P&C Leads? Help!

[insurancegal]

Hi. For all those who are independent agents, what is the best way to obtain leads? or is cold calling the way to go? I am starting my own agency and would like your input. Especially those who sll P&C. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

 

[tkirk97]

I would definetely say cold calling, or putting a large ad in your local yellow page, clearly cold calling is less expensive though. I think if you were to cold call for 3-4 hours a day, ecspecially in the early evenings you can cultivate as much business as you want, then once you write a policy get referalls from that person, and then you have some people that are warmer clients, send me a pm and i will give you more info.

 

[djs]

Hi. For all those who are independent agents, what is the best way to obtain leads? or is cold calling the way to go? I am starting my own agency and would like your input. Especially those who sll P&C. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

It's all about what your comfortable with. There are no secret methods, and there are no lines of people waiting for you to sell them insurance (at least not that I've found). Pick 5 of the ways listed below, or add a few of your own, and go to town. Work 15 real leads a day, you'll be amazingly successful.

- Cold calling
- BNI groups (or other network referral groups)
- Chamber events (looking for centers of influence)
- Take a mortgage broker to lunch, get his referrals
- Place ad in local paper
- Talk to independent car dealers about their referrals
- Internet leads
- Community events (setup a booth of some sort)
- Community lectures on interesting topics
- Sell to friends / family
- Church groups or other social gatherings (you must join, and be a good member to have the credibility)
- Sponsor little league teams and work their opening days
- Hire a telemarketer
- Have kids put up door hangers for you (check with the city)
- Radio / TV ads
- Pay $2M for an ad in the superbowl, if you can still get them that cheap.

There is no one system that works for everyone. Probably no one system that will work for the same person for a long period of time. You have to have a plan, work the plan, and make appropriate adjustments as you go along.

For instance, a lot of people buy internet leads, but then don't have the resources or methodologies in place to work them appropriately when they get the lead. I know I run into issues, the lead comes in, it might be a few hours till I get around to dealing with it. By then, it is usually long sold, or the person is tired of answering the phone. Now, I do have autoresponders that send out info immediately so I don't run into this problem as much.

I have Choicepoint do some telemarketing for me. You have to be careful to know your rates compared to the competition for an area if you are going this route. It's useless to spend money telemarketing into areas that you are not competitive in (for me, that's Oakland). Others can beat me all day long, the same company that I can beat hands down 10 miles away in a different zip code.

The single biggest thing is to have a system to work the leads. I've tried lots of things, but keep going back to a paper file for phone calls. I print out the lead, put it in the stack, make calls. When I talk to them, I add them to my database, with any relevant info, and then work from there moving forward. Takes to long to add everyone upfront.

15 leads a day... You'll do well. By lead, I'm talking about someone who has an interest, not making 15 cold calls a day.

Dan

 

[Agent Jeff]

It's all about what your comfortable with. There are no secret methods, and there are no lines of people waiting for you to sell them insurance (at least not that I've found). Pick 5 of the ways listed below, or add a few of your own, and go to town. Work 15 real leads a day, you'll be amazingly successful.

- Cold calling
- BNI groups (or other network referral groups)
- Chamber events (looking for centers of influence)
- Take a mortgage broker to lunch, get his referrals
- Place ad in local paper
- Talk to independent car dealers about their referrals
- Internet leads
- Community events (setup a booth of some sort)
- Community lectures on interesting topics
- Sell to friends / family
- Church groups or other social gatherings (you must join, and be a good member to have the credibility)
- Sponsor little league teams and work their opening days
- Hire a telemarketer
- Have kids put up door hangers for you (check with the city)
- Radio / TV ads
- Pay $2M for an ad in the superbowl, if you can still get them that cheap.

There is no one system that works for everyone. Probably no one system that will work for the same person for a long period of time. You have to have a plan, work the plan, and make appropriate adjustments as you go along.

For instance, a lot of people buy internet leads, but then don't have the resources or methodologies in place to work them appropriately when they get the lead. I know I run into issues, the lead comes in, it might be a few hours till I get around to dealing with it. By then, it is usually long sold, or the person is tired of answering the phone. Now, I do have autoresponders that send out info immediately so I don't run into this problem as much.

I have Choicepoint do some telemarketing for me. You have to be careful to know your rates compared to the competition for an area if you are going this route. It's useless to spend money telemarketing into areas that you are not competitive in (for me, that's Oakland). Others can beat me all day long, the same company that I can beat hands down 10 miles away in a different zip code.

