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Can Exclusive Leads Really Boost Your Sales?

The Pros and Cons of Exclusive Health Insurance Leads

By Rey Villar

Early last year, we received a surprise call from a health insurance agent about a test they were running on ProspectZone’s Exclusive leads.

In addition to having decades of experience in insurance sales, her company also trained agents for other companies and regularly tested and tracked their lead sources. They found that for every 10 exclusive leads they bought from ProspectZone, they closed over 30% of them.

There’s no guarantee that every agent will close 30% of their exclusive leads. However, exclusive leads are supposed to have higher close ratios and generate more sales than standard shared leads.

That’s why every agent prefers exclusive leads. But there are pros and cons to consider before you jump into exclusive leads.

The #1 Issue With Exclusive Leads

Regardless of where you buy them, exclusive leads have one big issue that makes most agents think twice: the cost.

Exclusivity always comes with a price, regardless of the product. But there are obvious reasons why exclusive leads cost more than standard shared leads. If your lead provider sells that lead as a shared lead, they can charge less but sell it more often for greater overall revenue.

With exclusive leads, your lead provider cannot sell that lead data to anyone else — so their total revenue is limited to what they charge you.

Is that higher price worth it? If exclusive leads can also increase your close ratios, the answer is yes.

The down side is that exclusive leads can sometimes come with side effects that agents and brokers still need to avoid:

• Poor sales skills
  As we discuss later, exclusive leads can get you connected to genuine prospects. But you still need to close the sale. Even if you’re new to sales, exclusive leads will help your closing ratio. But you still need to invest in learning how to sell, especially over the phone.


• Procrastination
  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can make an exclusive lead wait for you. Just because your lead provider sells the lead only to you doesn’t mean that the prospect will wait for you. There’s nothing stopping them from contacting other agents.
  

Lastly, keep in mind that “exclusive” does NOT mean “quality.”  Lead quality depends on how your lead provider generates and delivers leads.

Before you buy exclusive leads, make sure that your lead provider never incentivizes consumers to become prospects and that they deliver leads to your inbox without delay. Otherwise, you’re wasting even more of your budget on overpriced low-quality leads.

How Exclusive Leads Help Your Sales

Exclusivity is a selling strategy.

Many successful agents and producers use this strategy because it gives them real advantages that can help them triumph in a competitive marketplace:

• Less competition
  You’ll still have competition, because there’s nothing to stop prospects from shopping around. With exclusive leads, however, you won’t have to compete with dozens of agents to be the first to connect with your lead. You can also minimize the “annoyed prospect syndrome” you sometimes encounter with leads who have already heard from 20 other agents before your call.


• Higher Contact Ratios
  Did you know that leads are more likely to convert into clients if you’re the first to contact them? With less competition, exclusive leads give you much better odds of actually contacting and connecting with your prospects. Exclusive leads give a better chance of getting your foot in the door…and that is where the sale really starts.
   
• Higher Close Ratios
  It’s a numbers game. For many top producers, their close ratio is directly related to their contact ratio. The more prospects they can speak to, the more leads they’ll close.
  
  For example, if you close 20% of every prospect you actually get on the phone, and you’re able to actually contact 100 prospects a month, then you’ll submit 20 apps each month. Now what if you’re able to contact 150 prospects a month — without buying more leads? You would then be submitting 30 apps a month…a 50% increase. That’s the advantage exclusive leads offer.


• Less Wasted Time
  Your budget may be able to buy more cheap shared leads. But then you have to dive into the scrum and fight with dozens of competing agents on each of those prospects. The same budget will get you fewer exclusive leads, but you’ll be able to spend more of your time on genuine prospects. Exclusive leads will also give you more free time — that you can use to close even more sales.


• Higher ROIs
  Many agents have discovered that less wasted time and higher close ratios result in higher ROIs. You’re getting more out of every dollar you invest in your leads.

Will Exclusive Leads Work For You?

There’s no question that exclusive leads will help. When you compare exclusive leads versus shared leads of the same quality, basic statistics tell you that you will have a higher success rate with exclusive leads.

The question is whether they’ll help you enough to offset the higher cost.

That’s why you have to run some of your own tests and then measure the results. As you do, I recommend that you focus on the “Revenue per Lead” calculation.

Ask any agent who uses leads how much they pay, and most can give you their “cost per lead” (CPL) in under a second. Now ask them how much revenue each lead generates?

The revenue per lead calculation turns the CPL on its head and looks at the lead’s production — instead of price.

Although price is important, it doesn’t give the full picture of how effective your leads truly are. The revenue per lead measurement, on the other hand, focuses on results and your bottom line.

Consider the scenario below, which assumes average commissions of about $400 per submitted application.

In this scenario, you work the same number of leads for both types. But with the exclusive leads, you generate:

• More applications. With the higher close ratios, you should see a dramatic increase in applications submitted.
  
• More revenue. In this scenario, each exclusive lead generated an average of $42 per lead — that’s 3.5X more revenue than the average standard shared lead.
  
• Higher ROI. The ROI for exclusive leads is more than 1.5X greater than standard shared leads.

In the end, the issue isn’t whether exclusive leads will boost your sales. They probably will. The question is “by how much”?

The best way to answer this question is by running tests and comparing results. Split a portion of your current lead budget between exclusive and search leads. Then compare the ROIs and revenue per lead they produce.

Chances are you’ll see a clear winner — which will make it easy to make the right business decision for your future lead purchases.

Speak to a ProspectZone exclusive lead specialist today to see how big of a difference exclusive leads will make in your business! For more information about exclusive leads, call 1-877-561-9663 ext. 1; or go to the More About Exclusive Leads page.