If you clicked found this article, chances are you are a life insurance agent, or someone who has purchased life insurance leads before. When purchasing internet generated leads there is 2 types out, competitive or exclusive. Both types have benefits, but the question you should ask is, which will benefit you? Hopefully this breakdown will help you make smart decisions regarding your leads
Competitive Life Insurance Leads-
Competitive life leads are leads which are sold off to multiple agents, multiple times. If you are purchasing a competitive lead, you are getting someone’s life insurance request, that between 1 and 4 agents have also received. If the consumer checked other types of insurance, maybe even more.
The quality of competitive leads is a common reason for purchasing. Competitive lead generators are successful for a reason, agents always rave about reaching potential buyers, and the number of bogus leads is far less than exclusive. The reason for an increase in the contact ratio is a longer more strenuous process, usually more than a few pages for the consumer. The flighty lead will generally leave the site without completing the request. Agents end up receiving a lot of information on a potential life insurance customer.
The price of competitive leads is the main reason agents purchase this type of life lead. Competitive leads tend to be slightly cheaper than exclusive.
Competitive leads do not give the consumer any online rates. Agents sometimes like to be the first person to give out rates over the phone. Especially captive agents, or those contracted with only a few carriers tend to do better with this type of lead.
Exclusive Life Insurance Leads-
The main benefit of an exclusive Life Lead is that you are the only person receiving this lead. The lead, which generally contains less data than a competitive lead is sent to only one agent. This agent then has the ability to call back this lead at their leisure. You likely will not have to worry about losing your sale to the guy up the street.
The quality of exclusive life insurance leads is often suspect. However leads will contain all relevant contact information and life insurance request data like term length, amount smoker status, birthdate, height, weight, etc. Quality among lead generators vary between sites regardless of exclusivity. Mostly it depends on where a website is advertised. Look for the best quality to come off of search engines, where someone is actively looking for quotes.
Exclusive leads use a shorter form, and require less personal information. Generally speaking there is a certain number of people just looking to get quotes, using fake information. However, most exclusive lead generators will show quotes for carriers, and a potential lead will feel more comfortable submitting to a site that has something to offer, and doesn’t just sell off their data multiple times.
Most competitive sites do not say that they are selling it off many times. To a consumer getting “4 free quotes” doesn’t equate to having 4 insurance salesmen call, often thinking that one agent will call with 4 rate quotes.
So there is 2 ways to go. Purchase competitive leads, and see if you can be the first agent to call, make a solid sale and hope that the next 4 agents, can’t beat your rate. Or, call on people who may be slightly less interested, but interested nonetheless and get a few bogus leads mixed in there. From what I have heard around the industry the rule of thumb on exclusive leads is the something like 30% of the leads are just bad data, where competitive is more like 15%. Can you make up that 15% difference selling to leads that are yours alone.
Your best bet is to try some of both and see which work best for you. Cost-wise, exclusive leads probably start at around 10$, while exclusives can be more like $15. If you are a good closer, competitive might be your best bet. You get more leads for the money, regardless of how many agents are calling. If you are more of a relationship seller, you may have more luck with the exclusive leads, knowing that the contact isn’t going to be talking to a bunch of other agents right after you.
A lot of agents use both, saying that both work well for them, selling both with success. So maybe its not the lead, it’s the agent.
For more information on Life Insurance Leads visit Efinancial.net/leads, For life insurance agent services like carrier contracts, or lead sales software visit Efinancial.net.
Marty Weishaar Marketing Director Efinancial.net
Marty Weishaar