Very nice

Great past week. I have this coming from Assurant plus I wrote a GR deal for another $1,080 commission - so the week's total was $4,500.

The big change?

1) Steady flow of telemarketed leads
2) Meeting with my clients

With my per-lead cost at around $2.50 I can handle a high volume - and with a high volume I can spend time with the prospects who want my help and not waste time with the "it's a bad time, call me on Thursday" people. Since the leads are exclusive it's no big deal if I can't get to them for a day or two. And as I've discussed before, the other change was making Lisa an employee.

Networking? I've been to three chamber of commerce events and I'll continue to go. However, the deals are very sporatic and there's no possible way you could make consistent money just by networking. It's just a good supplement to a steady lead source.

More leads = less frustration

Sounds obvious, but if you're looking for make this an enjoyable career you simply need a lot of leads. How many? The better agents close around 1 out of 15 - average is around 1 out of 20.

So work it backwards - you want 3 deals a week you're looking at between 50 to 60 leads. What I see is a lot of is agents getting 20 a week and trying to milk three deals out of it. Ain't gonna happen. If I was a new agent, no renewals, no referrals yet, etc...I wouldn't get out of bed for less than 8 leads a day.

What will happen is you'll doubt your selling ability, lead source and script. You'll got into "what am I doing wrong" mode when you're not doing anything wrong.

I know I have a client when I'm on the phone and they voice a problem - it's either the premium, plan or lack of insurance. If they don't complain chances are I don't have a deal. They need to be converational and you can be Zig Ziglar and not make them be conversational if they have little to no interest.

At least 80% of your leads, regardless of the source, will not be interested enough to be converational. They'd rather roll around in broken glass than talk to you for another 10 seconds. So the key to actually enjoying this is to let those people off the hook. Stop pestering them.

Do you actually call leads back 3, 5 five times? Then you're not getting enough fresh leads. If you weren't intested in something would you want someone calling you that often. Would you do business with someone that desperate? If I saw the same caller ID on my phone 5 times in two days I'd think "what a loser."

You and I both know the prospects who as soon as they pick up the phone and realize you're an agent mentally say "SHIT!" Again - let them go. Don't watch them twist and turn while you drone on and one with stuff they don't want to hear. Use your 6th sense.

When I go through my calls each day my line is "What are you most concerned about, your rate or your plan?" The answer for most people - neither. They're happy where they are. I'm looking for the 2 or 3 out of 15 people to engage me with "it's my rate. I hate it. I was struggling at $650 but now it's $720 and I need to do something about it." That's my client and you won't find too many like that unless you have high lead volume.

I guess you can pull a "salesman" on people and really dig in but then you might as well sell timeshares and make real money.

Trial results for Gary's CRM

Lisa tried the telemarketing CRM today. To be honest, it was the worst day for her to try this out - she's right in the middle of packing to move, is a single mom with twin 1 year olds and a 4 year old.

The good news is the results were fantastic. She was only on the system for 26 minutes and got 4 leads and this was while learning the system! I'd say when the learning curve is over she'll be at 10 to 12 leads per hour.

Regarding the costs involved - this is more about RIO and marketer retention for me. Not only that, but now I get reports so I can see what's going on. Priceless. I also wanted to mention that more than one person can use this system for the same price - just not at the same time. So one marketer could work mornings, the other afternoons.

So let's try to break the math down:

4 hrs per day X $12 per hour X 5 days X 4 weeks = $960

Monthly base price = $450

Data (about 5 cents a record) - about 5,000 records or $250

Total = $1,660

10 leads per hour X 4 hr X 5 days X 4 weeks = 800 leads per month

Cost per lead = $2.06 per lead. Half that amount of leads would be $4 a lead.

So I don't see how this doesn't work. If you've shied away from hiring home-based marketers because you had no way of tracking their true work times or results, well...here ya go.

And by the way, if I get 800 leads per month and closed 1 out of 50 that's 16 deals a month - $3,500 AV per deal is $56,000 in volume. Just wanted to point out the absurd. Closing 1 out of 50 is like calling people and saying "Hey, you don't want health insurance do you?" 1 out of 50 would say "Actually, I do."

