Lead generation begins at home

Martin Reynolds is director of K&R Consulting

Many column inches have been taken up with the pros and cons of lead generation companies. I am not aiming to continue this debate as individual brokers will make their own decision based on their own experiences. It works for some and good luck to you if you have found a way to make it work.

My view is all brokers who have been in business for a number of years have their own lead generation system – it’s their own database. I know I may be stating the obvious and forgive me if I am telling you how to suck eggs, however how many people can honestly say that they work their database to its full potential. Or more importantly if you have had to downsize your business during the last few years how well are you working your old advisers’ databases?

There would be a number of questions that I would ask myself to quantify this. How actively did we sell protection and GI before the dip? What are my penetration rates like for these products in my database? What other products do I now have in my kit bag that I did not have before? Surely any answer that has a penetration of less than 65% means there are plenty of leads waiting to be contacted. One broker who did not overly actively sell protection and GI until the last 12 months but has been trading for over eight years has taken on a GI specialist to work his database. His view is that “there is gold in those files” They are just waiting to be mined.

A second key element is how often have you made contact with your database over the last few years? Do you really know their current status? Statistically there will be no doubt that some of the happy couples you have seen over the last few years will have separated or divorced. Are you aware of this and have you helped both parties move on? On a happier note some may well have had children - perfect protection and estate planning leads.

I appreciate that as firms have downsized there is a time versus income calculation to be made. It is always easier to pick the low hanging fruit. There are though a number of firms that will actively help you with this. They will help you work your database. They will call your database to cleanse and update details for you and create new leads in the areas that you want at that time. They will then pass you back all the leads which means that all your time is used selling. Yes there will be a cost to this but there is also a cost to buying leads of customers you have never met before. This method can be efficient in cleansing your database, cost effective in time management but more importantly an income generator.

My simple view is an existing customer should be a happy customer and therefore a better bet as a future client.