YOUR RATE OF RESPONSE MEANS NOTHING
(in itself). Here's why: let's say you send out
to Ohio licensed insurance agents 5,000 insurance mailers. Of
these agents and brokers, you get back 100 leads of prospective
agents, and are able to contract 10. Six months later no
production comes in, so your results are zero. Trying to measure
insurance mailing leads results based on how many agents reply is senseless. These
useless figures will only misguide and mislead you.
100% of
nothing always equals nothing. Worthless
insurance mailing leads returned by the
wrong style of agents are worth nothing to you. In fact they
cost you time, plus the high expenses of delivering your
insurance message to them. With insurance mailing leads, your whole recruiting
success depends on superior recruiting of Productive Agents. We
will break down then various styles of insurance mailing leads
obtained, and explain their value, or lack of, to you.
Determine, based upon the source of names for your recruiting
campaign, just what style of agents receive your message, and
hence what style of insurance mailing leads agent will provide. You can make
this process easier by classifying insurance agents into 6
separate groups. By doing this first, you can drastically cut
your costs while determining the
quality of insurance mailing leads responses. Here are the 6 classes of insurance
agents.
UNWANTED AGENTS You would be surprised how many of
these there are in a non-refined, or semi-refined list. You have credit life
agents, professional multi-state telemarketing agents, agents
who have a wrong address listed, agents who have requested they
receive no mailings or calls, in-house agents directly licensed
by the home office and in non direct selling positions, agents
that are 99% retired, agents who are deceased, but the widow is
collecting their lifetime renewals, etc. Check our article:
600,000 Agent Losers and Rising. for detailed explanations/
CAPTIVE RESTRICTED AGENTS
This group is primarily comprised of home debit agents
along with life licensed fire & casualty agents of one insurance
carrier. They are not independent and their multi-line carrier
strong suggests to them that placing business elsewhere could
risk their career. Do yourself, the agent, and the company
a favor by ignoring them. Depending on the state, they can
compose up to 20% of the total agents. Please make sure that your agent name
source has removed these names. If one of these agents does respond, how much is
the insurance mailing lead response worth?
FORMER AGENTS If
you have an agent who has already been unsuccessful in the
insurance industry and is now inactive, ask yourself who is
going to make or break this former agent? Are you really going
to make the difference into turning this former agent into a
success, or does it rest on the agent? The agent has already
failed, and are you that hard up for agents? Taking a gamble here is
certainly being optimistic and very much not realistic.
ROOKIE CAREER AGENTS
Those agents who have never yet brokered outside insurance
business, and make up a very significant portion of your
insurance mailing leads returns if
you use a poorly screened list. By rookies we mean life and
health insurance agents with under 4 years of experience, plus
any under a career agent where their obtain money from a subsidy
payment program. Exceptions would
be some of those undertaking CLU courses, LUTCF courses or having obtained a
series 6 or 7 license. You have to give these agents credit,
many of them are super talkers and wonderful dreamers. Chances
are that at one point you may have even been in their shoes. BUT
empathy and sympathy will not pay you recruiting expenses.
Unfortunately 85% of these agents will not be around to
celebrate their 2nd anniversary. Others will talk on and on
about the potential client that needs your product, but this
mystical client never materializes into an issued case. If you
still believe that the rate of response with insurance mailing
leads is so important, mail
this group of agents.... many will respond to your offer and everyone
else's offer and end up producing for none. They are your biggest
distraction for wasting time, money, and effort. Only if they
can actually true convince a pro like you, that have a legit case to write, are they
worth the longshot chance. We say lottery tickets pay off better.
EXPERIENCED CAREER AGENTS
who have to this date not placed outside "brokerage" business
may be sitting on the fence. Be careful though, only if the
agent is very sincere should you proceed any farther. Remember
that this agent (like many others), may be a super shopper who
like to collect sales brochures and spend hours comparing them,
or this agent might be trying to pass off a case that no one
else wants, or might have an extremely peculiar client who would
only agree with his mother and attorney present. An occasional
agent dealing like this might be okay, but too many like this
one will require more than aspirin.
ESTABLISHED INSURANCE
BROKER Receive back a insurance mailing leads responses
from an agent who has previously placed any kind of case with a
carrier outside their primary carrier and
you are
getting hot - finally.
During the next roughly 18 months, 75% of the agents that broker
your product have already established themselves by
brokering some form of insurance! You can help to
put these numbers in your favor. This agent is easily scared off
if your product offering is too technical or portrays too darn
many features or riders. Keep it simple on both your approach
and the material presented. Let you advertising piece talk about
the ease of selling, not the vacation in paradise rubbing noses
and drinking nectar with the company big shots.
YOUR PRODUCT BROKER
This is as hot as it gets. Get a
insurance mailing lead response from an experienced agent already brokering a
similar product to yours and get ready to make your best
move. Just one response from a prospective broker of this
caliber is worth 2 dozen from rookie career agents. This
insurance mailing area is
where you need to spend at least 80% of your time, your recruiting
budget, and your skills on. So what if this agent is already
writing for a competitor or two of yours? This is war, survival
of the fittest recruiters! Reel him in, and then don't let him
go unnoticed. Whoever said "it pays to advertise" must have been
referring to a recruiter cashing in on the business produced
from the newly recruited experienced producers that wrote
business for his competitors.. Say yes to
veterans.
YOUR OWN BROKER
Give yourself a well deserved kick if you don't look in your own
backyard. The next multi-million dollar case might be produced
by a broker under contract with you writing a small case or a
different product. You did the work already in getting the
contract signed and first piece of business placed. Developing a
monthly newsletter to your current base of brokers should be a
must. Here is the proper place also for the use of the occasional email. Don't smother, mother. If your
group of contracted brokers is too large to carefully nurture,
then cut off your non-producers, don't cut the newsletters,
or emails. Agents are told to ask for referrals, but do
you do the same? How hard do you work on referrals from your
agents... probably not much. If it costs $200 or more to recruit an agent
that actually writes a case, would offering your broker a $50
gift certificate get you another easy broker? You have to spend
money to make money. Keep your agent
informed, do they know about every single product you handle? If
they do not, they should. Your current producer might just rate
a perfect 10.
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