Mike,

Thanks for the comment on my site. The point of its mention was that insurance leads.com turned out to be a more cost effective solution for lead generation than running my own pay-per-click campaign through Google.  Best of luck with your sales.

Pokerguy,

Thanks for the responses.  I'm going to sign up for it today so hopefully I'll have some feedback in the next few weeks as I go through the leads. 

One other thought I had though.  What do you do about if you are out of the office on a couple of appointments and won't be back for a few hours?  I work alone, no one but me to make the initial call.  Also, since it is an internet lead, do you get them and call them on Saturdays/Sundays/nights/etc?  If you would elaborate a little on this it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if you send me your name in the messages section I'll say you referred me.  I don't know if they are running a promo right now, but it's worth a shot.

Thanks,

Mike B - another Mike, go figure.

Mbonfa2,

How have the leads / program been working out for you?

Pokerguy

Well, I was going to wait until I got a little further into it to report my results but so far I have been fairly pleased.  I set my screen at first to be:  25 miles radius of zip code, under age 65, and no pre-existing.  I wanted more leads quicker so I opened it to 50 miles earlier this week.  These leads cost me $14.50 each.  It works out fine now that I have learned how to use my GA's online system to submit apps (I don't have to drive anywhere or mail anything for that matter). 

I'm going to spell out the negatives for people, but people, don't take this the wrong way.  So far, I have received 20 leads.  10 have been BS (that I can prove or don't pass the sniff test).  6 were refunded right away and 4 are pending refunds.  I expect to not even have to argue about 3 of these.  My FIRST lead was a sale of two small policies.  $850 in premium.  Assuming underwriting goes ok, I'll make $650 so the program has already paid for itself times 3.  I have another policy I feel like (80% chance) I can sell today or tomorrow if I can catch up to the lead, it should be another $550-$775 in premium with pretty much the same payout.

So summary:  20 leads, 10 BS, 1 sale, 1 probable sale, 1 potential future sale, payout if underwritten $650, probable $1100.  Not bad.

I've committed $200 and will have another 23 real leads to work before that is spent (the BS ones don't count, you get refunds).

I've added 4 people to an insurance newsletter that I will start next month when I send out my next monthly newsletter to my investment clients/prospects.

There is a small learning curve that lasted about 3 days.  Once you get your feet underneath you and figure out what you are going to say and get some approved emails going, you spend probably 10 minutes actually calling and leaving messages and another 5 minutes sending emails on each lead you can't sell to.  So $15 bucks and 15 minutes.  I call 5 times (with messages, I call more than that if I am sitting down making some calls but never more than one message a day) and follow up with 5 emails.  On the third one I start requesting that they let me know if they want me to leave them alone.  Keyword: NEXT. 

For my sale, I spent probably 30-45 talking to him and doing the app over the phone.  For the one I think I'm going to get today or tomorrow, it'll be lower than 30 minutes because I know how to use the GA's system now. 

A few other tidbits:  I don't put a minimum on my policies.  If someone requests 50k and you can't upsell, that's your own fault.  I also find that I have ZERO competition (no one else is calling my leads) when it's under 250k.  That being said, I'm finding that I am usually the first one calling my leads anyway.  You can turn on and off your leads very easily.  If you can't be first calling, turn them off.  I work from home so I leave them on over the weekend if I'm just around the house.  What else?  Oh, I may request a new rep.  Mine hasn't returned two messages I left for her yesterday.  I'll send her an email at the end of the day and if she doesn't reply within 24 hours, I'm requesting a new one. 

So....That's a ton of info, but I'm pretty happy with it.  It's pretty easy to be sitting around reading the news, drinking your coffee, working on other things and get a text messages saying Joe Blow wants 250k of 20 year term right NOW.  Half the time it's BS, but that's a damn fine percentage compared to cold calling.

Thanks for the lead PokerGuy!

This whole thread is a scizzam...IMHO.

Of all the posters combined have less than 100 total posts on RR, most of which are on this thread.

I guess this explains why none of forums regulars have posted here, they can smell a rat.

Maybe I am wrong.... but its rare.

GL selling your leads.

Quite the cynic there bud.  Just trying to share my experience with anyone who is thinking about this.  I'm staring $650 in commissions in the face...  yeah buddy!  Trying to trick you specifically...  tricking the regulars is my secondary goal.

Personally, I think it's better than cold calling and more consistent than direct mail.  It does nothing for my innvestment business though so I gotta keep those going too. 