The single biggest thing is to have a system to work the leads. I've tried lots of things, but keep going back to a paper file for phone calls. I print out the lead, put it in the stack, make calls. When I talk to them, I add them to my database, with any relevant info, and then work from there moving forward. Takes to long to add everyone upfront.

15 leads a day... You'll do well. By lead, I'm talking about someone who has an interest, not making 15 cold calls a day.

Dan

Hi Dan,
Interesting post. How do you learn the about the other companys' P&C rates? Do you have a reliable multi-company quote software? Or do you call other agents for hypothetical quotes from different zipcodes?

 

[MIBizInsurance]

As always Dan provides solid advice.

There is no magice bullet. It all comes down to working smart and working HARD.

I know a P&C agent who has a 6+ million book and he still makes 10-20 cold calls a day. He has been doing it for over 15 years and says he'll never stop till he retires. He always busts the balls of the folks who never want to cold call or heaven forbid cold walk.
I asked him why not call current book and cross sell em - "Hell, I can hire any one to do that. I love the challange and meeting new people"


Good luck and pop in from time to time to keep us up on how your doing.

 

[Mr. Bill]

Although I have not purchased their information (why? Don't ask me!) I have heard on multiple occasion, purchase the New Agent Success Kit from The KBI Group - The internationally-known sales and sales management consulting firm of Jack and Garry Kinder

 

[Agent Jeff]

I would definetely say cold calling, or putting a large ad in your local yellow page, clearly cold calling is less expensive though. I think if you were to cold call for 3-4 hours a day, ecspecially in the early evenings you can cultivate as much business as you want, then once you write a policy get referalls from that person, and then you have some people that are warmer clients, send me a pm and i will give you more info.

Who do you suggest best to cold call for P&C policies? Would a purchased residential demographically-filtered list for maybe 10 cents per name from goleads.com suffice? After then laboriously scrubbing for DNC, maybe the cost is 40 cents per name (not counting labor).

I'm thinking you'd have to call about 100 of these scrubbed numbers just to get a single warm lead. In other words, $40 plus three hours worth of dialing. This is far more expensive than an Internet lead in both time and money for sure.

Of course, there can also be some long-term returns thanks to x-dating which will eventually work favorably into the equation.

And also my estimated numbers above could be way off for a competitive P&C insurance product. Are they? What are realistic target ratios?

 

[djs]

Who do you suggest best to cold call for P&C policies? Would a purchased residential demographically-filtered list for maybe 10 cents per name from goleads.com suffice? After then laboriously scrubbing for DNC, maybe the cost is 40 cents per name (not counting labor).

I'm thinking you'd have to call about 100 of these scrubbed numbers just to get a single warm lead. In other words, $40 plus three hours worth of dialing. This is far more expensive than an Internet lead in both time and money for sure.

Of course, there can also be some long-term returns thanks to x-dating which will eventually work favorably into the equation.

And also my estimated numbers above could be way off for a competitive P&C insurance product. Are they? What are realistic target ratios?

40 cents per name / number without more targeted data, is way out of line. I can buy semi-targeted leads from Choicepoint, where they have some secret computer program that determines a person will need auto or home insurance, and those cost about this much. They are scrubbed already. They will then telemarket them for free (I pay per lead generated though). Of course, you might as well open the phone book, you'll have about us much luck In my area, people don't take to telemarketing very well. I know some areas you can do pretty well, others are so over telemarketed that it isn't worth the effort.

Dan

 

[tkirk97]

If your going to cold call check out Sales genie.com, it's $300/ per month with no limit on how many names you download. Don't know where you are from but if you are hooked up with Allied they provide sales genie at $100 per month. Also, hit up your marketing reps for re-imbursements.

 

[Agent Jeff]

40 cents per name / number without more targeted data, is way out of line. I can buy semi-targeted leads from Choicepoint, where they have some secret computer program that determines a person will need auto or home insurance, and those cost about this much. They are scrubbed already. They will then telemarket them for free (I pay per lead generated though). Of course, you might as well open the phone book, you'll have about us much luck In my area, people don't take to telemarketing very well. I know some areas you can do pretty well, others are so over telemarketed that it isn't worth the effort.

Dan

Another great post.

You've put a lot of effort into telemarketing though it sounds you have met frustration due to your local market conditions. Has a worthwhile portion of your book been built through telemarketing? Has it been worth the time and expense? Have you tried x-dating?