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Why Should I Invest in Live Transfer Insurance Calls?

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Fran Majidi February 28, 2023
live transfer leads

What exactly are live transfer leads and how are they different from regular insurance internet leads? Why are they more expensive and how do they work? These are all fair questions, and the answer we'll keep coming back to this little fact: Live transfer insurance leads are inbound calls that convert to sales 10 times more than clicks to your website. These live transfers are far more valuable than a traditional insurance lead too, for a variety of reasons. We'll explain the process of how live transfer calls work, and you'll see for yourself why these kinds of leads are superior and costly.

How Do Live Transfers Work?

It's very simple, actually. SmartFinancial effectively generates interest in their websites with organic marketing strategies and paid ads that point back to a form that prospects are invited to fill out.

The content a lead vendor markets must be relevant to the marketing plan you envision for your business. It must also be of superior quality. The content a lead generation company creates is important because it can effectively bait customers or attract a target audience that is an ideal one for the type of insurance you are trying to sell.

Insurance agents need to have a robust internet presence or else buying leads is a necessity. Unless you're willing to spend hours a day on social media, buy live transfers.

How Do the Transfers Come to Me?

Once the prospect makes it to SmartFinancial's web pages, they enter their zip code and then come upon the form, which has dozens of questions that are helpful in generating insurance quotes that should be relatively accurate, as long as the prospect answered the questions honestly and accurately.

What happens next is that a representative from SmartFinancial calls to speak with the prospect, after the lead has read over the privacy policy and given detailed information. If the person on the phone seems to be genuinely interested in getting a more accurate quote (and possibly buying insurance), the SmartFinancial call center representative puts the caller on a brief hold and contacts the insurance agent that has signed on to receive live transfer insurance leads during those hours.

If the agent is readily available, the call center representative transfers the call to the insurance agent to close the sale. Having a high contact rate with customers means higher closing ratios.

What's the Main Difference Between Transfers and Internet Leads?

Most insurance agents know that whether it is live transfer life insurance leads, health insurance live transfers or auto insurance live transfer leads, the likelihood of prospects actually buying insurance is high because they've already invested both time and energy in seeking out a new insurance carrier. Contact rate is high if you don't fumble the first few seconds. If the leads stay on the line to get a quote right after they filled out the form with their contact information, the chances of closing that sale are higher than waiting to contact a data lead. Call centers are required for live transfers. This type of insurance sales process therefore costs more.

Live auto insurance leads, for example, are superior to regular insurance leads because SmartFinancial's agents have done most of the work for you by the time you speak with the prospect. Across the board in the insurance industry, transfer leads are more expensive because they have a high contact rate and can help a struggling sales team boost their sales.

Unlike some of their competitors, SmartFinancial only hands off insurance leads that are at the last stages of the purchase. We could say that these live transfers are warm, if not hot, insurance leads. These callers are beyond the point of interest. They are actively looking to pay for the right insurance products. You're left to focus on doing what you do best -- sell insurance, not scour the market for leads.

Which Insurance Agent Should Get Data Leads?

Data leads are sent to the business owner or administrator via email. The agent taking these leads must make first contact with consumers. Several touches are recommended to reach the prospect. A call is a touch and so are emails and texts. Often, an agency owner will buy live transfers for top producers and buy data leads for the remaining sales staff.

Why Are Live Transfer Leads More Effective Than Internet Leads?

The biggest mistake insurance agents make is sitting on insurance leads after they receive them. Or, they buy in bulk and do not contact each one right away. Insurance is a numbers game and most of the insurance leads will probably not pan out. Often, if you're not the first agent to call a prospect, you won't close the sale. Therefore, it makes sense that a lead that sat in your inbox for a week is a wasted lead. With live transfer leads you are not only making contact with the leads right away, they are only being transferred to you when the leads are close to getting quotes directly from an insurance agent. In marketing and sales lingo, these leads are far along in the sales funnel.

Mistakes Insurance Agents Make During Transfers

Answering the calls wrong. The transition between the call with SmartFinancial's call center to the call being transferred to the insurance agent can be tricky, if not downright awkward if treated poorly.

The insurance agent (let's call him Bob) gets a call from the SmartFinancial call center rep first before being connected with the prospect. Too often, Bob drops the ball with a confusing greeting. For instance, "This is Bob speaking. How can I help you?" is the greeting. To the caller this sounds like the person on the other end is not up to speed with the fact that they are wanting a quote. Or, they think they've been transferred incorrectly because Bob doesn't seem to know why they are on the phone with the prospect who just spent a good deal of time giving personal information to the call center's rep. A better greeting would be, "Hi, this is Bob. I see that you're ready for a free quote." Or, "Hi, this is Bob speaking. I'm here to help you with a quote." That way everyone's on the same page about where they stand.

When you pick up the phone with a vague greeting, the prospect will get frustrated and may even hang up the telephone. What would you think if you just spent time filling out a form, spoke with a representative and were told you'd get a quote only to get, "Hi, this Bob. How can I help you?"

As far as the prospect is concerned, you called them, not the lead agency so they are confused that you don't know who they are. As a business owner, it's important for you to ensure that you furnish all producers and sales agents with a good script to cover the first few minutes of contact.

Another mistake agents make is not being present at their desk when the call comes in. This is why SmartFinancial's service gives you the opportunity to pick the times you want to receive live transfer insurance calls. You paid for the live transfers, so try to be at your desk for them. Rarely do leads leave messages after falling off the cliff with a transfer to voicemail. And if they do, chances are that you will no longer be the first agent contacting them. You will also no longer be their exclusive agent.

Proper Pre-planning for Live Transfers

  • The beauty of SmartFinancial's system is you can turn the system on and off based on your schedule. Don't have it turned on if you're not prepared to take calls or if there's a conflict with your schedule.

  • Be prepared for inbound live transfers, and don't make outbound calls during designated hours. Don't overlap with meetings. Desk work time is the best time to take live transfers.

  • Designate your best producers for live transfers, not your agents who "need help." They won't be good at closing insurance leads. Period.

  • Do you know who's taking the calls? Don't just let things take their own course. You need to designate someone as the receiver of the calls if you're not the one taking calls from the live transfer leads. Again, we always recommend using your best performers.

  • Recognize the phone number so you're prepared to give a greeting that will open a conversation, not confuse the caller. SmartFinancial uses a single caller ID so you always know it's live transfer leads when that number shows up.

  • Always have your system open so you have info on the client. One big turn-off to prospects is the sense that the agent they connect with is clueless about their profile. Get acquainted by giving the information a cursory glance while you're chatting. Otherwise, they won't understand why you don't know who they are after they spent all that time applying for a free quote. Make this seem as natural as possible

  • You need to still pursue the prospect after quoting the prospect, not say goodbye after they get their quote. This should go without saying but too many agents don't work the lead. They don't call the next day to see how their insurance shopping experience is going. They don't call to see if they are still interested. You need to follow up, several times even.

Live transfer leads connect you with an insurance customer at the height of their interest in getting insured. This is your chance to close quickly on a sale, so follow our guidelines for success.

If you're interested in learning more about SmartFinancial's live transfers, contact us at (877) 323-7750.