At one point, door to door, face to face sales or telephone sales were pretty much the only option available for agents hoping to expend their businesses. Even advertisement or postcard generated leads require a lot of work on the part of the agent to convert them to sales. However, that’s not necessarily true today. More and more people are going online to look for their insurance and they want it to be easy. That’s why lead harvesting sites have popped up. These sites take the information of people looking for insurance, and then provide it to clients of their own – insurance professionals looking for leads. Sites selling ordinary or qualified insurance leads are turning up everywhere. However, you may be wondering if they’re worth the money.
The answer is that it depends. You may see articles promoting sites that promise their qualified leads are ready to buy right now, and that you’ll instantly get lots of sales. This just isn’t true. Even the highest quality leads take a little bit of work to turn into customers. Think about it – would you buy from the first person who contacted you? It’s more complex than that, too. Not all lead sites are the same, with some reselling the same lead to a number of clients, and others harvesting leads in a very general way that makes them less useful. After all, if you buy contact information about someone who wasn’t looking for your products, you’re going to have a much harder time making that sale.
That doesn’t mean that all purchased leads are useless. A qualified lead – one that’s guaranteed to be interested in what you’re offering – is more worthwhile than a lead that was harvested less deliberately. A company that’s offering truly qualified insurance leads will go over them carefully and do enough research to make sure that they’re likely to be good prospects. However, many companies are using the term qualified without doing all the research required. That means that you have to do more shopping for a lead provision company than simply reading their promotional materials. You’ll have to look into what’s being offered and what others think about that provider.
One way to find a good provider of qualified leads is to talk to others you trust in your field. They can tell you about companies they’ve had experience with and let you know if they’re likely to help you with quality leads, or if you’ll just be paying for a list of junk. Remember to find out if leads will be sold more than once, or if you’re likely to be the only professional getting that lead.
Find out what the lead provision company means by qualified, and see if they’ll credit you back for leads that turn out to be junk, like those with the wrong or out of date contact information, or leads that are just plain wrong. While no company guarantees every lead will turn into a sale, they should at least offer you the information for people who are actually looking for insurance. After that, the job is yours to turn that contact into a long term customer.
If you decide to purchase leads, it’s important not to rely solely on this method to get new business. After all, your source of leads, even if it’s a good one, may not be consistent enough to keep you growing. That’s why you should also work on creating new products for existing customers, getting customers you already have to recommend you to friends and family, and keep working on the old fashioned methods of lead generation. Every marketing plan needs to be diverse, so that you won’t have trouble if one of your approaches slows down or becomes unreliable.
While they’re not the cure all or automatic business builder that some lead providers may claim, purchasing qualified insurance leads can be an effective way to expand your client base. You just have to know that you’re working with a reliable, reputable company that’ll provide what it claims it will. Check out any prospective lead provider carefully, and be sure not to neglect other areas of lead generation. That’ll keep your business healthy and allow you to take advantage of all the options available to you.