How do you measure up? Senior Market Survey

[somarco]

@Josh you are right, I could replace my current "stack" with yours would probably increase my budget but if the trade off is "one stop shopping" it might be worth it.

My problem is the funnel entry point, which for me, starts with my quote engine with built in auto-responder.

Everything I have done piecemeal is by design.

Many agents don't want a consumer facing quote engine. They feel the lose control of the sales process where I feel it gives me more control.

Everyone is different.

Your thought that Autopilot would turn into an early payoff for agents buying leads is probably on target. Most agents getting a weekly "dump" of 100 or more leads would quickly get swamped (especially if they only work F2F) so having a system to sift and sort would be extremely beneficial.

EDITED for clarity

@Josh it occurred to me you viewed my "throw $$ in the fire" as a knock against your product.

That was NOT my intention at all. It seems to be a very fine, and well thought out solution for a lot of folks, especially those that work on lead VOLUME.

When I was buying leads (good quality, not aged) I would only buy 20 to 30 per week. Some weeks I bought none because I was still sifting through my stack, looking for BUYERS.

I have never called a lead more than once unless they acknowledged my message. Many agents are looking for folks they hope to SELL.

That is not the way I play the game.

If you are a BUYER I will talk to you all day long, but if you need to be convinced you need me the conversation is very short.

Without trying your product, just looking at the total package, it seems to be a very good fit for aggressive sales types who want to kill what they eat.

That is not me.

 

[HoosierLife]

@Josh you are right, I could replace my current "stack" with yours would probably increase my budget but if the trade off is "one stop shopping" it might be worth it.

My problem is the funnel entry point, which for me, starts with my quote engine with built in auto-responder.

Everything I have done piecemeal is by design.

Many agents don't want a consumer facing quote engine. They feel the lose control of the sales process where I feel it gives me more control.

Everyone is different.

Your thought that Autopilot would turn into an early payoff for agents buying leads is probably on target. Most agents getting a weekly "dump" of 100 or more leads would quickly get swamped (especially if they only work F2F) so having a system to sift and sort would be extremely beneficial.

EDITED for clarity

@Josh it occurred to me you viewed my "throw $$ in the fire" as a knock against your product.

That was NOT my intention at all. It seems to be a very fine, and well thought out solution for a lot of folks, especially those that work on lead VOLUME.

When I was buying leads (good quality, not aged) I would only buy 20 to 30 per week. Some weeks I bought none because I was still sifting through my stack, looking for BUYERS.

I have never called a lead more than once unless they acknowledged my message. Many agents are looking for folks they hope to SELL.

That is not the way I play the game.

If you are a BUYER I will talk to you all day long, but if you need to be convinced you need me the conversation is very short.

Without trying your product, just looking at the total package, it seems to be a very good fit for aggressive sales types who want to kill what they eat.

That is not me.

Yep yep, I was not viewing your comment as a knock. I get what you meant.

As for your entry point being the quote engine, I understand where you're coming from. That's easy to handle.

I'm assuming when they hit submit some type of integration is pushing them to your autoresponder. Possibly zapier?

Either way, all we would need to do is either replace the opt in form with one of ours on your current site OR when they fill out your current form it sends a zap to to create the contact inside of Autopilot and add a tag.

Then you'd move your drip to Autopilot. Same entry point and then everything else is built out all in one place.

 

[somarco]

As for your entry point being the quote engine, I understand where you're coming from. That's easy to handle.

I'm assuming when they hit submit some type of integration is pushing them to your autoresponder. Possibly zapier?

No idea.

The auto-responder is built into the quote engine. So is the landing page. It's an all-in-one package. I was one of their early customers (about 20 years ago) so I am grandfathered in @ $32 per month. They charged me $300 (one time) for the landing page and $0 for hosting on their site.

In addition to the low monthly outlay, the package is "sticky". Unlike other quote engines (that cost a lot more) I can't host it on my site, even with an i-frame.

