Here we go again . Stamps 68 to 73 cents in July . Up 48% since 2019

[DonP]

The sky is falling

Jd I sell 100% face to face . But I see the handwriting on the wall in 5-8 yrs . First of all postage keeps going up . Sure you can get BS Walmart survey leads at $20-$25 a lead . But 1/2 those are dead broke and SSI . They just don't have the means to pay . You hard sell it's a lapse . So you have to spend a lot more time weeding threwcagent killers . Rgi still has some areas at $40 ish a lead . 20% of there leads are serial mailers . The average per 1000 drop will be $575-$625 a 1000 after this rate increase . I like you didn't think telesales in fe could work . But our clients are now filling stuff out online . Fb Leads with high intent are $10-$12 . It's obviously working as 10's of thousands of agents are doing it . Yes persistency is lower but vol and geographic area much much wider . No. 3-4 hr a day windshield time . Jd your in your late 60's and this doesn't affect you . But not watching the earthquake trends happening for young agents is stupid and ignorant. Remember the pharmaceutical salesman that was considered an incredible high paying career ? It's vanished . So many careers like it gone now
.

 

[jdeasy]

Jd I sell 100% face to face . But I see the handwriting on the wall in 5-8 yrs . First of all postage keeps going up . Sure you can get BS Walmart survey leads at $20-$25 a lead . But 1/2 those are dead broke and SSI . They just don't have the means to pay . You hard sell it's a lapse . So you have to spend a lot more time weeding threwcagent killers . Rgi still has some areas at $40 ish a lead . 20% of there leads are serial mailers . The average per 1000 drop will be $575-$625 a 1000 after this rate increase . I like you didn't think telesales in fe could work . But our clients are now filling stuff out online . Fb Leads with high intent are $10-$12 . It's obviously working as 10's of thousands of agents are doing it . Yes persistency is lower but vol and geographic area much much wider . No. 3-4 hr a day windshield time . Jd your in your late 60's and this doesn't affect you . But not watching the earthquake trends happening for young agents is stupid and ignorant. Remember the pharmaceutical salesman that was considered an incredible high paying career ? It's vanished . So many careers like it gone now
.

Thanks for that!!

Now back to hand wringing.

 

[tippingpoint]

Remember the pharmaceutical salesman that was considered an incredible high paying career ? It's vanished . So many careers like it gone now

Realtors are about to take a big haircut.

 

[Jccwell]

Jd I sell 100% face to face . But I see the handwriting on the wall in 5-8 yrs . First of all postage keeps going up . Sure you can get BS Walmart survey leads at $20-$25 a lead . But 1/2 those are dead broke and SSI . They just don't have the means to pay . You hard sell it's a lapse . So you have to spend a lot more time weeding threwcagent killers . Rgi still has some areas at $40 ish a lead . 20% of there leads are serial mailers . The average per 1000 drop will be $575-$625 a 1000 after this rate increase . I like you didn't think telesales in fe could work . But our clients are now filling stuff out online . Fb Leads with high intent are $10-$12 . It's obviously working as 10's of thousands of agents are doing it . Yes persistency is lower but vol and geographic area much much wider . No. 3-4 hr a day windshield time . Jd your in your late 60's and this doesn't affect you . But not watching the earthquake trends happening for young agents is stupid and ignorant. Remember the pharmaceutical salesman that was considered an incredible high paying career ? It's vanished . So many careers like it gone now
.

If telesales works so well, why not leave the field and go do telesales?

Leads are cheap. Sure, they're going up and will continue to do so. As long as you write plenty of business, who cares?

There's nothing we can do to stop the lead cost from going up. Either accept it and move on. Or let it eat away at you. End of the day, neither of those things will lower the lead cost.

 

[hockeyday]

It's amazing how the business has shifted since COVID.

Before COVID, more than 95% of my producers sold face-to-face.

Now, 85%+ of my new agent applicants only want to sell remotely.

Give or take, 80% of my Weekly/Monthly Top 20 sell exclusively over the phone.

There is zero possibility I could sit there 12 hours a day 6 days a week and dial facebrag leads ,

 

[hockeyday]

And gas is back up to $4 per gallon.

Inflation is really under control, isn't it.

2023 was my best year ever, if your in this biz and your worried about gas prices I find that funny. Buy an ev

 

[GMDM100k]

Over the last two years my agency has transitioned from working 90 percent direct mail leads and 10 percent web leads. To 80 percent web leads and 20 percent direct mail leads.

Persistency has been the same so far but the closing ratio dropped about 1 to 2 percent.

The biggest issue with web leads that my team has is the shelf life. You have to work web leads immediately. Within 3 days to get the best closing ratio. Direct mail leads are good for months.

