Lead Experiment

[Guest]

I took 5 agents and gave them old leads, about 150 each for the state they were in (I have about 9000).

These leads were anywhere from 6 to 15 months old.

Can you guess what happened?

People bought, agents sold.

Defies logic doesn't it?

 

[Alston]

Not at all.

Most of our sales are to people who have requested quotes within the last month or so, but we make a lot of sales to people who initially requested quotes 1 and 2 years ago.

Plenty of people window shop before they are really ready to buy. From time to time my wife and I go to real estate open houses that are out of our price range. One day (soon I hope) that price range will fit us.

People who are looking to retire, or start a small business often get prices when they are in the planning/decision-making phase.

We recently got a telemarketer to work for us on a very part-time basis to call old leads. I know that we get a good return on drip marketing to old leads. We drip market via both email and snail mail. We will probably expand the telemarketer's hours after she makes enough calls for me to have enough data to analyze.

 

[Guest]

Hi Alston,
did you hire a telemarketer personaly or is it a service?

I do have 9000 leads.

 

[Alston]

I hired my sister. We try to keep it in the family if possible.

 

[Frank Stastny]

I took 5 agents and gave them old leads, about 150 each for the state they were in (I have about 9000).

These leads were anywhere from 6 to 15 months old.

Can you guess what happened?

People bought, agents sold.

Defies logic doesn't it?

Nope, not to me.

I routinely sell "leads" that are 6 to 24 months old.

When I had agents working for me I gave them leads. These were all direct mail "leads" that I had in my prospects database. I printed them out on 4x6 index cards and told them they were fresh, hot leads. They worked them and sold insurance.

If I had told them they were "old leads" they wouldn't even have bothered to pick up the phone. They always asked how fresh they were and I told them they were still steaming they are so hot.

 

[joshril]

What about the DNC?

 

[CHUMPS FROM OXFORD]

I also was curious about the DNC list.

I have about 3000 old leads (18 months old or less). If I send them an email or two, would the DNC issue be a factor?

 

[Alston]

A typical case:

09/27/2006 09:21 am Requested quotes online

Sat 11-3-2007 5:23 pm Viewed quotes online after receiving reminder email.

Thu 4-17-2008 7:37 pm Spoke with ****. They have no current insurance. Received quotes by email, but I will snail mail quotes again.

Mon 4-21-2008 7:42 pm She hasn't yet received the quotes in the mail. Check again tomorrow after 1:00. Re snail mail if she hasn't received by then.

Fri 6-13-2008 9:38 am She called in and wanted the Aetna Open Choice $2500 value plan, because she wanted to keep it under $300 I recommended the $5000 deductible open access plan because of the limitations of that policy. She said she was going to apply online.

Tue 6-17-2008 9:55 am Contact Type: Left Voice Mail
Staff Member: Alston Balkcom
Approved for Managed Choice Open Access 5000. Premium $234.
Left voice mail to tell her that her policy was approved.

Some background

We close a lot of these cases just based on our drip marketing program. Because of this success we are now getting more aggressive about calling old prospects. However, this prospect recontacted us based on just our emails and postcards.

My website automatically sends quotes via email to each person who requests quotes on our site. We also send a print out of the quotes in the mail. We also send an email once a month for 6 months and then one every at least twice a year. We also will send a postcard at least twice a year.

I wrote a program that notifies us when a client views their quotes online. We try to call them when they do. Often we are too busy, but we still close a lot of old cases.

We have just recently started using a telemarketer so that we can do a better job of following up with prospects by phone and close more of these old prospects.

 

[Alston]

Many Internet Leads are recycled!

I'm an affiliate for a couple of the major Internet lead sellers. Here is little information about the way they work.

You probably already know that when you buy a lead from them they sell it to up to 8 agents.

You may not know that the lead sellers keep the prospect in their database and will contact them again when a period of time has elapsed. That period of time is in the contract they have with you.

After that they can either resell the lead (hopefully at a discount to an agent who knows it is an old lead) or they will send a spam email to that prospect. If the prospect responds the lead company will resell the lead to an agent.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with this practice. The person who requested quotes a second time is probably even more interested than the person who requested quotes only once.

What is wrong is:
If you are not recycling your own leads but are buying Internet leads, to a certain extent, you are...

throwing away the day old bread in your kitchen in order to make room for the day old bread you will purchase from the bakery.

 

[moonlightandmargaritas]

The person who requested quotes a second time is probably even more interested than the person who requested quotes only once.

And you can waste twice the time.

I believe it most important to find out why someone is requesting a quote. In that manner, you can give it the attention/urgency required.

There's all kinds of interested people out there. You can generate a lot of quotes, and waste a lot of time. You feel good because you're busy.

It takes more than "interested" for them to be a good prospect!