April 30, 2015
Insurance carriers have traditionally encouraged insurance agents to sell within their immediate area. It was recommended to them that they only sell insurance within 10-15 miles of where their office was located. However, times have changed and this model or rule is no longer relevant to available technology, how people communicate and the way people buy insurance. To be competitive, insurance agents should get insurance leads or insurance live transfers from anywhere in their state. They should no longer be bound by out of date rules or traditions which hinder their ability to be successful.
When this geography policy was first developed, people had to pay long distance charges on calls that might only be a few miles away, cell phones didn’t exist, text messaging wasn’t invented and email was years away. People did business in person or by US mail. FedEx and UPS didn’t deliver packages overnight. Consumers used the phone book to find insurance agents and went to Sears or another retail center to buy home and auto insurance. Times have changed.
When this carrier policy was developed, large multi-carrier companies didn’t exist. You didn’t have Progressive, The General and others spending millions on TV, radio and online advertising. You didn’t have Google or people using mobile technology to search the internet for insurance while they were at work and out running errands.
Today, insurance agents need to obtain insurance leads from as large of a geographic area as possible and use every form of communication available to them. They need to take inbound calls from auto insurance leads from anywhere in the area that they are licensed to sell insurance in. Consumers no longer care about meeting with their insurance agent in person, what they care about is an agent that is responsive to their needs and uses email, text and mobile technologies. Obtaining inbound insurance calls from the entire state where an agent is licensed will enable them to more quickly grow their book of business and achieve lasting success.
April 08, 2015
The Internet has made many of the tasks of daily life that used to be relatively difficult and time-consuming much easier. When you wanted to rent a movie, you used to have to drive to the video store. Now you just click a few buttons on Amazon or iTunes and you’re watching a movie in seconds. You used to have to call your bank or your credit card company to resolve billing disputes or get help with your account. Now you can easily manage your finances online. But one industry has been stubbornly slow to enter the 21st century: lead generation. While the rest of the world has embraced convenient self-serve models, the following are still routine when it comes to buying leads online: No way to create or edit campaigns without calling customer support No way to start or stop leads (or pause indefinitely) without calling support No way to change your price (or bid) without calling support No way to easily view credit card charges or see your purchase history Contracts, up front commitments and large minimum deposits required to buy leads In addition to being inconvenient and annoying, these things have real and serious costs for your business. Has this ever happened to you? Your leads turn on in the middle of the night because your lead provider only allows you to pause for a certain number of days. Your phones go down and you need to close shop for the day, but you can’t turn off your leads because your account manager isn’t picking up the phone. You need to target some new states and remove some others, and you have to call each of your lead providers one at a time, wait on hold, then explain your changes over the phone (and hope the person on the other end understands the changes and puts them in correctly). You have way too many leads coming in and just need to pause for a while so you can work the leads you already have. If you’ve ever dealt with any of these headaches, you might want to take a look at our newest partner, NextGen Leads. NextGen Leads provides extremely high quality health insurance leads, using advanced technology to streamline the lead buying experience from end to end. NextGen Leads gives you full control over every aspect of your lead generation, allowing you to change your geographic targeting, filters, pricing and delivery schedule at any time without having to call customer support. You just log in to your account and make the changes yourself, anytime, day or night. If you need help their Sales Consultants are happy to assist you, but you also have the freedom to self-serve if you prefer. With the power to easily modify your lead generation campaigns, you can quickly react to changes in your business. Did one of your carriers just increase commission on family policies in Florida? Buy some leads there. Do you want to zero in on healthy people between the ages of 30 and 50 that live in specific counties or zip codes? Go for it. Did your phones go down? Just hit the off switch and don’t turn your leads back on until you’re ready. If renting a movie is this easy, why not buying leads? Check out this video to see how easy it is to get started with NextGen Leads:
Agent Ethan Kosmin Generated over $200,000 in premiums during first year in business thanks to Contact Concierge.
A look at some surprising facts and shocking statistics from the insurance lead industry.
