes’ leads), you’ll have a prospect who is demonstrating high intent to make a purchase. This increases your odds of converting to a sale.
Expand Your Territory
Consumers are spending more and more time shopping online for just about everything, even for pricey, one-of-a-kind purchases like diamonds. As the trust in online purchasing grows, so does the number of people willing to buy insurance from someone they will never meet in person. If you are licensed to sell in a particular territory but aren’t yet receiving leads from those zip codes, you should consider doing so. As Perniciaro puts it, “You want to fish in the largest pond that you possibly can. If a customer brings up a concern about where you’re located, you can say this: ‘Your account was assigned to us because handle the entire state of X. You’re in the right place.’ Then move on.”
Alter Your Hours
There is a large cohort of workers who don’t work typical hours and many people working 8-to-5 who can’t or don’t want to do personal tasks like shopping for insurance on weekdays. “If they can’t reach you, you don’t have the opportunity to make the sale. So another way to give yourself a competitive advantage is to take leads at hours when other agents are not. This means early mornings, evenings and/or weekends. (Hometown Quotes often offers special pricing for leads generated during these nontraditional hours. You can find out more by calling 800-820-2981.)
Tweak Your Filters
While it can make sense to apply some filters on your insurance leads, it may take some adjusting to find the right ones. If you represent only one insurer and know that you won’t be able to write policies for certain consumers, sure…filter those leads out. Again, though, using the angling analogy, Perniciaro says “the right filters attract the right fish.” If you ratchet your filters down too tight, you’ll miss out on some good fishing holes.
Create the Right Follow-Up Processes
The best insurance leads in the world will be worthless if you don’t have a good plan in place to sell to and service those prospects. “The average callback rate is after 3.8 touches,” says Perniciaro. “That may mean you make three calls and send one email, or maybe you send one text, make one call and send two emails. However it happens, you should have some method to track each time you reach out, how you did it and what happened.” This could take the form of a homemade spreadsheet, but for many agents, it’s worth it to invest in CRM (customer relationship management) software. Using this tool, you can automate your outreach, which ensures consistency in how you treat every lead that you get. “Most really successful agents have a great script and follow-up process,” he says.
The biggest takeaway for anyone buying insurance leads may be to understand that consumer habits are changing. “A few years ago, a fair number of consumers shopped for insurance online just to get a comparative quote,” says Perniciaro. “Now, 82% of people who shop online for insurance also shop online for other things. They have gotten used to purchasing online, not just looking for pricing.” For that reason, it’s a great time to review your practices in order to take advantage of this behavioral shift.
0 Comments