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How do you view lead follow-up: Do you see it as ripe with opportunities to improve your results? Or chock full of pitfalls that waste time, cause frustration, and yield nothing?
If you tend toward the latter—but know the former is possible—you’re in for a treat.
Bo Ward is a retired agent and current CEO at AgencyMVP, a lead management and marketing automation company that caters exclusively to insurance agents. His expertise helps agency owners and producers increase close rates by working leads more effectively. Similarly, Christian Bisese is a Century Club member who spent years practicing and honing the sales techniques that ultimately made him successful. We’re lucky to have been able to pick both their brains, and below is the combined and streamlined version of their lead follow-up processes.
Keep reading for a straightforward, no-frills action plan you can start using in your agency today.
Webinars To WatchYou can take a deep dive into the wisdom of these two experts by listening to their complete webinars here:
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6 Steps To A Successful Lead Follow-Up Process
1. Build a system you can automate.
If you don’t have a clear, repeatable system in place for following up on leads in your agency, this is a foundational problem you should fix first before working on your other techniques, according to Bo Ward. “The biggest mistake I made was not having a system in place when I started buying leads,” he says.
His ideal automatable system looks something like this:
- Integrate with EverQuote for a continuous, effortless flow of incoming leads.
- Use AgencyMVP to automatically rank leads based on priority and automate text and email outreach.
- Use a platform like EZLynx to generate comparative quotes and help consumers find the best rates.
- Automate customer data intake with a tool like Canopy Connect.
2. Make the time to reach out—and be persistent.
“You want your internet leads to work?” Christian asks. “The bottom line: You have to work them.”
He recommends following a strict 10-step outreach process for each lead. Spread these steps out to cover a roughly 90-day schedule (but use your state’s telemarketing sales laws as your ultimate guideline):
- Call the lead. If they don’t answer, leave a personal message. Additionally, send an email from your personal account, not from your automated system.
“Hi [customer], this is [your name] from [your agency]. I can get your 2020 Ford fully insured for $90 a month. Would that help you out?”
- Call again on day two or three, depending on your desired outreach cadence. Leave another voicemail.
- Call again and leave another voicemail. This time, include some type of price comparison that gets them thinking about their current policy.
“How much is Geico charging you for your car insurance?”
- Call and leave another voicemail. Just keep showing up.
- Call and leave a voicemail, and send a reminder text.
“Hey. I can still offer you $90 per month for your Ford. Does that sound good?”
- Call and leave a voicemail. Then send a self-service link through text.
“Hey [customer], if you’re still looking for a better quote but you don’t have time to talk, visit [your website link] to get a quick quote whenever it’s convenient for you.”
- Call and leave another voicemail. Some contacts need more than six touchpoints before they respond, so don’t be shy!
- Call, leave a voicemail, and repeat the quote from step 1.
- Repeat step #8.
- Repeat step #8.
That might seem like a lot, but as Christian says: “We’re going to be relentless with our follow-up.”
And yes, voicemails are non-negotiable in his opinion. “It takes less than 20 seconds. You’ve got time to scroll Facebook, so you’ve got time to leave voicemails.”
To maximize your chances of getting someone on the phone, he recommends following an A/B schedule. On day A, work new leads in the morning and do follow-up in the afternoon. On day B, do the reverse. As he says, “Stop calling Bob at 3PM every day. Change it up!”
3. Play the long game when necessary.
Some customers just won’t respond on the first try…or the second…or the tenth.
That’s why neither Christian nor Bo gives up after just ten calls or 30 days. In fact, Bo reaches out to unresponsive leads again 60 days before their next policy renewal period, and Christian has calendar tasks set to help him follow up in another 30–60 days if the first attempts are unsuccessful.
It can be tough to stay motivated to keep reaching out when you never hear back from a particular customer, but keep making it a priority. Christian says, “If you don’t block time on your calendar to follow up, you’re not giving yourself a chance.”
“Stick with it for twelve months,” Bo says. “Don’t look at ROI in the first two weeks.” Sometimes it’s the long game that wins the sales.
4. Educate your lead.
Once you make contact, it’s time to give your prospective customer an education in insurance policies. They need to know about liability gaps, premiums, and all the factors affecting their coverage.
Christian likes to use these lines to spark productive conversations about insurance:
- “Your insurance does three basic things: protect you, protect the other person, and protect your vehicle.”
- “Bob, what are you doing about life insurance?”
- “What does your mortgage protection plan look like?”
- “What if something happened and you couldn’t make your car payment?”
These points will help you explain the finer details to your customers as well uncover opportunities for cross-selling.
5. Measure your results.
Both Bo and Christian agree: You can’t scale your business up without measuring where your success comes from.
To start, you’ll want to identify which zip codes are most competitive. If you’re an independent agent, you’ll want to do the same for carriers. Where do most people want to buy insurance? Where do the major carriers want to pick up more business?
Next, adjust your lead purchasing strategies to fit your data. For instance, you can tell EverQuote to deliver you leads from within a specific set of zip codes if you notice a strong pattern of success in some places but not others.
6. Ask for reviews and referrals.
“91% of people say they’d give a referral, but only 11% of agents actually ask for one,” Christian says.
That’s why he makes a point of always asking for:
- Google reviews: “If I sent you a link, would you mind leaving a 5-star review?”
- Referrals: “Do you know anyone who I could help, too?”
He then follows up on both of these by the next business day, if not the same day.
The best follow-up process in the world won’t help you if you don’t have a full pipeline of leads to work.
That’s where EverQuote comes in.
Choose from our traditional warm internet leads, our exclusive leads program, or our consumer-initiated inbound calls (CIC) program (or some combination of all of them!) and get new, motivated leads piped right to your inbox or phone line whenever you hit a slow spot.
Contact EverQuote when you’re ready to grow your book and fatten your wallet.