 

[rousemark]

Boy! This thread sure got off track!

 

[somarco]

Boy! This thread sure got off track!

Doing what I can to help @Josh promote his business.

 

[HoosierLife]

No idea.

The auto-responder is built into the quote engine. So is the landing page. It's an all-in-one package. I was one of their early customers (about 20 years ago) so I am grandfathered in @ $32 per month. They charged me $300 (one time) for the landing page and $0 for hosting on their site.

In addition to the low monthly outlay, the package is "sticky". Unlike other quote engines (that cost a lot more) I can't host it on my site, even with an i-frame.

Yeah it sounds like you have all of the pieces of the puzzle, for your needs, right there. There's always a possibility we could integrate with that, but I would need to look at their backend to see.

It might all be internal and they don't have any API or integration compatibility.

 

[HoosierLife]

Boy! This thread sure got off track!

Hey, that was your fault lol!

 

[somarco]

Yeah it sounds like you have all of the pieces of the puzzle, for your needs, right there. There's always a possibility we could integrate with that, but I would need to look at their backend to see.

It might all be internal and they don't have any API or integration compatibility.

I have asked in the past. They say it is proprietary.

I know anytime you provide a gateway to "outsiders" you open another way for the bad guys to get in.

My primary website is locked down tight with constant security updates and a Wordfence firewall. But I still get quite a few visitors on a daily basis, many originating outside the US. I have country blocks that disallow any IP that is not US based plus a number of blacklisted IP's including some that have tried to get inside.

Most agents probably don't pay much attention to security and have no idea who is poking around on their site.

 

[DecisionMan]

This has been an interesting thread to read because it contains much more useful information than the daily emails I've received the past month advertising AutoPilot.

Please take this constructively as I appreciate what has been developed and I'm a huge advocate of CRM usage and have a ton of experience over 25 years using my CRMs.

Those emails and their links contain a lot of advertising with very few details. The videos basically are endorsements. Yeah, "my business has exploded" may be true but how? Why? What did they use? How does it work?

This message thread provides a lot more detail that might be very useful to include in the ads.

The one thing I didn't appreciate in one of the ads was the implication that if you don't go with AutoPilot then your not a smart agent, or that you don't want to succeed. That kind of advertising is an immediate turn-off to me.

That said, in 1987 I made my own clipper program basically to run mail labels for my snail-mails. In 1990 I bought Maximizer, eventually purchased by ACT!, eventually purchased by Sage. I spent a lot of money on custom layouts that supported my client and prospect management and consider myself a professional CRM user.

Now I use Cloze which integrates with Evernote and Gmail and is available across all platforms. Between those apps and Dropbox I have full access to everything I need.

I can't spend the time to switch to another platform since I'm so heavily invested in what I'm using, plus what I'm doing works very well. I have a proven system that works for me.

Newer agents? I strongly suggest getting with something like AutoPilot that's been developed by experienced producers in our industry. But it only works if you use the system and stick to the system, and a lot of agents just want to write business but hate the paperwork or the data input/management.

Perhaps most of the successful agents in the Forum already have a CRM that works so they won't make a switch, but give a lot of credit to these guys that put together AutoPilot and the technology integration. Its a lot of work, but it certainly fits well in our industry.

 

[Travis Price]

Many agents don't want a consumer facing quote engine. They feel the lose control of the sales process where I feel it gives me more control.

I hands down agree with this.

Like JHP, my customer facing quote engine can be manipulated a bit to show carriers I represent.

I didn't like JHP as much, for the limitations you note Iframe sucks.

But my sidebar goes to my landing page, which has a customer story video and more about me and how I do business. It's gated.. so I get the lead info.. they get the quote.

Win/win.

I do an initial call, and then autoresponder as well.. I also send them a branded letter opener if I have the address (off a list I have or such.)

I'm not hard selling. When they're ready to talk, they will.

Maybe I'll lose sales, but that's on them.