Speaking of consistency, Pokerguy, I've only gotten 5 leads all week, two were BS and one is suspect.  Do you ever get that type of lull or might there be something wrong with my account?

[quote=mbonfa2]

Quite the cynic there bud.  Just trying to share my experience with anyone who is thinking about this.  I'm staring $650 in commissions in the face...  yeah buddy!  Trying to trick you specifically...  tricking the regulars is my secondary goal.

Personally, I think it's better than cold calling and more consistent than direct mail.  It does nothing for my innvestment business though so I gotta keep those going too. 

Speaking of consistency, Pokerguy, I've only gotten 5 leads all week, two were BS and one is suspect.  Do you ever get that type of lull or might there be something wrong with my account?

[/quote]

Some of us were born at night, but not last night. I'll agree with Jack, and my BS meter goes off the chart on this thread. My cynicism's problem typically, is that it generally isn't set to the highest sensitivity. In our area, there have been a bunch of "postcards" mailed to folks, about "you have an upcoming annuity coming out of surrender, please call...." Not exactly ethical lead generation... Then again, I kicked the "crack" of annuities long ago.     

This is a BS thread, just like all the others.  Any of the regular posters on this site can smell it a mile away....

New guy comes on the board, just HAPPENS to be using the same service as that of someone who just HAPPENED to make a post about it.  A little dialogue, the old "yeah, it sucks I only got 27 leads this week and 5 were bad, but they refunded 100% of my cost within 3-7 business days, no questions asked.  So of the other 22, I set 9 appointments and am dripping on the rest.  Should close on 4 WL policies, 3 terms, and a couple of VUL's.  I should see about 20K this month JUST from this lead program.  Bad month.  Did I mention the website?  here it is..... www.BSinsuranceleads.com"

C'mon guys. 

I find your lack of faith disturbing...  I'm not pumping a lead system here.  Nor am I saying I'm making a ton of money off of it.  Sorry to have wasted your time. 

Riiiiiiiiight.

The post sole purpose is to talk about a successful marketing solution.

Is it easy? NO- you have to work these leads

Is it free? NO- you pay

Do you get bogus leads-Yes about 1/3 are total BS

Do you get refunded? YES

Do you always get refunded? NO- A few slip through, you need to stay on top of it.

Do you make $ with this marketing- YES

Is it the only thing you should do to meet prospects? NO

Read my posts, this has and is helping me sell more life insurance contracts. If you don't want to sell life insurance then this post does not apply to you.

I have spoke with a number of people on the phone about this. I posted this because it is helping me sell more, with hopes of it helping you. If you want to talk about this send me an email with your name and number.

B24, Bigfirepower, Jackofalltrades email me or don’t, this post is legitimate. I respect your right to say this does not pass the "test". But you’re wrong.

Insuranceleads.com is still working for me. The annuity leads are not as good as the life leads, mainly just rate shoppers. I have had a few junk leads that were not refunded.

I wanted to post that I have been using http://www.spokeo.com/ for a few weeks now to get additional information on some of the leads that I don't get in touch with immediately.

Good Luck with your sales,

Alrighty, here's my update after I finally have my feet under me with this.  This will obviously be considered PUMPING MY LEAD SYSTEM but here goes nothing: 

78 Total Leads (20 were free, spent $290 so far and have $83 of credit in my account - so $207 investment)

44 Refunded (They are slow slow on refunds and will charge you even while pending but after 10 days they won't argue if they haven't been able to prove it)  THAT IS 56% BS RATE...

34 Real Leads - Sold 6 policies.  3 have backed out during underwriting.  I reduced my area so I can start meeting these people face to face as PokerGuy indicated on a call that he meets face to face with people - more commitment that way.  1 more sure looks like she is backing out on underwriting, but her husband already has done his and should be getting an offer any day.

9 Active Leads - I consider active if they haven't told me "no" or I haven't been able to talk to them within 10 touches.  Of these 9, I feel like I may be able to get 8 sales.  (As you can tell by my awesome closing rate from above this may be a little aggressive, but the only truth is optimism)

$0 in commissions so far

$881 coming from two policies that should be underwritten any day now - they are both done with the medicals.

The only change to my previous post is that I upped my minimum to $100,000.  I haven't had ANY success with people who request $50k, so I figured it was worth the extra $2 a lead to exclude them because I had gotten like 10 of them.  I now pay $16.50 per lead.

