The answer is yes, you should use an insurance lead service because efficient, productive businesses outsource whatever they can.  When you outsource prospecting, you get to spend more time in appointments where you need to be to make sales.

There are a few very important aspects to running an insurance leads function that many new agents just don’t understand.  In fact, many experienced agents don’t understand these concepts either.  Unfortunately, they are the true secrets of the top producers, so if you have any desire to become a top producer in this industry, you should heed this advice.

In order to get a good feeling for how powerful this idea is, think about how much time you spend on your business.  Do you spend 10 hours a week or 80 hours a week building your business?  Either one is fine, but how much money do you make per week?  Do you make $800 per week or $10,000 per week?  How much do you want to make per week? To meet your goals, you need to be face to face or on the phone with prospects and clients.  Any other activities, like generating leads or prospecting should be delegated or outsourced to an insurance lead service.

Figure out how much money you make per hour and then take your weekly income and divide it by the number of hours you work per week.  This is your current hourly rate that you pay yourself.  Next, figure out how much you want to make per week – this is your goal hourly rate. After you’ve figured out your hourly rates, go back through and list everything you do during the day.  Be very thorough and list every task that you do – it may help to keep a log or journal of every step that you take during the day.   Patience please—we will get to how an insurance lead service makes these numbers look better.

This is where it gets good – go through your day and figure out what tasks you can give to someone else to do for less than your desired hourly rate.  For example, if you can hire an assistant to make your appointment calls or generate your leads for less than what your desired hourly rate will be, then mark that as one of the processes you should outsource.

Are you surprised at how much time you’re wasting on tasks that you could easily send to other people for much less than what you’re paying yourself?  If you’re like most insurance agents, this should be a wake up call for you. It’s very common to fond that your time is worth $300 an hour and you waste a big chunk of it prospecting when you could just pay and insurance lead service $20 per lead for the same prospect you would get on your own.

I can almost guarantee that one, or even most, of the tasks that you listed has to do with generating insurance leads.  It’s always amazing to see how much mundane, monotonous, and just flat out cheap laborious work insurance agents put themselves through to generate leads when they can easily outsource this task by using an insurance lead service.
If you decide to use an insurance lead service, you’ll quickly find that it isn’t very hard to make more money, work less and enjoy life much more than you currently do.

Just be sure you choose your insurance lead service carefully.  There are many services out there that won’t produce very good results and will only take your money and leave you with leads that don’t want to buy your insurance.  Proper due diligence is the key to making this work, so spend some time research the insurance lead service’s policies and their reputation online as recommended.

If you truly want to free yourself from the slavery of Insurance lead generation and reach the income goals you set for yourself, using an insurance lead service is by far one of the best ways go to about it.

It’s a shame that so many insurance agents are clueless about marketing and client acquisition.  In July 2009, 1600 insurance agents did a a Google search on the phrase “insurance agent lead.” What exactly were these agents looking for?  A life lead, a P&C lead, an annuity lead?  Do they have any idea as to their niche, do they have a strategy or are they just fishing around for their next sale?  Unfortunately, the bar is so low to become an insurance agent (take some easy classes and pass a very simple exam), that it has become the second career for truck drivers.  Once the ex-truck driver passes his insurance exam, he now sets out looking for an insurance agent lead, I guess. (by the way–I like truck drivers.  I just think they should drive trucks and not sell insurance).

I don’t want to take anything away from the true insurance professional–those who are clearly financial advisers, have the CHFC or CPCU credential and really add value for their clients.  But some yahoo that may use Yahoo or Google to look for insurance agent lead is no one that should be exposed to the public.

So let’s give our 1600 Internet searchers the benefit of the doubt, assume they are new agents and provide some advice on how to generate insurance leads and grow a business. Depending on how new you are to the business, you may or may not know what an insurance agent lead is.  But even if you’re an industry veteran, you still may not know exactly what this type of lead is.  Even if you think you know, it’s still important to brush up on your knowledge and marketing strategies every now and again.

When you’re first getting started, it’s important to learn how to generate leads or have others do so for you.  Insurance agent leads come from a variety of places such as the Internet, direct mail, direct response TV, telemarketing – also known as cold calling (something you should never do but may want to hire someone to do).  The physical aspect of the lead is a name, address, phone number and email address – and possibly some other optional information – of a person who’s interested in receiving insurance information or a quote.  At the time he is filling out the form, the lead may or may not know exactly what type of insurance or company they need.

An insurance agent lead is a whole lot more than that, however.  To the average, unsuccessful insurance agent, this information is just an address and phone number.  It’s a faceless piece of information that the agent must use to get to their end goal – a sale.  To successful insurance agents, however, it’s a lot more than that.

The person on the other end of that insurance agent lead is someone who has worries, desires, needs and wants.  It can’t be stressed enough how important that is to success in this industry.  When you pick up that phone to talk to this lead, you’re speaking with someone who is potentially very scared or misinformed about insurance in general.  They may have no idea that you’ll be calling, and the reason they filled out the form with their personal information is because he’s going through a transition in his life and have some unknown circumstances that he needs you to help him through. To the experienced agent, this insurance agent lead is also a connection to everyone this prospect knows in the neighborhood, at work, his employer, etc.  In other words, one new client can lead to a whole lot of new business.

For example, many times an insurance agent lead will be calling because someone in the family close to them had just passed away and they’re starting to think about what will happen when they die, whether or not they have enough insurance coverage, and what will happen to their family when it’s their time to go.  Others are calling because they’re starting their own business or were laid off from a job that used to provide insurance and now need to find an alternative solution.

The key to success in this industry is to always keep these considerations in mind when talking to prospects.  Each insurance agent lead is a person and not just a potential sale.  Your job is to find out what this person wants.  What keeps the prospect up at night?  Why is he seeking further coverage (the emotional reason is what you want to know as people buy emotionally)?  It may seem simple, but finding out the answer to these questions, then answering them with a product that you offer is what will take you from being just an insurance agent to becoming an insurance super agent, a true professional. Not only will you make more money in the industry, but your clients will be eternally grateful for you doing it.