I'd hate to even think of the reality which is 1 out of 15 closed. That's $185,000 in monthly volume. Lol. Although I laugh at that there are absoutely agents writing 2 mill a year in health premiums. It's "do-able" with telemarked leads since you can get back to people when you have a chance without a pack of wolves jumping on them.

Just called the last batch

Ok, just finished calling the 8 telemarketed leads I got yesterday. Mind you I called the 17 shared leads yesterday with zero deals working. I "should" be on the phone calling them all again today, but screw that. Who wants to do that all day.

Out of the 8 telemarketed leads 6 picked up the phone. Of those 6 four were the owners. One had Tricare and was just looking for supplemental coverage. That's dead. Then I have two on Kaiser - hate the plan and another family paying over $500 for BCBS - no copays and limited drug coverage. So out of 1 round of calls I have three deals working and two leads to yet get a hold of.

All of these leads are local, exclusive and half the price of shared leads.

Go GR

11:02pm and GR finally figured out that an app completed at noon had been submitted. Alright! Now maybe we can have an underwriter take a look at this one by mid November. Yep - this is a company on the leading edge of technology.

Great day!

I ran my two appt's and got both deals. Did a GR at $360/mo and Assurant at $410. So today's total volume was $9,240. GR was a clean app - of course it's not even showing on my status report yet. Maybe that'll be approved in a week or so. Assurant's was applied for and approved today.

I got nailed with shard leads between last night and today - 17 of 'em. Of course I was busy today and started calling them around 3pm. I posted the results. After one round of calls - zero working. It's not to say there's not a deal in there somewhere, but it's like pulling teeth and they ain't biz owners.

Thankfully Lisa got me 8 more telemarketed leads today. Doesn't really matter when I call them back. They aren't going anywhere. The 2 deals I closed today were both from her leads. I can't remember when I closed my last shared lead. Oh well, the Assurant leads are free until my account runs out - then I won't renew.

So basically it was just over $2,300 for me today by just getting telemarketed leads and sitting down with my clients. Amazing that with all this new technology what works the best is the old school method. It's not rocket science.

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Slammed

Yes, I'm officially slammed. I ran an app't yesterday, got the deal then got home and made my app't setting calls. I have two appt's today - yanking a husband/wife off Right Start and writing an Assurant HSA. Both of them are off Lisa's telemarketed leads.

I'm also very anxious to get this new telemarketing software/CRM installed. I'm waiting on Lisa - she's busy packing to move this week and we should be up and running by mid next week. I think this is going to change a lot - just being able to run detailed reports changes a lot. As I stated below, one of the major problems when hiring home-based marketers is you never really know how many calls they make or how many hours they work. This obviously solves that.

It also makes a difference that I'm back to sitting with just about everyone. Yes, you can sell on the phone. I can to. But it's not a matter of which deals you close, it's a matter of which deals you don't close. The mentality seems to be "if they're not interested enough to sign up on the phone it's a deal deal or it would have lapsed." To me that's lazy agents looking for justification. That was me most of last year - call someone back who I thought was very interested, right to voice mail and I'd say "Oh, well - they weren't that interested."

It's just an extremely easy process to qualify and set the appointment. Less is more. You don't have to run around all over your state all week when 4 to 6 deals is a lot of money. Don't run 10 to close 4. Run 4 to close 4. When I'm on the phone with a lead:

1) Qualify for health - very detailed health history. I don't like surprises at the appointment.

2) Qualify for interest - Ok, I'm saving them $120 a month. Do they care? Is that enough to make them move? I ask. If not, you'll run the app't only to hear "sounds great - got a card?"

3) Qualify for time - Do they want coverage to begin within 2 weeks? Sometimes you hear "Send me what you have but I'm paid through December." Could they cancel and get a refund? Yes. Will they? Unlikely.

And finally, everyone knows I'm coming to do an app. I actually go over the application and underwriting process while I'm setting the appointment - letting them know approval times, making sure I can set an effective date to match their termination date, etc...My clients know I'm coming out so they can choose a plan.