Direct mailers are like tv leads used to be. Direct mail is on the way out. Web is in.

Especially with the changes that are being made in regard to buying and selling names to generate leads.
The most compliant and safest way to generate a lead will be by the consumer seeing an ad online and requesting info directly from the carrier.

They days were a lead vender can buy a mailing list and solicit them for leads are going to be behind us.

About 5 years ago I believed that direct mail would be nearly non existent in 10 years. And I started to plan accordingly.

I still sell face to face though. Web leads can not sustain the volume that is needed for telesales. And the changes coming up are going to make it really hard to get the thousands of names you'll need to get to sell over the phone the way they do it currently.

There is a telesales agency that works with my imo and does about $450k a month in ap. They make over 1 million phone calls a month. About 350,000 a week. In the 4 years they have been in existence they have made enough calls to call every person in our market 100 times over.

This is not a sustainable way to do business.

 

[GMDM100k]

It's amazing how the business has shifted since COVID.

Before COVID, more than 95% of my producers sold face-to-face.

Now, 85%+ of my new agent applicants only want to sell remotely.

Give or take, 80% of my Weekly/Monthly Top 20 sell exclusively over the phone.

I have the vast majority of new agents wanting to sell over the phone also. Telesales agents are flooding the market and imos are eating it up.

Millions of calls are being made daily in our market. And the sheer amount of data that is needed to make it work over the phone is going to get real tight as more and more agencies continue to grow their agencies with remote agents.

And all the crooks will be the first to ruin the market and make laws change.

Like AIL and globe life. There will be more regulation. Stiffer fines. And all the data will get eaten up way faster than direct mail or web.

 

[tippingpoint]

Over the last two years my agency has transitioned from working 90 percent direct mail leads and 10 percent web leads. To 80 percent web leads and 20 percent direct mail leads.

Persistency has been the same so far but the closing ratio dropped about 1 to 2 percent.

The biggest issue with web leads that my team has is the shelf life. You have to work web leads immediately. Within 3 days to get the best closing ratio. Direct mail leads are good for months.

Direct mailers are like tv leads used to be. Direct mail is on the way out. Web is in.

Especially with the changes that are being made in regard to buying and selling names to generate leads.
The most compliant and safest way to generate a lead will be by the consumer seeing an ad online and requesting info directly from the carrier.

They days were a lead vender can buy a mailing list and solicit them for leads are going to be behind us.

About 5 years ago I believed that direct mail would be nearly non existent in 10 years. And I started to plan accordingly.

I still sell face to face though. Web leads can not sustain the volume that is needed for telesales. And the changes coming up are going to make it really hard to get the thousands of names you'll need to get to sell over the phone the way they do it currently.

There is a telesales agency that works with my imo and does about $450k a month in ap. They make over 1 million phone calls a month. About 350,000 a week. In the 4 years they have been in existence they have made enough calls to call every person in our market 100 times over.

This is not a sustainable way to do business.

I'm curious about the numbers. You said 350,000 calls a week that's about 1.5M calls a month. They produce $450k in AP per month. Let's say they have a $900 per month AP for each sale which is 500 sales per month. 1.5M calls per month divided by 500 sales is 3000 calls per sale. This seems off somewhere.

 

[Telesales314]

I'm curious about the numbers. You said 350,000 calls a week that's about 1.5M calls a month. They produce $450k in AP per month. Let's say they have a $900 per month AP for each sale which is 500 sales per month. 1.5M calls per month divided by 500 sales is 3000 calls per sale. This seems off somewhere.

There are several extra layers to consider.
1. They need to PICK UP the phone
2. They need to not IMMEDIATELY hang up when they realize its a sales call
3. If the IMO has Prequalifiers for banking/medical DNQs/etc, they would need to have to get past the prequalifier, and not hang up during the process.
4. THEN they would be subject to the agents closing ratio

Many of these calls are going to be to the same numbers. They are not calling 1.5 million individual people, they are calling a smaller number of people multiple times in a calling rotation. It might make 4 daily attempts the first few days and then 1-2 a day for the rest of the month. Depends how they have it set up. Even if they get a sale on the 20th attempt, the 19 previous calls are still in the total

So if you redo it:
1. If 10% of the 1.5 million are picked up, you are down to 150k calls
2. lets say 75% immediately hang when they know its a sales call-now its 37.5K
3. Lets says 80% either hang up during the PreQs presentation, or do not qualify-now its 7500
4. At $900 AP that's 500 sales, the closing rate is would be 6.6%. At $800 AP-562 sales- closing would be 7.5%

Now I made up all those values, and you can fiddle with the numbers and they would adjust everything down the line.
if only 7% instead of 10% pick up, then the closing ratio is over 10%. but I think when you consider the other layers it seems more reasonable/possible