If you work in Insurance, you know that “Leads” are the lifeblood of the industry. Most Agents will go to their warm market first. They attempt to help Family and Friends with coverage, and most of the time this will make them a social pariah. Kind of like when that friend who just got into a “network marketing company” shows up, and everyone scatters.
The next step for a lot of Agents is the booth or table rental at an event or the local mall. They sit there endlessly waiting for people to come up to them to talk about Life Insurance usually with little to no result. It can be a huge waste of time and money.
Then there is the “Lead Vendor”, If you’re with one of the IMOs out there they will recommend that you just buy your leads, but only from a “VETTED COMPANY” that they approve. They will tell you it’s for your own protection and usually something to do with TCPM compliance. But the truth of the matter is, that IMO either owns that lead vendor or has a financial arrangement they don’t want you to know about.
Did you know that most so-called “exclusive leads” are recycled? That’s another interesting fact that vendors don’t want getting out. What do we mean by this? Well, have you ever seen an online survey? You know the type, fill out this survey and get a free gift. On this survey, there are usually about 30 questions and anything you answer “NO” to you become a lead. “Insurance” usually is about the 20th question.
So if you have purchased leads before you have probably heard, “I didn’t fill anything out” or “stop calling me” most Agents want to know why this keeps happening with leads you send $11.00 to $45.00 for. Well, it’s because the lead vendor sold their information to every industry they answered “NO” too. That could include, solar, auto, medical, home services (roofers, etc) Life insurance, and about a dozen other industries. So technically the “Insurance Lead” is exclusive to you for 30 days, but you are competing with the solar people, the auto people, the roofing people, and more. This means within a few days of filling out that survey your phone gets triple dialed 2 to 3 times a day from each industry. This usually forces the lead to stop answering their phone or to lie about filling anything out, because they just want the phone to stop ringing.
So what can you do? Well, most Agents keep spending money on these types of leads because they are encouraged by their IMO to buy more. If you didn’t book enough, buy more, if you didn’t sell enough, buy. more, if you got a chargeback, buy more. By the time we talk to most Agents they are about ready to leave the industry because they have gone broke buying leads that really never had any intention of buying Life Insurance, they just wanted a free gift, which by the way they usually never receive. That doesn’t give your new client confidence in you or the policy they just bought through you.
And here comes the worst part, after you actually made that sale, the Vendors don’t stop selling the lead. You see after 30 days for most vendors the lead is no longer Exclusive, so they can resell it as a 1-month-old lead, then a 3-month, etc, etc. Oh, yeah they usually sell the lead-off to 3 or 4 sub-vendors who do the same.
So what do you do? You can keep on the path you started on, the buy more leads treadmill, you can do a bulk mailer (very expensive) or you can do what most top-level producers are doing, Generate your own leads. You see most top-level producers don’t have the time to waste calling leads where they are competing with other agents to get them on the phone. They also don’t waste their money on $20 and $30 dollar leads that they can generate for $3 to $12. This is why they are on top, no competition on the phone means a much higher contact rate, and with the private lead generation they aren’t filling out a survey for a gift. They are looking for insurance!
