December 2004 Newsletter

Agents,

Happy Holidays from all of us at HometownQuotes.Com.  May you and your family have a wonderful season and a blessed (and profitable) New Year.  Our December 2004 newsletter is below!

Best Wishes,

HometownQuotes.Com

December's Promotion

application before the end of 2004 and automatically receive $50 in free leads!  If you refer another agent to us, and he or she signs up, you receive $50 more in free leads.  application today and become a Hometown Agent.

How to File a Claim

A client calls up his insurance agent and tells him he needs to file a claim. The agent says “Tell me what happened?” The client tells him and the agent says “I’m sorry but that’s not covered.” The client says “well, let me explain better what happened.” The agent says “I’m sorry but that’s not covered either.” The client says” I’ll tell you what, you tell me what’s covered and I’ll tell you how it happened!”

Selling Your Agency Through Internet Leads

It has often been said that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. I think this holds true with a lot of the advertising that insurance agents are doing today. Agents spend millions of dollars per year perusing the next sell but just because any agent puts his or her name out under the lights, in the phone book, in a newspaper or on the side of a park bench does not mean that their agencies will grow.

Let me introduce you to two insurance agents. Agent A has been in business for 15 years and has fairly large book of business that he has grown from the ground up. This year, for whatever reason, Agent A decides that his agency is going to become more aggressive and really go after the new business. Agent A puts up a billboard in town and spends $2,000 per month for that space. Who guarantees that the Agent will get calls, yet alone business off of that billboard? What happens if he doesn’t write anything? The billboard company is not going to refund his money and they generally will not give him any “free” time because of his loss. So what is he to do? He retreats back into his old habits and his agency does not grow. Across town Agent B, a new agent in town, spends $200 per week in Internet Leads. Agent B receives somewhere between 10-15 qualified leads per week from this marketing. Agent B is following the HometownQuotes.com selling system to increase the close ratio of these leads and in turn is making a nice profit. If Agent B ever feels like that he is getting too many leads he can slow them down and conversely if he is not busy enough he can purchase more. Agent A has no control over such factors.

There is quite a difference in Billboards and Internet Leads. The billboard bill comes once a month even if you didn’t receive the first phone call. With Internet Leads the agent is in 100% control of his or her monthly bill. Speed them up or slow them down as your budget increases or decreases. If you are advertising with multiple mediums tracking which source is generating the calls is an additional expense. Tracking where the leads are coming from is very simple. It will say right on the lead which company sent you the lead. The billboard is restricted to your office hours. Most agencies are not open at 8:00 pm or 7:00 am. Tracking where the leads are coming from is very simple. It will say right on the lead which company sent you the lead. There is never a closing time for the Internet. If a customer is interested in insurance at 2:00 AM they can get online and submit a request for coverage.

Most agents believe that Internet Leads are an expensive way to go. This is the furthest thing from the truth. Return on Investment (ROI) is extremely high on internet leads as compared to other advertising. Lets take a look back to our friends Agent A and Agent B.

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Followup Email of The Month

The following is a sample followup email we received from an agent that he says works very well for him.  We have changed the names to protect the innocent!