It can be! Keep reading for more details that will help you understand what you’re paying for…
When an agent buys leads, most often he or she is purchasing shared leads. This means the company selling the leads could be selling it to other agents just like yourself.
At EverQuote, we limit the competition: Our shared leads never go to more than three agents—sometimes fewer—so you won’t be competing against hundreds of other people at the same time. And at EverQuote we never will share a lead with two agents with the same carrier. Our average “share rate” typically hovers around 1.5 agents per lead.
Not all lead vendors follow that same policy.
It’s possible you could purchase leads from somewhere else that have already been sold dozens of times over or more. Unless a lead is advertised as having a limited share rate (or being exclusive), you can count on it being distributed to a number of other agents.
Leads that have a capped share rate, on the other hand, are an insurance agent’s dream. These are leads that can only be sold to two to three agents.
You can simply access your leads and reach out to an interested customer knowing you have the advantage of being one of the only agents the customer is talking to (and the only agent with your carrier). In an ideal world, this can take much of the competitive pressure off; you get to have a genuine conversation with each person and help them find the best policy for their needs without worrying what a bunch of other agents may have told them already.
You may pay a slight premium for these types of leads, but that comes with the territory no matter where you shop.
When agents feel strongly that they want to commit to buying the best life insurance leads, or high-converting live transfer life insurance leads, the price is often a secondary consideration compared to the benefits of bypassing potential competition.
If capped share life leads sound too good to be true, that’s because sometimes they are.
While some leads of this nature are what they claim to be, life insurance leads billed as “exclusive” often aren’t truly as exclusive as you might hope.
Think about it from the consumer’s perspective for a moment. What a customer wants when they sign up to receive quotes is to hear back from multiple agents with competitive responses. This allows the consumer to shop around easily and choose the best deal at their leisure.
This also means that customers frequently sign up for quotes from more than one company at a time. It isn’t unusual for a person to sit down at their computer and really dig into researching life insurance, signing up for information from any source that seems promising.
The end result is that the customer’s information might end up in the hands of numerous lead companies at once.
Each of these companies may only sell an exclusive lead once, but they have zero control over what other companies do with the same information.
So, while purchasing exclusive leads definitely lowers the competition you’ll experience, it may not eliminate your competitors entirely. For many agents, however, limited share rate leads are a more worthwhile option. This is definitely something you should keep in mind when you choose where and how you’d like to buy leads.
When you work with EverQuote, you can opt in to receive exclusive leads whenever they’re available in your area. This means you can jump on the opportunity to be the first (or only) agent responding to a customer’s query whenever possible. Or you can receive a steady stream of warm, shared leads that also limit your competition in the wider marketplace. Keep in mind that even our shared leads only land on the desks of three agents at a time.
With this combination, you’ll have minimal competition and plenty of interested customers constantly filling up your pipeline.
Contact EverQuote to start receiving warm leads right away!