Internet Leads My Thoughts and Processes

[DJWilliams]

This is why I have been hesitant to post anything on this forum after viewing it for the past year. It seems every time a new member tries to post any type of value on here it gets torn apart and the post gets turned into a bash session. This is why I will more than likely just delete this post and move on before I take part in anything of the sort.

I can assure everyone I am real and have no hidden agenda. I am an Allstate agent that started last year and I have had a tremendous level of success on the P & C side of things but have struggled with Life & Financial results.

I figured I could try and post my process on here that worked for me to help others in hopes of getting some help on the financial side. I only posted names of companies and everything because of all the posts and PM's I received.

The DJWilliams is for David J Williams and you can even look up my agent website by google just type " David J Williams Allstate insurance "

Also if anyone would like to you can reach me at my office at 585-225-9500

 

[669comche]

When a new person comes on this board and starts promoting a service it reeks of spam.

I mean, c'mon, re read your post.........you sound like a salesman for Leads360.

The forum is about sharing ideas, keeping up to date with industry events and learning something new.......

 

[DJWilliams]

Well I didn't intend on it sounding that way if anything I worded it the way because I am passionate about our process because I know how well it works and I was excited to help and receive some help in return.

There are tons of lead management systems out there that Im sure work great and serve the exact same purpose. I only choose this one because they integrate well with the Allstate specific programs I use. Like I said the reason I shared was to receive some best practices in return from others.

 

[ksigmtsu]

By using the term "best practices" you automatically sound as if you work for the CRM company, because Leads360 uses that term in their documentation over and over, or as if you worked as a motivational speaker for office training, rather than being an actual agent.

No agent I have ever met or spoken with ever has ever said the words "best practices" in that order in a sentence. I thought it was a clumsy way to describe the sales process when I read it in the leads360 documentation.

Search the term "best practices" in the forum, see how many people other than you ever used that term ever on this board.

Again, I really like the leads360 product, I've posted information about the product on this board, but I never came here, created a new account, then posted about the product using the terms from the product manual.

It creates an air of unbelievability so to speak.

 

[gmhopks]

Dave,

I too, am fairly new to these forums and I agree with why you were hesitant about posting anything here.

I've witnessed what a lot of regulars do to new posts and I get a little tired of reading thru their negative/off-track comments to glean information from those that have something of value to post and have stated their information in a professional manner. It is if they just have to make a comment for the sake of making a comment: never/rarely adding anything of value and usually stated in negative terms. It is ok to disagree or have an opinion counter to the original OP, but some of those detractors don't know how to communicate at all, let alone in a professional, constructive manner.

Sorry for getting off-track.

Your post is one of the best I've read and a lot of people interested in the topic will learn something of value.

Don't let a few idiotic comments keep you from contributing to these forums.

 

[DJWilliams]

Ksigmtsu

If you are that determined as too finding out who I really am feel free to call my Allstate office at 585-225-9500 I would love to chat you seem like an astonishing business man. If you need further validation knowing who I am contact another Allstate agent in my local area and mention my name.

PS

Just about every fortune 500 company uses the term "best practice". I use different terminology because I come from a retail background as a company executive for 9 years. So yes I act, walk, talk and think differently and it shows in my results.

 

[ksigmtsu]

I think you're mistaking my tone. I don't care who you are, I was explaining why people might doubt what you were saying. I don't care who you work for.

Most people start out on this board talking to people, not lecturing with MBA speak sounding like a product manual, so when someone comes in here and does that, people automatically think, wow there's another Jimmer.

Like I said, I actually use the same product. I'm not familiar with the P&C quote integration side because I use it for health/life.

I use the drip marketing, although I can't customize much because they lock us indi small business guys out of most of the fun tools. I do have a couple fun integrations working with it, 3rd party dialer that it posts across to automatically, all set up so my benepath leads drop across into norvax then leads360 then I can just go click to quote and send it across, takes about 3 minutes to run a health quote while I'm on the dialer with someone.

My thing is, if even a sales trainer tried to use terms with me like "best practices" I would probably laugh at them. It's just a personality flaw with me I guess, but I associate it with academics that don't know what they're talking about.

 

[Suis]

I guess it's the climate - everyone is depressed and suspicious. I learned much from your post. And so what if you were hawking a brand - I can check it out and know how to decide if I want it or not. Let's keep this forum informative and stop all the negative. Sometime it gets off track and funny but we can't just make it one big joke. David I hope you'll continue to post your experience - there are some of us who put personal feelings aside and want to learn whatever we can!

 

[ksigmtsu]

Here, I'll contribute my process. I'm a bit different than the OP since I work from home with no other staff. When a lead enters my system into leads360 it's posted across into the dialer, and they're called from newest to oldest automatically.

