Who is responsible to prime the pump and fill the top of the funnel? Many agencies and brokers expect their sales team to cold call, network, and send emails to build their own pipeline, and fill the top of the funnel. It reminds me of the old slogan, “Let your fingers do the walking”. The slogan referred to the Yellow Pages, the omnipresent database of the time. Regardless if it’s the Yellow Pages or Google Pages, the question still remains, who is responsible to fill the pipeline, and what’s the most likely path to success.
Today insurance lead generation encompasses many new tools to help producers prospect, including eMarketing, Social Media Marketing, Blogging and Web Seminar Marketing, in addition to traditional cold calling and networking. Many producers find this aspect of the sales process to be arduous and challenging. That’s why so many producers fail, they are not insurance lead generation machines, nor are they savvy insurance web marketers. The results are self-evident, insufficient qualified prospects at the top of the sales funnel, usually translates into inadequate results at the bottom of the funnel.
A better path to success for many agencies and brokers begins with a comprehensive and consistent insurance marketing and lead generation program, providing producers with an influx of quality prospects, so they can spend more time selling and less time prospecting.
Why don’t more agencies invest in these types of programs?
- They lack the internal resources
- They believe in doing business the old fashioned way (I built my own pipeline and you can too)
- They over invest in sales and under invest in marketing and lead generation
- They tried it once and it didn’t work
- They tried a short pilot program and didn’t see an immediate ROI
These are just a few of the reasons many agencies and brokers under invest in insurance agency marketing and lead generation. Regardless of the reasons, agency owners and executives should review current and past producer performance and determine if it’s time to upgrade their insurance marketing and lead generation programs, to improve the path to success for their producers and their agencies. Agencies, brokers and wholesalers looking for insurance marketing and lead gen assistance should call (518) 222-6392 for a complimentary review of their marketing goals.