Spending money on leads

[DHK]

but if your $1500 budget is per month

I read it as $1,500... total. Not monthly.

Maybe I misinterpreted?

 

[Todd King]

I don't sell Med Sups, but they have tighter regulations on how you're allowed to market yourself. However, to me, both FE and Med Sups are commodities.

The ultimate way, based on what you've listed, is to invest more in sweat equity and buy some leads... or rather a list. You'll want a T-65 list. And just start calling to introduce yourself.

You can get lists from both @Josh at www.YourLeadStore.com and there's another one that I'm looking at is www.thedatacentral.com. The 2nd one (supposedly) includes email addresses.

And yes, these people WILL answer their phones. Think of all the calls we get from doctors and health insurance that aren't in your caller ID. They'll pick up.

The next question will be: what is your introduction going to be? What will you say? That skill will be important.

I've got to expound on a couple of points here.

Med Supps don't have tight regulations on marketing. It's the Medicare Advantage that has rules and restrictions.

Secondly, T-65 is one of the harder ways to market Medicare products. You have to be calling these people like 6-8 months before they turn 65. Much easier to work with the 67 and above crowd, especially for a newer agent.

Direct Mailers are probably your best bet to start out with, in order to get some momentum going. At least these people have already shown a modecum of interest. Much easier to talk with if they are already involved.

 

[bill3173]

I read it as $1,500... total. Not monthly.

Maybe I misinterpreted?

I literally meant"if", as he didn't state whether it was monthly, quarterly, annually, biannually, period certain, lifetime, etc..but he did mention radio ads and mailers. Once and done with $1500, wouldn't get you very far, and I assumed he knew that, after 10 years in biz.

 

[LostDollar]

If he is still doing it, for T-65 I think it would be worthwhile to discuss @sshafran 's T-65 mailing program with him. I don't know the costs and I don't know what the lead times are for how long money would be put into lead generation before leads started coming in to provide cost recovery. (ie I don't know the money pool required to start using the program.)

I liked the concepts when I saw some posts about it sometime back.

(Caveat, I am NOT an insurance agent.)

 

[William Clevenger]

I definitely DO NOT RECOMMEND High Quality Leads To Grow Your Business | TheDataCentral - I used them for about 2 months and had an unreasonable error rate on both email addresses and phone numbers. While I bought a lot of contact data, I have ditched it all as worthless.

 

[Travis Price]

Secondly, T-65 is one of the harder ways to market Medicare products. You have to be calling these people like 6-8 months before they turn 65. Much easier to work with the 67 and above crowd, especially for a newer agent

This is absolutely true. T65 is a long term play, but easier sale. T67 (that's on Medicare) is a harder sale, but easier to market to...

I'd also pair with someone like UHC. They offer free leads for Medicare. However, the quality of leads that you yourself don't generate are always meh.

If 1500 is your total budget, I'd get AHIP out of the way and pair with a company that does a retail program. $500, I think is the fee and some IMO return that if you're in the spot for X amount of days/time. It's also a lower pressure sales environment.

That'll get you more money to work with in January. A list or door knocking is good and cheap as well, but God cold calling sucks.

Everything works, but I'd get hyper focused on one marketing method until you start getting money rolling in. 1500$ is not enough, imo, to have mailers work with recent return rates.

 

[Travis Price]

If he is still doing it, for T-65 I think it would be worthwhile to discuss @sshafran 's T-65 mailing program with him. I don't know the costs and I don't know what the lead times are for how long money would be put into lead generation before leads started coming in to provide cost recovery. (ie I don't know the money pool required to start using the program.)

I liked the concepts when I saw some posts about it sometime back.

(Caveat, I am NOT an insurance agent.)

No offense to Scott's deal, because I've used it myself and love the concept, using a variation myself.

1500$ is not enough. You're doing multiple mailings over an 8 month period. So you're going to do 150x5x.80 in each is. That's going to give you a grand total if about 1500 letters with a response rate between .5 and 1%. 7-15 calls for someone new is a pretty slim margin or error, imo for 1200$.

If you have 1500$ a month, that's a different story. Total 1500$, you're in trouble.

 

[DHK]

I definitely DO NOT RECOMMEND High Quality Leads To Grow Your Business | TheDataCentral - I used them for about 2 months and had an unreasonable error rate on both email addresses and phone numbers. While I bought a lot of contact data, I have ditched it all as worthless.

I appreciate the heads up.

 

[sshafran]

No offense to Scott's deal, because I've used it myself and love the concept, using a variation myself.

1500$ is not enough. You're doing multiple mailings over an 8 month period. So you're going to do 150x5x.80 in each is. That's going to give you a grand total if about 1500 letters with a response rate between .5 and 1%. 7-15 calls for someone new is a pretty slim margin or error, imo for 1200$.

If you have 1500$ a month, that's a different story. Total 1500$, you're in trouble.

Exactly. My way of marketing is "higher cost - better intent" and works well for when someone doesn't want to spend a lot of time chasing (lower intent, lower cost) leads or self-generating leads via seo, YT, etc... and it is a long-term play.

I remember when I had a book of business of 5 and I sat (literally) in my walk in closet in a small apartment on a laptop cold calling for hours. The leads were "free" but there was a lot of labor.

 

[theinsuranceman]

I don't sell Med Sups, but they have tighter regulations on how you're allowed to market yourself. However, to me, both FE and Med Sups are commodities.

The ultimate way, based on what you've listed, is to invest more in sweat equity and buy some leads... or rather a list. You'll want a T-65 list. And just start calling to introduce yourself.

You can get lists from both @Josh at www.YourLeadStore.com and there's another one that I'm looking at is www.thedatacentral.com. The 2nd one (supposedly) includes email addresses.

And yes, these people WILL answer their phones. Think of all the calls we get from doctors and health insurance that aren't in your caller ID. They'll pick up.

The next question will be: what is your introduction going to be? What will you say? That skill will be important.

So why are these people more likely to pick up their phone than the general population on average? And I believe you say you've tried the 1st source but not the 2nd one? How can you endorse this 2nd source when you've only looked at them?