Lead enters system. I dial the person and attempt to give a quote. I always leave a message explaining why I called and my number on answering machine.

Drip marketing already started before the call was ever made, because the CRM handles that. Drip marketing contains links back to my website to self quote, phone numbers, and information about health/life/medicare internet shopping.

No answers are queued up for dialer calling with multiline predictive dialer. If the person answers I deliver a quote and call back no sooner than the next day. Fun feature of the multi-line that I use, if a new lead enters while it's dialing but not picked up, the dialer immediately dials the new lead and dumps the background calls. I tested it a couple times, it takes on average less than 2 seconds from lead entering my system in leads360 till the phone starts ringing.

Sometimes they want to put an app in on first call, but that's about a 1/50 shot.

If the person does not answer, they're queued in dialer to be called 5 times with same status as a maximum. Meaning 5 answering machine pickups is removed from queue. They also are not called more than once per 5 hours. Studies I've read show that attempts to call past 6 calls actually decreases the chance you ever close the lead. I reset the queue monthly, so that the leads that were never contacted go back into active rotation for predictive dialer if they're not flagged do not call.

I don't use a script. Introduce yourself, tell them what line you're calling for, where you're located, and ask if you can help.

After that I wing it. Clear thing to me, a long introduction causes hangups. Keep your opening call message short. 15 seconds max.

Any phone number that on call 1 has an answering machine with no name on it or disconnected is ran through whitepages.com reverse phone lookup to check to verify. If there is no match on whitepages, I flag the number to be dialed but I also flag it in the CRM as a bad phone. The warning message that gets emailed typically has a high response rate.

This method I use has a closing rate of around 12% on shared medicare leads off the net number received after returns. Similar closing ratio on exclusive health. I stopped using shared health after I saw the closing ratio I was producing with Benepath. If lead volume gets low, I buy 100 or so aged leads. Gives something for me to do. Closing ratio on them averages 1/50, and it's less painful that cold calling.

I don't buy life leads, too many liars to compete with with shared, I get really tired of explaining to people that the total face with the accident double indemnity isn't the actual face amount and that they're buying a policy that goes up in rates annually, and that it's a mistake.

Fun features of leads360, you can set up each lead that comes into the system to enter under it's own company category, so you can track your contact/qualify/closing ratio with each lead vendor and see if it's worth buying the leads without any outside calculation. Secure send that they have integrated also makes more emails actually get to the people you're trying to drip market. I have problems with my email server getting blacklisted and thrown in junk mail from time to time, shared internet hosting sucks for that.

As a sales tracking CRM leads360 does great. I think it looks like it's actually set up better for P&C guys to track their book than it is for health/life.

This sort of system is not for everyone, because it does require buying 1000-2000 dollars worth of leads a month to put 10-20 policies on the books. When I started it was a struggle to break even, now I'm making 500-1000 a week profit on just first year commissions. You need to be on the dialer all the time, 4+ hours a day.

Fun nugget of advice. Call your backlog Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between 5:30-7:30. You'll have contact ratio shoot through the roof on people you could never get on the phone before.

Also, when calculating contact/qualify/closing ratio on leads, this is going to sound nuts but the data is unreliable until it's 90 days old. You'll have people that don't close for 3 months.

I personally wouldn't suggest anyone to start out trying this approach without around $8000 dollars in reserve money to get started plus enough to cover bills.
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That's my "best practices". They work to direct your sales process toward an actionable hot button approach for your key buying demographics. This outside the box approach will create a buzzworthy referral generation once you deploy the game plan and start to drill down your hot leads to find the low hanging fruit. F2F is a necessity to insure customer stability among the geriatric crowd. Just stay ITL.

 

[DJWilliams]

Ksigmtsu

Thanks for your added insight that is a great process you have as well. I responded in such a way out of frustration that this forum should be about just this helping one another out and it seems like everyone takes threads of topics off track and accuse everyone of spamming.

I appreciate the time you took putting that together and if you like you are welcome to give me a shout and maybe we could bounce some ideas of each other. We have additional processes we have in place that are currently working for us that might help you further.

Also I noticed you have implemented a predictive dialer with leads360 that allows you to call with multiple lines at once similar to how Call Fire works. Who did you go through that integrates through leads360? I have been trying to do the exact same thing and have yet to find a provider that integrates to do this.

I currently use a call transfer service that calls the lead in real time when it comes in and then for additional calls we use the click to dial feature along with a wireless voip headset on auto answer. I like your method with the 4 line predictive dialer though if you mind sharing?


Thanks again.