5 Ways to Master Lead Conversion

I’ve always been a big numbers guy. I pursued a bachelor’s degree in Finance and spent my entire career in different branches of the industry. Some may call me an excel nerd because I truly enjoy spending hours on sheets that organize and optimize every part of my work.

When I first became an insurance agent I was struggling to understand how to increase my lead generation, increase appointments, and increase sales when I thought I was really putting in the work. Then I created my own activity tracker to break down to the minute what I was spending my time on, I realized exactly how much work I wasn’t doing, started doing it, and my income tripled.??

The point of the activity tracker is to distinguish revenue-generating activities and then optimize the time spent on those while limiting other secondary tasks. One of these revenue-generating activities was cold calling.?

Yes, this is the most well-known sales tactic, but it's also one of the least effective. The average success rate of a cold call is 2%, so I knew I had to figure out how to master the skill and increase my own personal success rate to achieve the ambitious sales numbers I’d set for myself.??

This is how I did just that.

1. Using a lead mix

I always get asked what my favorite type of lead is, but I never want to rely on any one type - this is how agents can get burned by limiting their target market, limiting their sales potential, and ending up facing greater competition for those sales.???

The most effective strategy I’ve found is utilizing multiple lead types - a lead mix - and multiple lead vendors for each type.?

For example, if I’m focusing on final expense leads I want to get those types of leads from multiple sources in case a few fall through, but if I also add new parent leads to my mix I have an even greater pool of sales opportunities.

Another benefit to working with a lead mix I realized later on in my career. When you have worked with multiple types of leads you’ll have more experience to teach and work with new agents as you build up an agency. This is truly essential for growth and scale.?

2. Triple Dialing

A very common cold calling strategy is to get a list of 100 leads, dial through them one by one, and that’s it. All those leads that hadn’t picked up in the last few hours may never get called again.?

What I found to be less wasteful of solid leads and return a significantly higher conversion rate was taking 100 leads, breaking them into stacks of 25, and dialing each lead three times in a row - otherwise known as triple dialing.

For any of these 25 that didn’t pick up, I start back at the beginning. So, maybe five had answered, four told me to pound dirt, and I booked one. I’ll take the remaining 20 and repeat the triple dial process, which may get me down to 15 no-answers.?

Then repeat a third time.?

There will be a handful of people that have just gotten nine calls from me in about a 90-minute window. I can guarantee you this increases your pickup rate. This allows you to get more contacts per day and the research shows that dialing the same number three times in a row increases the pick up rate by 75%.

Imagine having made about 180 calls in just two hours, converting about four of them with that 2% success rate, and you still have another 75 fresh leads to go.

Having stuck to the original blueprint of dialing all 100 once and moving on never gave me the contact rate I needed to be successful. My thought is only telemarketers call once a day and don’t leave a message, and I wanted to stand out from that crowd.

The best time to incorporate this strategy into your sales approach was yesterday, but the second best time is now.?

3. Scripts?

Using scripts for calls, of course, is nothing new or revolutionary.

What changed the game for me and over 2,000 agents I’ve mentored is mastering tonality, pace, and strategic questioning.?

In my experience, many agents read straight off of a script while on a call, but this is an almost guaranteed way to burn a lead because we can all tell when someone is simply reading something to us and there’s an immediate ‘click’ on the other end of the line.

When agents have memorized, practiced, and truly know their scripts, they have the ability to incorporate it naturally into a real conversation that keeps the lead engaged and less spooked by what they think could be just another telemarketing scam.??

Structuring a call as a conversation eliminates a significant number of objections and gains time spent on the call. For example, if I were to say, “Hi Jane, this is John, I'm calling you back about the life insurance opportunity..” to squeeze as much information as possible into the call before they hang up, it sounds like just another scam.?

Instead, if I were to say, “Hi Jane,” and pause to wait for a response, that buys more time on the call and bonus intrigue from the lead that wants to know who you are now.?

From here, I would give micro-information and then ask a question. For example, “I’m getting back to you about XYZ. Can you verify this is your address?”

There’s psychology behind this structure that says the lead is most likely going to answer the question if it's something simple, like an address or date of birth.?

Building out your scripts in this way and approaching every call like a conversation will ease any apprehension that the lead may have, pique their interest, and give you a much higher chance of converting that lead into another call or meeting and eventual sale.?

4. Tracking

Any sales rep knows that managing hundreds of leads and making sure they’re flowing through the right pipeline can get nearly impossible without a tool to help.

I don’t encourage leaning on technology as a crutch to support your business, but I am a big fan of incorporating the right kinds of technology to maximize efficiency and value.?

A lot of leads can slip through the cracks without proper tracking, which just ends up being wasted dollars. I was having this problem myself, but a lead management tool was one of the best investments I made for my business.?

Being able to have lead statuses automatically updated and then accurately follow up on 600 cold calls in the same day is a significant time saver on the admin side, which means more time can be spent perfecting your sales pitch and building client relationships.

5. Optimizing?

As hard as we try, no new process is ever perfect the first time we implement it.

These solutions for mastering cold calling will absolutely work for everyone with the right effort, but adapting them to your own personal style and current processes may need some tweaking.

Iterations of defining your lead mix, tracking and re-dialing unanswered calls, building a conversational script, and managing your lead flow will show you how to best organize your day and ultimately optimize this sales technique to take you far beyond the 2% average conversion rate.??