Also, another tidbit I think may be useful, I think that if you only request a couple of leads per day you get better quality.  If you say you'll take 10, they'll put up banners on every damn web page advertising $500,000 worth of term life insurance for $3 a month!  Flashing.  And offering a free camera for filling out the survey.  You'll get 5 leads in 10 minutes and those are almost always BS.  I actually had a call with a girl who was unemployed and filling out a paid survey to make money.  I had to convince her that she wasn't in the market for life insurance to get my refund. 

I am currently looking at NetQuote (my girlfriend insists that Oprah sponsors them), InsureMe.com and AllWebLeads.com to keep my leads flowing when InsuranceLeads.com is holding too much of my money in unrefunded BS leads.  That's my biggest complaint.  Not the BS Ratio; the fact they will charge me and sit on my money while I'm waiting for 10 days to pass so I can get the refund without an argument.  It's disheartening when you see you owe them $200 and the last 12 leads you have gotten were for some unemployed people filling out surveys.  I'm convinced you need to rotate between a couple, I'll update on that later if this thread continues.

It's a tough game, but I'm convinced you can make money at it without a huge time committment. 

My $0.02.

60 leads, 34 BS leads, 28 Refunded, 26 Good leads = (32 x 12)/26= $14.77 vs. $12/lead.

26 Good leads:

4-Bought from another agent

7- Following Up

14 -SOLD +5 Spouses =19 Cases @$32 = $7,300 Premium=  $3,500 Comp Coming

$408 Spent = $3,500 comp

I had my leads turned off for 2 weeks (vacation), and have reduced my target area. Still set for 3 leads/day max. Received 26 leads, 12 Junk (11 refunded). Sold 7 of the 15 leads for $3,375 comp hope to close 2 more. I did pick up a 65K investment account. Cost= 17*$24.70=$419.90.

Mbonfa2 how did the leads work out for you in Sept?

Well, in order to explain that, I need to explain the end of August.  From 8/17-8/31, I received 31 leads.  Of which 6 were real leads (not necessarily quality, but real.  some were filling out survey's, etc.).  What happened was they charged me for all 25 of those leads and then didn't refund them - until I complained.  Then they refunded them all.  So I had that credit I mentioned in my last post.  I reduced the number I was willing to take in a day (because of my theory about them sending more crap if I was willing to take it) and only took leads to go against my credit.  Once I hit my credit amount and they weren't refunding those leads I shut it off until they refunded some of them...  Well, eventually they started claiming all of the leads had been verified for quality - including the last one whom I spoke to and he told me he was looking for a vision and dental policy, not life.  They rejected that lead because it was "verified" which I knew was BS.  That was the final straw.  Long of the short, I cancelled my relationship with insuranceleads.com because quality of leads were horrible (at least for my area) and they stopped having a generous refund policy with the clearly BS leads.   

I am currently trying InsureMe.com.  They offer 10 free.  I have found those to be much higher "Yes, I requested a quote" ratio's for my area.  I have only gotten 9 so far, but I have sold two policies and have a couple people that don't seem to be avoiding my calls. 

Reading about y'alls posts, I might possibly be the worst LI agent ever, but my current numbers for IL.com (still have folks I'm talking to):

83 leads

45 BS (that were refunded) - 54% - the number is actually significantly higher, but these were refunded.

38 real leads (this number was lower, but some weren't refunded)

8 Sales - 5 of which dropped out during underwriting and decided not to finish.

3 Pending - $1993 Net Commissions if they all go through.

$290 Spent

Yeah, so I suck at this game, but I'll keep trying with all the free leads I can get from all these companies until I find a good one.  So far I am optimistic with InsureMe but if you scroll back a couple of months I was really optimistic with IL.com too, so... At least we have Les Miles...  Geaux Tigers.

How long can the same guy keep a thread going as 3-4 different people...!?!?!?

This might be common knowledge but I just found out that Netquote  & InsureMe.com are combining. I will post an update when I find out what they are doing with accounts that are common. Call your rep. This could be a good or bad.

Ps.

Thanks Jackofalltrades. I would guess that you are one of my multiple accounts.

PG,

Just talked to a rep over there and asked the question about that.  Bankrate.com bought InsureMe about a year ago and then they bought NetQuote a few months ago.  He said he doesn't know what they are planning on doing with regards to merging the two - he hadn't heard anything about it.  Seems like a good idea to combine them to minimize their expense, but then with the way they advertise, it may work for them to have the "Starbucks Effect"