Many insurance agencies have not yet formalized their lead scoring system. This is a worthwhile effort for all agencies and one that should be reviewed every year, while tracking the ROI 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 interest level and distribution. For example, let’s say an appointment for a trucking insurance leader comes to your agency. This potential customer is with an owner of 15 power units, they use company drivers and they are not satisfied with their operator. Maybe your lead rating system is on a scale of 1 to 10, and this lead scores an 8. What could score higher? And what types of leads are off the profile and what score would they receive? Prospects may need to score an 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 lead? For example, are commercial leads separated by large and small companies, by industry or product? Are benefit leads screened by 50+ and 50+ groups? 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 business people often refer to prospects in vague terms like: new, warm, hot, cold, likely, qualified, etc. These terms do little to better understand a sales pipeline or convey the likelihood of purchase to other team members. Agencies can 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 build a buyer persona

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

• Assign numerical values ​​to rank your top prospects

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

What should be included in a prospect dashboard?

Use a prospect scorecard to quantify your approach to project creation. Some attributes of your ideal client may include income, growth rate, type of client (business or consumer), and market niche. For example, are you targeting 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 qualifying abbreviation to help you determine if you’re selling to a profile prospect.

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