I was interviewing a guy who had sold leads for Eloan to mortgage brokers.  He told me he had sold leads for years and had used them himself. “The truth is,” he said, “lead programs never work.”  The producer who needs to buy leads is the guy who can’t figure out how to market for himself.  So he usually has poor communication skills, does not think strategically and will just ruin the lead anyway.”  This guy had a very valid point about insurance lead systems–that if you fail to work the lead properly, the lead is worthless.

Here’s an example from another industry.  Today, say 50 people walk onto the BMW lot in your town.  Of those 50, they ALL have a motivation to be there.  They don’t just happen to be there by chance.  Now it’s possible that ten of them have no credit, no money.  Their motivation is to look at pretty German cars.  The other 40 however do want to buy a car, have credit and are considering a BMW among several other brands.  At the end of the day, the dealership sells 3 cars to these 40 people.  We could say that the dealership, the sales people, failed at communicating with the other 37.  In other words, they “blew the lead.”  Similar, most professionals in financial services blow the lead.  The issue is usually not with the insurance lead system, it’s with the financial advisor not knowing what to say or how to approach someone who has minor interest and turn that into a hot interest and an appointment.

And that’s why this article is about “Insurance Lead Systems.”  Because if you just treat the lead as what you have paid for or cultivated and don’t view it as part of a “system,” you will lose a lot of money. An insurance lead system has several components:

• Insurance lead generation–how is the lead generated (Internet, direct mail, telemarketing), how fresh is it, what is the degree of interest of the prospect, etc
• Pre-approach–most insurance lead systems miss this step altogether.  In the pre-approach, you want to build your credibility BEFORE you contact the insurance lead.  In the insurance lead system we recommend, you send a booklet personalized with your name, photo, credentials, background, etc.  The booklet is totally educational, no sales pitch.  The purpose is to get the insurance prospect positively inclined toward you so that when you do call, they treat you as a professional, not a sales person.
• Approach–what you say in the first 30 seconds of your call.  If you blow this, assume the prospect will hang up within 60 seconds saying “I’m not interested.”  This approach must be very soft, no selling no pushing and must be about the insurance prospect and making friends with them,  e.g. “Hi, Mrs. Smith?  I’m a neighbor of yours here in Toledo and I had to call you about a coincidence where you came to my web site last week…..  Notice that that approach does not start with the stupid way that 99% of all insurance agents would start “Hi Mrs. Smith, this is Bob Jones with the Jones Insurance Agency….”If your insurance lead system does not have a well-scripted approach in the first 30 seconds, don’t call another lead until you get it on paper.
• Call Termination–what is it that you want to happen at the end of the call?  Do you want an appointment?  If so, then you must offer a compelling reason for the prospect to meet with you rather than just offering an appointment.  Here’s the difference.  Do you want:
  a) a steak or do you want
  b) a 60-day dry-aged steak, cooked by the food network steak grilling champion, a steak that is perfectly marbled and the same steak served in the Zagat top ranked steak house in New York,  juicy and tender, melts in your mouth steak?

  When you offer an appointment, does it sound like a) or b) above?  Is it any wonder you don’t get all the appointment you should from your insurance lead system?

• Dripping–of every ten leads, you may never reach half of them because you get their voice mail or the phone just rings.  What dripping system do you have to make the prospect call you?  If you don’t have a series of offers that you deliver by mail or email (such as a direct response insurance newsletter), you’ve already lost half of the value of the insurance lead system.

Hopefully, you now see that an insurance lead system is a lot more than just an insurance lead.  The lead itself is the starting point.  If you fail to have other steps that create a comprehensive insurance lead SYSTEM, don’t waste your time or money.

If you’re serious about staying in the insurance industry, you’ll take your lead generation and marketing very seriously.  As you may already know, the fate of your business will completely rely on the quantity and quality of leads that you’re able to process in your insurance lead systems.  Sooner or later, you’re going to ask yourself whether there’s anything more you can be doing to ensure your success as an agent participating in insurance lead systems, or if you’ve maxed out the capacity of your system.

Insurance lead systems are exactly that – systems.  They are systems that have one legitimate purpose – to generate as many quality leads as they can, as well as pre-qualify the leads so that the agent and the agent’s assistant won’t have to back track on questions and parts of the contract that have already been answered.

You can create your own insurance lead system or outsource.  In either case, the system must have these aspects:

1. Method to capture interested prospects (and offer and response mechanism)
2. Method to qualify the suitability of the prospect
3. Step that establishes you as a superior source for the product or service
4. Presentation (usually by phone) to have the prospect agree to meet with you
5. Drip mechanism for those prospects that qualify but won’t meet now

It’s not just about getting leads.  Steps 2,3 and 4 are what separate mere leads from an insurance lead system.

Unfortunately, the easiest way to do this is to be sure that you’re using special insurance lead systems that are designed to fit into your current market.  You should also be using a CRM solution that will dovetail into your new insurance lead systems.

Insurance lead systems are all unique in that they’ll only provide the names and personal information to the agent.  They won’t provide the reason for their inquiry or the other personal information required when determining whether or not the lead is even worth pursuing, along with a variety of other issues. So when you finally get that lead, that’s when the show really begins.  You must use your highly developed marketing strategy and knowledge of sales to call or contact the prospect any way you can.  By doing this, you’ll set yourself apart from the hordes of other insurance agents that are no more than a search away for them.  Taking the time to personally connect with them will prove to your clients that you really do care about them.
This can only be done by creating and building a unique selling point, and using that USP in everything that you do.  Unfortunately, the average agent has no idea how this works, which means that they’re already way beyond the power curve and will have a hard time catching up.

To the average prospect out there, you’re just another nameless, faceless insurance salesman.  You have to know exactly who your target market is and what they want out of life.  You need to delve down into the deepest, darkest secrets of the person wants, loves, desires and fears.   If you understand your target market, you already know these secrets and then you develop a video, an audio a booklet–something you can provide the prospect which differentiates you from other agents that merely flap their lips.  This credibility-building steps is missing from most every insurance lead system.
Once you’re able to study your prospect in that great detail, it’s time to integrate what you’ve learned into your sales process.  If you use what you found out about the person in your marketing system, you’ll find that your ratio of leads to sales conversations will skyrocket.  This is because you are going to be doing something called relationship marketing – where you take the market research that you have discovered and use it to write sales letters, emails, fliers and business cards that appeal to your target market’s hidden desires.

With your marketing strategy honed and ready, you’ll be able to fully take advantage of insurance lead systems by ensuring that you won’t waste a bunch of money on leads you’ll never get to convert to sales.