Where Are my Trusted Choice Leads?

[pageins]

We pay Trusted Choice for leads every month.

I am getting no leads. Zero...or something very close.

Where are my leads?

At a meeting last September in New Orleans one of your organizers spoke and said that the algorithm favored larger agencies. In other words, the more companies an agency represented, the more leads they received. Not good for us...so why are we even a "Trusted Choice" agency?

That algorithm makes sense, I guess...if that's the only criteria that matters. Thing is, that's not the only criteria that matters ...or is it? I guess that depends. The trend is that the consumer wants to spend as little as possible on insurance. To the insurance company, they want a good risk...which is easy to ascertain on a car insurance quote. A little more difficult on a homeowners, or business, insurance quote due to the variables involved.

We need more leads and we've been paying for them.

So, where are they?

 

[ModernInsurance]

This should get interesting! (Throws a bag of popcorn in the microwave).

 

[hesse]

signed up last fall and was getting 1 about every 3 weeks. Mostly commercial, that being said ive gotten 2 since Jan 1.

 

[pageins]

signed up last fall and was getting 1 about every 3 weeks. Mostly commercial, that being said ive gotten 2 since Jan 1.

That's better than me....zero in the past few months.

 

[shawnmwalker]

I am with Modern Insurance. This has the potential to get good! I'll sit back and wait for this one.

By the Way Trusted Choice! Great Org!

 

[tcdotcom]

MI: Hope your popcorn is done. Maybe you want to grab a beverage??

hesse, if you pm me with your agency name, I will check to determine if you've been getting phone referrals in the past few months.


pageins,

In looking at your account records, contrary to your assertion, you've gotten 9 referrals since the beginning of the year. Certainly not world-on-fire results, but also not close to zero.

One of the largest challenges that TrustedChoice.com faces is that the referrals that we deliver to agencies are easy to overlook for one or more reasons.

First, in some instances, the principal rightly delegates the sales & marketing efforts to their production staff. Emails are going to the sales manager and so the principal isn't aware. In very few instances will a sales person looking to impress the boss volunteer that the account they just wrote came in from an opportunity that was handed them.

We have recently added the ability for the principal to receive an email in addition to the primary receiver of referral emails to alleviate this problem.

The second issue is more widespread, and tougher to fix. Somewhere between 60 and 80% of referrals to agencies are via telephone, and rarely does the source get attributed to the caller coming from TrustedChoice.com.

To address this, we've instituted tracking numbers on agency profiles. When the consumer wants to call your agency, he or she dials a number that we have set up for you. The phone then rings in your office, but since it is a unique number, we know that the customer found you on TC.com. If the phone call lasts more than 30 seconds, we count it as a referral and post it to your dashboard.

After watching stats for a couple of months as we rolled the program out, we realized that lots of calls were really short. So we instituted call recording to figure out what was going on. Somewhere between 16-20% of inbound calls to agencies hang up before they talk to a person. Some leave VM, but many just get tired of waiting and leave.

Unfortunately, many agencies don't have effective Source to Sale documentation, and even if the agency does have a procedure wherein the question is asked and recorded, many consumers say "I found you in google" or "on the internet". I've personally heard producers ask the question, get the answer and log "Found us by the agency web page".

No. TC.com. But the agency is never going to know that.

Thus your problem isn't that you don't receive referrals, the root of the problem is that you probably aren't aware that you are receiving them. Of the 9 referrals since January 1, 8 were phone calls to your agency.

As always any Advantage agency can log in to their dashboard to see their referrals themselves. We have also instituted a new feature this week where we are emailing a link to the recorded phone call for calls exceeding 4 minutes in length.

 

[shawnmwalker]

TCdotcom,

That was your first post but you showed up just in time to resolve the problem. I didn't even get a bite of Popcorn and now it is all resolved! Great Post.

Do you mind taking a moment to help the agents here on the forum better understand What Trusted Choice does for Independent agents? Maybe start a new thread to educate us better on the TC deliverables. I am most interested in the Lobbyist deliverable and how TC helps us from that aspect.

 

[tcdotcom]

Shawn,

I'm so sorry you didn't have a chance to get any popcorn. It's one of my favorite snacks. Real butter please!

I'm more than happy to post up per your suggestion, but I've got to address a common misconception first. (And it is completely confusing so don't feel like you are the Lone Ranger. We haven't made it easy for anyone.)

I work for TrustedChoice.com, and we are a for profit company. A distinct and separate entity as compared to the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (aka IIABA or Big I) which is the trade association that represents many independent insurance agencies and agents.

Now the confusing part: The IIABA has developed the brand Trusted Choice (R), and has been using it for the past decade give or take. They have licensed the use of the TrustedChoice.com website to us.

Clear as mud, right?

As I said, way too confusing for most folks. So while I can provide insights to the IIABA and their various operating units (one being the lobbying activities that take place in Washington DC and the various state capitols) I'm not an official spokesperson for the associations, nor do I have command of the details of the national and state associations.

But I'm happy to offer clarity as I am able.

Obviously I do have some command of the details of TC.com however.

Finally, the official name of TC.com is Consumer Agent Portal, LLC dba TrustedChoice.com.

 

[shawnmwalker]

you lost me at some point..... Not even sure when it happened.

 

[BigSteve]

I thought I was confused before I left the office.