How to Break into Home-Owners Market

[heavenly]

Any ideas on how to write more homeowners policies. We have noticed during our 5 years in business that they tend to stay on the books better than most lines.

Outside of working with RE agents, what other methods have been effective in building a book of home-owners?

 

[joshb]

Any ideas on how to write more homeowners policies. We have noticed during our 5 years in business that they tend to stay on the books better than most lines.

Outside of working with RE agents, what other methods have been effective in building a book of home-owners?

Networking groups have worked well for me. Home leads typically are better than Auto's so that works fairly well too, not to mention good cross-sell opportunities.

 

[heavenly]

Thanks for the reply. We do need to get better at cross-selling our existing book.

We ran through about 40 leads from insuranceleads.com and wrote only one small HO policy. Lots of people thinking about buying homes and wanting to know if they did how much their homeowners would be. Lots of people never answer the phone or email and the rest had exisiting policies but were just not serious about changing even when we could beat the rate.

Do you know of a good lead source in California for HO leads?

 

[Hefe]

Self marketing, cross-selling, networking groups (LeTip or BNI).

I wouldn't make a final judgment on the online leads after 40. There are enough people who take 30-60 days to buy and some that pull up your quote after 6 months or a year. I would have guessed you would get more than 1/40 on the initial run but maybe you just got a bad batch.

 

[NCROSS]

I am in Ga. and I need to pick up my homeowner sales or I am going to lose some of my contracts and I was thinking of buying some online leads. How are the leads working out for you guys?

 

[Hefe]

I have had about a 250% first year ROI on internet leads. That's not as much as some here will say is required but I'm happy with it. Renewals and future cross sells aren't included in that so they only increase the profitability.

 

[Justin Bilyj]

I heard from Mark Rosenthal on a previous thread (I think), that you can go to your local city hall to examine transfer documents. Every address that is new, you can contact, and ask them if they want a requote, and atleast if you don't get it, ask them to follow up in 11 months before their policy renews.
At the very least, after getting the record, hit them up in 11 months, you know when their policy reviews.
Not sure if there is a database that you can find for such records, but I see the title transfers in the paper all the time.

 

[1manshow]

Something that adds 50+ home policies per year to our production is pretty simple but I've yet to hear of another agent doing it. We have several of the leading realtors as clients for auto/home so I just contacted them and asked if they could use some leads when we run across them. I explained that quite often we ran across "for sale by owner" homes when we were out inspecting clients homes. I offered to forward the info. Name/address/number if they promised to follow up right away AND to return the favor if the opportunity presented itself for their clients who needed insurance. That was about 8 years ago and it's still working like a charm. Give to get!

 

[Mark]

I heard from Mark Rosenthal on a previous thread (I think), that you can go to your local city hall to examine transfer documents. Every address that is new, you can contact, and ask them if they want a requote, and atleast if you don't get it, ask them to follow up in 11 months before their policy renews.
At the very least, after getting the record, hit them up in 11 months, you know when their policy reviews.
Not sure if there is a database that you can find for such records, but I see the title transfers in the paper all the time.

Welcome Insurance Agents-How to Find New Home Owners


The court house has all kinds of good records.

 

[NCROSS]

Hefe, that shounds like a good ROI to me. My biggest concern is feeding my companies enough applications at this point while I ride this economy out. May I ask which internet lead company you are having the best results with? I have tried NetQuote one time to find out they were paying someone to fill out leads with fake numbers and emails etc and they refused to credit the leads. Thats why I am so leary of the internet leads. I already do the courthouse records for my life insurance mailers. By the time I pay for stamps, have returned mail, etc I basically break even on them. The only real profit I have had is word of mouth and face to face contacts but I gotta do something more with the economy the way it is. I live in a small town and my companies are not happy with me at the moment. Neither is my bank account