call

10 Tips on Managing Insurance Leads: Stay Organized, Save Money

author
Fran Majidi April 8, 2022
managing insurance leads

You finally decided to give buying insurance leads a chance and want to know how to keep all the information and your follow-up appointments organized. Or maybe, you’re past the testing phase with buying leads and have found a lead source that works for you. Your new problem is that buying more insurance leads you to find yourself overwhelmed and scattered. Can you do this alone?

You’re not alone. It’s easy to feel bombarded by so many email addresses and phone numbers, but the fact of the matter is that missing expensive live-transfer calls or forgetting to follow up with data leads are disastrously expensive mistakes you can’t afford to make.

You don’t want new business to get lost in this crazy shuffle. We’re here to help!

Do I Need to Hire Someone to Manage My Leads?

You may feel overworked entering all the information on new prospects into a spreadsheet, especially when you start increasing your lead flow (that’s a lot of input!). You may have thought about hiring someone, even if it’s for a few hours a day, to input all the data for you so you don’t have to work overtime and weekends.

Yes, you can manage your leads by hiring someone else to do the work for you, but the problem is that you’ll be cutting into your ROI by paying another salary. Is there another way to do this? The answer is (again) yes.

SmartFinancial not only emails data leads and sends calls through their call center. they offer a management system with which you can sort and track your leads based on their status (Have you followed up with this prospect? Have you not heard back from another prospect after emailing?). However, if you want automation of emails sent in bulk or if you need reminders on when to send follow-up emails to prospects, you’ll need to subscribe to a content management system.

Do I Really Need a Content Management System?

There’s no set number of leads that determines whether or not you need a content management system (CMS) also called CRM. Many agents already have one because it makes life so much simpler when it comes to staying on top of where they are along the sales funnel with so many different clients.

As you increase the number of leads you have to juggle SmartFinancial strongly recommends a content management system or even a web-based tool that takes leads, organizes them in a readable way and updates you when you need to call or email a prospect. And remember, you still need to follow up with customers to whom you’ve sold policies as well. The right tool will also help you automate emails for birthdays, holidays, and whatever messages you want to automate.

The best CRM's for insurance agents include Richotet, EZLynx, Ringy, Leads360 or Agency Zoom. Be sure to look deeply into your options because one type of management system will be better suited to your agency than another. No two agencies are the same.

Things to consider when choosing a system to invest in:

1. Does the system generate emails to send to potential clients?

Is this a feature you prefer over sending emails manually on, say, Constant Contact? While you may think that you’re great at following up with clients, it’s time to consider whether or not you’re doing it efficiently enough. For instance, some management systems will automatically send a thank you note as soon as you enter the lead into the system. You may or may not be doing that with every lead you create or buy, and if you don’t, you may want to seriously consider this time-saving option, which is guaranteed to boost your sales.

It’s imperative that you try to be one of the first if not the first agent to reach out to each prospect. If you don’t want to send an automated thank you message to everyone, you can customize your follow-up email per lead as they come in but if you’re buying 20 to 30 leads per day (the industry’s suggested average), it can be overwhelming to reply to each in person.

You can also automate all sorts of other emails, keeping renewals, holidays and birthdays (even anniversaries) in mind.

2. Can it Keep Up with X-Dates?

After a client buys a policy from you, you need to stay abreast of the account and contact them when it gets closer to renewal date. Ideally they will have also been hearing from you from time-to-time over the past 6 months so you’re not just hitting them up for payments.

3. What about drip marketing?

Your first email may not do much but you’ll want to stay in contact with a lead over the course of the next few weeks because they may still be interested and shopping around. You’ll want a system that sends period emails about what you and your agency can offer them. Don’t send notes haphazardly either. Each email has to have new information and aim to bring the lead closer to a sale.

4. Is the content management system’s information accessible or confusing?

Ideally, you’ll be able to learn the lay of the land by just clicking around and finding your way. The last thing you want to do is to invest in a system that doesn’t make the information you need easy to access.

5. Can you sort by information in a way that is helpful?

Can you easily call up the prospect by insurance type and according to the lead’s place in the sales process? Can you organize the information according to its sources (website, email, direct mail, referrals, etc)?

6. Does the system provide full visibility of your lead history?

Can you pick up where you left off in a matter of seconds, as opposed to spending hours backtracking? Do you have the ability to write important notes so you’re fully prepared each time you set out to make contact with a lead? Post-its just won’t keep you organized if you have many leads, let’s face it.

7. Can the system track the sources and types of leads and keep up with conversion rates for different types of leads?

Your content management system should be able to categorize what you’re getting (live transfers versus shared leads versus exclusive data leads). This sort of information will show you what you’re having the most success and you’ll be able to determine which type of lead lends you a stronger ROI.

8. Are you offering training to use system management properly? If not, is there any support provided?

Your service provider should make it easy for you to get up and running right away. If there is no training, is there access to tutorials? If so, these DIY courses should be easy enough to follow if speaking with a customer representative is discouraged.

9. Are the reports generated by the system useful to you?

If you’re getting useless reports that look impressive, you won’t benefit from them. Ask to see a sample report to see what sorts of metrics they use to track your successes and failures.

10. Does the system integrate with the information sent by lead providers?

You’ll want a CMS that integrates with lead providers like SmartFinancial, which integrates well with most CMS platforms available to insurance agents and carriers.

While having good content management will save you time and money when it comes to managing leads, you need to have the right lead source first and foremost. SmartFinancial is unsurpassed when it comes to the quality of insurance leads and the generous and very fair return policy they have in place. If you’re looking for a continuous stream of new business, give SmartFinancial a call today.