Many insurance agencies have not yet formalized their lead scoring system. This is a worthwhile endeavor for all agencies and one that should be reviewed each year, as you track the return on investment of your marketing programs.

What is lead scoring? It is a methodology used to rank prospects on a scale and then assign a value to determine the level of interest and distribution. For example, let’s say a quote for a trucking insurance leader arrives at your agency. This potential customer is an owner of 15 power units, they use company drivers and are not satisfied with their operator. Maybe your lead scoring system is on a scale of 1-10, and this lead is scored an 8. What could be scored higher? And what types of potential customers are outside the profile and what score would they receive? Prospects may need a score of 8 to appear on their producer scorecards.

Is lead distributed to producers by territory? Does your lead management process vary based on the type of lead, product or prospect? For example, are business leads separated by large and small companies, by industry or product? Are potential benefit clients analyzed by groups over and under 50 years of age? And does your agency have a tracking system in place to determine how many leads showed up for the appointment, moved into the pipeline, received quotes, and ultimately converted to new business?

Salespeople, sales managers, producers, and other businesspeople often refer to prospects in vague terms like: new, lukewarm, hot, cold, likely, qualified, etc. These terms do little to better understand a sales channel or convey the likelihood of purchase to other team members. Agencies may consider creating a simple lead scorecard to solve this problem and quantify their lead score. The formalization of the qualification of potential clients offers benefits such as:

  • Helps growers create ideal attributes to form a buyer persona

  • Create a simple number system to tap into your buyer persona

  • Assign numerical values ​​to rank your best prospects

  • Create a simple qualifying acronym to determine the probability of closing

What should be included in a prospect dashboard?

Use a prospect dashboard to quantify your approach to building projects. Some attributes of your ideal customer may include income, growth rate, type of customer (business or consumer), and market niche. For example, do you target companies with revenue between $5 million and $10 million? Are your best prospects fast-growing companies, trucking companies, manufacturers, or consumers?

If you are selling to consumers, are they high net worth, middle income, millennials, or seniors? Are your prospects in a specific market niche, such as banking, insurance, biotech, consulting, education, etc.? Create a scorecard with your ideal attributes and a custom qualification abbreviation to help you determine if you’re selling to a profiled prospect.

Insurance agencies and brokers looking to take their insurance marketing and lead generation to the next level, but lack the internal resources to achieve their marketing goals, can contact a competent insurance agency marketing firm.