How Do I Keep the Funnel Full of Prospects For My Insurance Agency?

How do I keep the funnel full of prospects for my insurance agency?

It's the age old question insurance agents have long been seeking the answer to.

We all know that insurance, financial services, and pretty much all of sales is a numbers game. It's what they teach you in sales training and it's what you read in all the best selling sales books. The more people you talk to, the more prospects you will find to get a quote. Of the number who get a quote, how many of them buy? These are the numbers and the ratios that you need to know. One of the hardest things to do though, is to get people into the sales funnel. How can I keep getting more prospects into the top end of the funnel? Put another way, how do you turn people into prospects more often?

Internet leads have proven to be an effective way for an insurance agent to get more people into the top end of the funnel and ultimately grow their agency. However, most agents forget this one crucial component to really maximizing the return on their investment in the leads. If you are paying for these leads and not following up again at their next renewal, you are missing a golden opportunity!

Let's say that you get one good lead per day, and you close roughly 1 in 6. If your closing ratio is not this high yet, don't worry. At the end of the month you would have written policies on about five new households. You now have 25 leads with policy renewal dates that you can begin marketing to. What happened to the other 25 leads that you didn't write a policy on? The prospect did one of two things. They either went with another company, or they did nothing, but something prompted the prospect to go online to request a quote from another provider. That's when you got the lead. You got in touch with the prospect and they let you give them a quote. Now, lets assume that your quote came in much higher, or they were ineligible with your company because of their claim history. It doesn't really matter. What matters is the fact that these leads are extremely valuable and should not be taken lightly. Too often, these leads are tossed in a folder with the hopes of following up sometime down the road. These were people who gave you all of their personal information. Most companies offer some type of leads management software where it will remind you when it's time to follow up with the prospect. Call them back in six months to try to quote it again.

One of the strongest reservations that agents have with internet leads is that at the same time their office is calling the prospect, so are three or four other insurance agencies. Six months later however, you will probably be the only one calling the prospect. You should have all of the "extremely valuable" quote information from the previous quote. Calling will let you know if the prospect actually switched carriers when you got the lead and possibly what you could have done differently to win the business. Maybe they switched to another company, but the application process was a nightmare or a billing mistake was made. The prospect may be anxious to switch again. If your internet lead follow up program is in place, you will be there to rescue them from their current carrier and grow your agency and your income.