Contact to Appt Ratio

[Rearden]

Hey everyone. I'm looking to find out some industry standards for what a typical cold call contact to appointment set ratio is. I'm calling residential for property casualty.

I know there are a ton of variables that will affect this. Season, time of day, skill of caller, script, luck etc... But what is a general ratio (like 20 contacts per 1 appointment) so I can measure my success?

I'm with a little-known multiline captive, calling a ListShack consumer list, using MoJo dialer triple line, mostly during normal hours. I'm saying something like:

Hey this is Mike with Farm Bureau Financial Services here in (city). We are one of the fastest growing auto and home insurance agencies in town. With our expansion, we're offering extra coverages and discounted rates. Are you interested in setting an appointment to take advantage of this?

My cold calling experience is based on uniform sales (very saturated and boring, much like insurance).

The goal was to simply set the appointment; no product pushing over the phone.

Like insurance, my goal is to SEE the customer, not SELL them over the phone.

I want both a short-term goal of selling deals up front, but also a long-term goal of getting to know future clients (usually the larger opportunities), and getting them in the pipeline.

Generally speaking, the company I worked for (Aramark Uniform Services) had a company wide expectation that, by placing 180 cold phone calls, that you should be able to set between 8 and 12 appointments.

I think the metric for insurance agents should be similar.

And that's no biggie anyway; if you can place 20 to 25 calls an hour, you should have the following day booked fairly rapidly, or the following week if you like to book ahead like I did.

One disclaimer is that your ratios for residential cold calling over the phone for insurance will be MUCH higher.

 

[jdimuzio2]

Thank you for your response, and that sounds much better ,I will try that today.
Thank you

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"Hi, this is Janine from abc agency, and I was calling to see if you had a moment to take a quick survey to help us improve our agency, its 4 questions.
1) do you have life insurance
2) do you have retirement savings
3) are you satisfied with our agency
4) do you have a current email.
Out of a huge book and from calling 200 people so far, I received like 4 or maybe 6 people to agree.
Help, is their anything more brief and better that I can/should be saying to identify that they need life insurance.
*****************
I agree with Dan. People typically would like to "help" but they don't usually have time for a sales call. I would make these calls in conjunction with their birthday as usually people are receptive when you say "happy birthday".
I'm surprised only 4-6 out of 200 clients would talk to you. Perhaps you went too fast and were too "salesy".
Simply be cordial and ask for their help....taking only "a few minutes".
Instead of asking for their email (which you should have), you can also say you are doing a records update and want to verify some information. Then, you can ask those questions, such as, "You trust us to insure your home/auto, who is taking care of your life insurance?. Your 4 questions are Yes/No questions and you want them to answer you with something other than yes/no. Good Luck!

Thank you for your response, and that sounds much better ,I will try that today.
Thank you

I will try this approach as well. Seeing from what you and another have said does point out a lot of help for me. I may have been talking to fast, I know the time of day is not the best. For my boss prefers me to be in the office in the morning to make calls, prior experience has shown me that 4-9pm is more efficient.
So I may speak to more then 4-6 people, but out of the 200 or so I have called, most have denied me on insurance, because they either have something or they just don't want to talk about it.

But I will try your approach, I think it sounds much better than mine.

Thank you Steve

 

[scinsuranceguy]

I agree with all who said you need to make sure the benefits to the customer are the first thing you lead with. Up until recently I worked for a large P&C Brokerage firm as a commercial lines producer, and we were told we must start our "elevator" speech out with, "Hi, this is ______, and I work for the seventh largest insurance brokerage firm in America."

Lets just say that I did not set many appointments going this route. I had a six to one ratio of calls to appointments when doing it my own way...telling the clients the benefit of meeting with me. Just keep changing it up and find what works for you.

 

[Norwayguy]

I agree with all who said you need to make sure the benefits to the customer are the first thing you lead with. Up until recently I worked for a large P&C Brokerage firm as a commercial lines producer, and we were told we must start our "elevator" speech out with, "Hi, this is ______, and I work for the seventh largest insurance brokerage firm in America."

Lets just say that I did not set many appointments going this route. I had a six to one ratio of calls to appointments when doing it my own way...telling the clients the benefit of meeting with me. Just keep changing it up and find what works for you.

Let me guess when you started out producing you were mum on the changes you made.

 

[scinsuranceguy]

Let me guess when you started out producing you were mum on the changes you made.

That's the way you have to be in the corporate world.

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Change your pitch.

What benefit does prospect get because your company is one of the fastes growing in the area?

What benefit does client get because your company is expanding their services? What new services--free coffee & donuts?

Stop identifying yourself & company in opening. Stop asking prospect how are they doing. Do you really care? It's phony.

What are the 3 most important benefits prospects are interested in? What's bothering them the most? How can you help them?

"Bob i work with homeowners in (city) to help them save money on their (policy kind) without giving up any benefits. In some cases, i have saved people $300-$500 a year.

My name is _______.

Are you interested in saving money on your (policy)?

P.S. google Mike Brooks on phone cold calling. I think he's the best.

Funny story about the coffee and donuts...there is a guy out in Texas whose way of setting an appointment is saying he will be in the area, and how many Starbucks coffees does he need to bring for everyone. Works for him, but man that's a lot of money on coffee if he doesn't sell. I'm not seasoned enough to afford all that on some coffee.