How Many?

[somarco]

I know some of you write business online & over the phone almost exclusively. Many buy internet leads and some (like Alston) generate their own . . . something I would love to learn . . .

Alston writes 200 lives a year. Jess (newmindfashion) a little more. Ed (Chumps) comes in at 350. Scott (Sti) must write about 500 a year.

My question is, how many leads do you need to generate 100 sales?

I run about 800 leads (gross) through my shop and write about 100 lives per year. Not all of my sales come from leads. Probably more like 70% or so. The rest are referrals and other sources.

 

[Alston]

[FONT=&quot]My closing ratio can range from 1 out of 5 to 1 out of 12 on any given month.

1 out of 6 requires a little luck and a lot of follow up.

Lately it has been closer to 1 out of 12. For most of this year I've been working on my lead generation business and cherry picking as an insurance agent. I've done my due diligence for the clients who call and email me, but I have made only a few calls to people who didn't call me first.

I'm happy with 1 out of 10, but 1 out of 8 is what I shoot for when my focus is less split. 1 out of 5 requires the stars being aligned just right. Although I'm hoping that after my son is trained we can do a better job at following up and do a little better.[/FONT]

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

In fairness...of the 350...about 280 are health and the other 70 are a mixture of life, MF, 401K rollovers and small groups.

Re the health...1 out of 10 sounds about right although referrals are a different story.

 

[MHart]

You guys are studs, when I was doing internet leads I was closing 1 out of 18. These were shared leads. I don't sell much of assurant out here in california and I believe that all the numbers on internet leads are based upon advance money when you are a new agent. I will get some arguments about this but if you are a new agent you don't have much marketing money like myself and it was hard to keep up with the cost of internet leads. Everything in california is as earned commission. I know there are some really successful agents on this board that are primarily as earned but they probably had a good marketing budget to start.

If you don't have money do what are good ole buddy John P suggested and that is go leads and B2B and market your but off.

This is what I am doing. It seems that my closing percentage has gone down a little bit. This is only on a month's worth of data so not very reliable. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Alston]

You guys are studs, when I was doing internet leads I was closing 1 out of 18. These were shared leads.

To be fair, my leads come from my website. They are well branded. My prospects are expecting to hear from me and of course the leads are exclusive. I've also stayed away from promotional practices that will generate volume without quality.

Before I built the website, I had pretty spotty results from buying Internet Leads.

One company gave me quantity, but no sales. Another, iLeads, gave me very high quality, but few leads in my area. I liked them but in order to get a decent rate I had to give them $700 up front and it took a long time (18 months, I think) to get all the leads in the contract.

 

[somarco]

Internet shared leads can be tough, and expensive if you don't know how to work them. I have refined my approach over the last few years to a system that generates good results but requires a lot of manual follow up.

I blow off the leads that are duds early on and concentrate heavily on the ones that show promise. I usually close about half the ones that get a green check mark (my coding).

It takes a lot of filtering down, follow up and patience. On average it probably takes me 3 - 6 weeks to close a lead. That is a lot of follow up and a lot of phone time with each prospective buyer.

All of my business is as earned. I prefer it that way but I also realize that starting out most folks can't make it that way. Eventually you need to wean yourself off the advances or you may never see trails.

I can get advances from Time and World. The other carriers (GR, Aetna, Coventry, Humana, BX & KP) all pay as earned. So you can see there are not a lot of choices if I want advances.

Going door to door calling on businesses can be very profitable as long as you don't factor in your time cost. I can talk to a dozen qualified prospects a day in the same time I could talk to maybe 3 or 4 face to face.

My business model works well for me but it is not for everyone. I had to work up to my current lead volume which is still light compared to some. I do so much follow up I really can't effectively handle more than 8 - 10 leads a day and sometimes even that is overwhelming with all the follow up.

If I get behind (like I did this weekend) then it takes me a few days to catch up. I had 23 leads come in since last Friday. Unfortunately I had 3 apps to work on today that cut into my call back time so now I am behind the ball again.

I hope to get caught up by Friday . . .

 

[TXINSURANCE]

A reasonable expectation overall on gross leads is in the 3 to 8% range. A reasonable expectation on "generated leads" is in the 6-12% range , even that might be a little high. There are also market variables as well.

I have some lead sources for $1 per lead I close 1 in 100, some for $50 per lead I close 1 in 2. Some for $5 per lead I close 1 in 15.

I look at the following at the end of the month:

Total Cost per Acquisition - i.e. leads, payroll, mortgage, phones, etc.,
Total Cost of Advertising per Acquisition - Advertising costs only

This is real easy to do - divide your advertising budget into the # of apps you submitted and you have your magic #. Same with total cost of acquisition divide your total costs into # of apps submitted and there is your other magic number.

Close rations and # of leads is somewhat irrelevant to me. I look at this from a cost per acquisition standpoint almost exclusively. I know what my target dollar amount is per application and I try to stay within that window so I know I can turn a profit.

This is important when you start pushing large volume (i.e. thousands of apps / year) to keep costs contained, while still growing.

I got a little silly throwing money around last year and ate my lunch pretty bad for a few months. It is a hard lesson learned when you are only tracking lead counts and close rations - you need to look at COA models as well.

Hope that was a little helpful.

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

I only buy local leads, so my ROR is higher than those that go outside of their area.

Pa is kind of funny. I don't live there (although we spend a good amount of time there). Lately, ROR has been off the charts. I'm sure it will flatten out though.

 

[tommyk]

Just need to find the right lead generator. Anyone know of one for Illinois?