Expanded Weekly Sales Funnel Case Study

“This is an easy business if phones keep ringing.
  If not it's really tough!”

The following, based on discussions with perhaps a dozen Insurance Agents since mid '05, is presented in first person for simplicity:

Here is the deal:

It is all about the old sales funnel. Fill the sales funnel and everything else will fall into place. Remember that our most important job as Agents is to get the phone to ring. Agents, Trainee Agents or otherwise, often have a prospecting problem, NOT a sales problem.

Getting started:

First, figure out how many Autos or Homeowners you want to write per month. Also, consider the amount of staff available to service this new undertaking. If your current staff can handle 100 additional quotes per month, you might proceed as shown below. Or, you might start with lower numbers and get extra help as needed.

Next, back into your plan using your market data. For instance using 50 Raw New Autos as your Goal:

Steps:

1. Buy all available New Movers each week that fall within your targeted zips. My leads arrive each Tuesday, 6-12 days after the people move. Source is new telephone hook ups - from literally hundreds of phone companies. One agent that sold his home in 2005 was astounded to see the buyer's name and address appear in his new mover leads the following week.
2. Leads are sold by zip code - you can order one or as many as 20 zips, but I advise you to consider proximity to your office. If you order from areas that are 40 miles away, viable prospects may balk at driving that far to see you. On the other hand, it's probably best to over-order and cut one or two zips that turn out to be too far away.

NOTE: Premove weeklies exclude apartment complexes because 411-based leads do not contain unit or apt. #. While postal carriers try to deliver first class mail, the reality is that it takes between 3 and 6 weeks for them to get info about unit/apt #s.

3. Now, if you want a "full funnel-feed", you'll need to supplement your weekly new mover leads with saturation leads, all the single family households that have been in their homes for at least 6 months. The Premove Weekly Saturation Program will send all the viable prospects over a period of 16-17 weeks. This cycle will be repeated three times a year. For example, if your zips contain about 35,000 households, Premove will ship you approximately 2100 saturation leads a week as a "super-supplement" to your weekly new mover leads. Once the 35,000 are exhausted, 16 or 17 weeks later, the cycle will start again. Shipping the saturation leads weekly will keep prospecting efforts smooth with a constant flow of fresh leads. Click here to secure your zips for the saturation program.
4. It seems to work best for me if I mail and telemarket. I have been doing late evening telemarketing for about a year now and have found our call to quote ratio has improved significantly since we switched to Premove. We don't wait for the mail piece to hit before we call. I feel the quicker we contact them- the better. In Florida, motorists have 30 days by law to switch their license and auto insurance over. On our first night calling, we got 2 people whom were brand new to the State of Florida.
5. Don't be concerned about downloading leads to your prospect management system, mail shop, DNC provider, etc. Premove provides easy to follow instructions on how to get leads working immediately. We e-mail this information to you when you sign-up. If you have data conversion/transfer issues, e-mail us and we'll call you and get things moving.

Other points:

1. You can load up to 5,000 names at a time into most software platforms, and leads will be sent in Excel (zipped files are blocked by most firewalls). It's simple for a staff person to do this. Premove will send you detailed information upon your request.
2. I pay my Telemarketers $10.00 per hour + $1.00 per Quote. When they hit 5 Quotes in an evening they get $3.00 per quote.
3. Do not be surprised if you cannot keep up with the number of quotes. I actually had to cross-train several of my outbound telemarketers to prepare rate quotes. This is a good problem.
4. We inform our leads that we mail them a quote out within the next 24-48 hours. We prioritize them by number of autos in HH. With preference given to 3, 4 or 5 car HH's.
5. Don't be overly concerned about downloading leads to your prospect management system, mail shop, DNC provider, etc. Premove provides easy to follow instructions on how to get leads working immediately. Specific instructions are e-mailed to you when you sign-up. If you have data conversion/transfer issues, e-mail Premove and they'll resolve issues.
6. You will encounter some push back on Social Security #'s and license #'s. As long as you read the disclaimer to everyone, you needn't worry because you can still do a quote without it. In those rare cases, that the people don't agree, just send them to Mutual with all the appropriate discounts, and then do the AUI when they come in.
7. We attempt to contact each prospect 3 times by telephone before we "pend" it for the next 6 months.
8. We mail to each person a minimum of 3 times. Logically, if you hit them 6 months in a row you will get them at a renewal point. However, we do see definite response to outgoing calls after 3 months, so I cut back. Watch your market and fine-tune accordingly.
9. When someone calls up for a quote, their name and address should already be in your database. Therefore, you simply pull up the name, promote it and go from there.
10. We always ask prospects for e-mail addresses. So when you follow-up with quotes, it's quicker, easier, and cheaper.

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