I know... I know... even seeing the word "leads" makes many agents shutter.  In just over 6 years of being in the industry, I have heard countless horror stories from agents on a lead program gone bad.  I've heard lead companies buying each other out and then not having enough supply to support their staff.  I've heard of auto-denying credits for bad calls.  I've even heard of stories where companies have taken their clients money and then shut their doors, never to be heard from again. 

But then on the flip side, I've seen new companies come up with technological advances that better the agents process to service their clients.  Companies that build programs specifically for their clients.  Your success as an insurance agent depends on the quality, quantity, and type of your marketing. You might be a world-class sales person on the phone and know insurance better than the average agent, but if you don’t have solid prospects to go after, your career (and your income) is stalled. An ambitious agent without a way to generate new inbound prospects are about as useful as your favorite gadget without batteries.

Choosing the type of insurance marketing you'll be most successful with and where to purchase them are two of the most important decisions you’ll make in your career. Not long ago, agents had to hustle up leads by working their network for referrals or buying shared leads from vendors looking to make a buck. But these strategies, as veteran agents know, are not only hit or miss but also create an unnecessary competition in the industry between agencies. Not only do these tactics produce an unpredictable amount of leads, the conversion rate can be dismally low.

If you’re an agent or broker who wants to expand your reach and make the most of your time, you simply need to buy leads in one form or another. The game has changed, and if you don’t keep up with new technologies out there, you’re going to get left behind.

Here are our top 5 reasons why buying an inbound call over an online lead are a must for the modern agent, and why Avenge Digital should be your resource for getting high intent, inbound calls that convert.

1) Your Source for Prospects is Important

No agent or broker wants to wake up every morning wondering if there will be leads waiting for them, slowly losing interest while they are sitting in your inbox.  The law of diminishing returns is REAL when working with an online lead. But agents who use an inbound call program like ours can rest easy knowing that when they get into the office, the prospects they are talking to will be calling the agency in real time.  

By using an online lead source, every step of the sales process is 100% on your shoulders. There’s simply no telling if your prospecting efforts will pay off.  Doing this month over month will stress you out to the max just in the hopes of having enough people to even try to convert into a new policyholder.

Buying an inbound call, however, takes the uncertainty out of your job.  Imagine knowing that every time you walk into the office in the morning you’ll be greeted by new, genuinely interested consumers calling your agency for business. Here at Avenge Digital, we work with many advertisers that do the heavy lifting for you, and we sort through all that traffic to get you the inbound calls you need to be successful and deliver them to you on a schedule of your choosing. Knowing that you have an endless supply of new consumers waiting for you to take their call removes the hassle out of your job, and lets you focus on making the conversion.  Trust me... your producers will thank you!

2) Time is Money

How do you want spend the limited hours you have in a day? Reaching out to online leads via call after call trying to connect, networking your client base relentlessly trying to find a referral, and trying to beat the quote of the agent who also got that same lead information? Or would you rather be closing sales?

Getting leads from an inbound phone call frees up your day so you can focus on what you do best: turning those prospects into sales! Devoting all your time and energy on converting your calls means that you will always be on your “A” game and see your sales numbers rise week after week.

As someone who has sat in the producers chair, I can relate with the feeling of stress adding up when you've been chasing leads for hours just to get the chance to talk to someone on the phone... and that's even before the quoting begins!  With an inbound call, you skip that whole process and get right to quoting, which brings me to our next point.

3) Take Control of Your Marketing

The hardest part of prospecting leads is qualifying them. Your leads may be in the market for a new plan, but are they really a fit for your agency?  When you use an inbound call program, like ours, you free up your office in a way that an online lead simply cannot provide.  Suddenly your follow-up process is less about connecting with the consumer, and more about engaging with the consumer.

When you use a lead generation website, you can precisely filter your leads but did you know that most online lead vendors do not qualify a lead like you would assume?  Not once in my career have I ever seen a lead company run a consumer report or driving history. 

Think about that for a second.... how many times have you chosen a highly filtered lead just to find out that the information is wrong, or the consumer lied?  You want a consumer who has excellent credit? No lead vendor can confirm that.  Over a year continuous coverage? Again, they aren't checking that for you.  Instead, when you choose a vendor, agents need to take care in finding out what exactly goes in to how calls or leads are generated and what steps a vendor will take to ensure you are only paying for qualified traffic.  At Avenge Digital, our program was built around agent success and know that while we can't verify every part of the consumer, we will work with you to ensure you are only paying for qualified calls.

As you discover what works, you can fine tune your pitch to increase your success rate over time, and reach additional consumers  you may have filtered away using a traditional online lead vendor.

4) CLOSE MORE Calls

There’s nothing more frustrating than calling lead after lead, and getting nothing for your efforts. But that’s the sad, inevitable result of using an online lead source instead of an inbound call source. When you buy calls from Avenge Digital, you can be confident that all of your calls have a genuine interest to speak with you and are initiating the conversation. We do our best to ensure that only qualified leads make it through to our customers, and in the event somehow they were routed incorrectly, we provide the longest credit window in the industry AND the most liberal return policy for bad calls.

We also provide you exclusive calls that are genuinely exclusive. Far too many agents know the experience of buying “exclusive” leads from lead gen companies, only to hear their prospects on the other end of the phone complain that they’ve already been called by a dozen agents within the last week. Selling leads to multiple agents and calling them “exclusive” is simply wrong, so we don’t do it.

When you have an exclusive inbound call connected with the consumer, that means that we sold it to you alone AND the consumer on the other end is the one that called you... not the other way around.

5) INCREASE YOUR ROI

How do you know that you’re maximizing the potential of your prospecting budget? Avenge Digital provides you with direct access at all times to your own dashboard where all your calls are stored, with the ability to track what's been quoted and closed helping you track the success of your agency.  

By following all TCPA Compliance guidelines, you can rest easy that your marketing process is not only efficient, but also "above board".  Additionally, when using a call recording for training internally, you can help develop your team to have more engaging conversations that ultimately lead to a policyholder on your books.

If you want to be a successful agent in the "Now" economy, you need to buy leads. If you want to take control over the kind of leads that you get, have the consumer call you, and get exclusive calls that are actually exclusive, then consider buying inbound calls instead of your traditional online lead. 

If you're ready to find out how to make the job of you and your producers easier, why not speak to one of our marketing experts by clicking here or calling us directly at 855-749-1267

Tell us what you think!  Are you an agent tired of chasing down leads?  Do your producers beg you to try something different?  Or are you an agent who has made the switch and seeing the benefits of inbound calls?  We want to hear from you!