How to evaluate life insurance lead vendors before you sign

Five things that decide whether a vendor is worth it

Evaluate a life insurance lead vendor on source, exclusivity, consent, returns and reporting. Price and volume come after. A cheap lead from a sweepstakes page sold to five agents is expensive by the time it reaches an issued policy.

Ten questions to ask on the first call

1. Where do the leads come from: your own ads, publishers, quizzes, sweepstakes?
2. Can I see the exact page and the consent text the consumer saw?
3. Is my agency named in that consent?
4. How many buyers receive each record, and over what period?
5. Is the lead real-time, or how old is it when I receive it?
6. What questions does the consumer answer before I get the record?
7. What can I return, how, and within how many days?
8. Can you exclude states, ages or products I do not sell?
9. Can I pause or cap volume daily?
10. Will you pass a source ID so I can track each campaign to issued policies?

Answers that should end the call

• "Consent is covered, don't worry about it." Consent is your risk; see TCPA consent for life insurance leads.
• "Exclusive" with no delivery log to prove it. See exclusive vs shared IUL leads.
• No returns for disconnected numbers or duplicates.
• A long contract before any test.

Run a fixed test, then decide

Buy a fixed number of leads over 30 to 60 days, call them all the same way, and compare cost per issued policy with your other sources. Keep the vendor if it wins on that number, not on how busy the calendar felt.