Fuel Your Agency’s Success with High-Octane Leads

Leads are the fuel that powers an agency’s sales engine. And if you run out of fuel — or you’re trying to run your diesel engine on gasoline — you’re not going to make it very far. This is precisely what happens when you try powering your agency with poor-quality leads.

Your leads may be bad to begin with, or they may degrade over time. But before you can hope to transform your sales process, you have to understand what distinguishes a high-octane lead from a low-quality one.

How to Identify a High-Octane Lead

When it comes to insurance leads, timing is everything. If the consumer was interested in purchasing insurance six months ago, that’s a poor-quality lead. High-octane leads happen in real-time. For example, a consumer who is in the late stages of the buying cycle and is actively searching for information on Google is in a prime position to buy.

Another key to lead quality is intent to purchase. Low-quality leads are often generated without effective targeting, such as when a prospective buyer is asked to check a slew of boxes to express interest, or when he is incentivized to fill out an online form to earn a coupon to his favorite store.

Agencies often run into trouble when they start buying low-quality leads from vendors. The problem is that a vendor isn’t just selling to your agency; he’s selling those leads to six of your fellow agents. And if several agents from the same carrier are calling a lead, they’re needlessly competing against one another. This problem is further exacerbated by aggregators that sell across vendors.

High-octane leads are measurable (i.e., you know how they were generated), verified, and internal. That means that the company generating the lead controls the consumer’s entire experience. The consumer wasn’t incentivized to fill out a form, and he’s easy to contact.

Going From Zero to 60

Once you know how to spot red flags that indicate low-quality leads, you can fine-tune your sales engine for optimal performance.

Fuel your engine with high-octane leads.To get more good leads (and avoid the bad ones), avoid aggregators and buy directly from lead-generators. Teach your system to check for undesirable lead characteristics before you buy, such as multiple leads from the same IP address, leads coming in batch formats, and leads without duplication checking. It’s also good to use third-party fraud detection services such as LeadiD.

Audit your website’s content. Driving a high-octane lead to your website does no good if the potential buyer can’t find what he’s looking for. Make sure the information on your website is accurate and easy to find. There should be an easily accessible form for receiving a quote or contacting your agency for more information.

Create fresh, educational content. Film an interesting video on a subject that your ideal client might be searching for online, or create a series of educational blog posts and a squeeze page where visitors can opt-in to get a free educational report or booklet. You can use the free download to collect an email address, phone number or any other information that might be relevant. Just don’t overwhelm the consumer with too many form fields.

Combine call and email strategies.Speed-to-call is the single-largest driver of lead conversion, but combining a call strategy with a smart email marketing strategy can yield exceptional results. There are a number of software solutions that will automatically schedule calls and send out emails according to a set plan.

Of course, these efforts will all go to waste if you’re trying to run your sales engine without the right fuel. But if you fill the tank with the best leads and supercharge your sales strategy, you can turn your agency around and pull ahead of the pack.