Many insurance agencies have not yet formalized a master scoring system. This is a worthwhile endeavor for all agencies, and should be revisited each year, while tracking the return on investment for their marketing programs.

What is key scoring? It is a methodology used to rank prospects against a metric and then assign a value to determine the level of interest and distribution. For example, suppose a major trucking insurance appointment arrives at your agency. This potential customer is with the owner of 15 power units, they use company drivers, and they are not satisfied with their carrier. Your lead score system probably falls on a scale of 1 to 10, and that progression is an 8. What could get you a higher score? What types of leads are outside of the profile, and what grade will they have? Prospects probably need to score 8 to appear on product scorecards.

Is lead distributed to producers by region? Does the process of engaging with a lead differ by type of lead, product or lead? For example, are business leads separated from large and small businesses, by industry or product? Are benefit threads analyzed by the over-50 and under-50 groups? And does your agency have a tracking system to determine how many leads were shown to an appointment, made it through the pipeline, received quotes, and eventually converted into new business?

Salespeople, sales managers, producers, and other entrepreneurs often refer to potential customers in vague terms like: new, warm, hot, cold, weighted, qualified, etc. These terms do little to better understand the sales pipeline or convey a purchase prospect to other team members. Agencies can consider creating a simple probability scorecard to solve this problem and score the lead. Formalizing a lead score provides benefits such as:

• It helps producers to create ideal traits to shape the buyer persona
• Creates a simple digital system to leverage your buyer persona
• Assigns numeric values ​​to rank the best leads
• Creates a simple qualifier shortcut to determine the probability of closing

What should be included in a lead scorecard?

Use the prospect scorecard to define your approach to building pipelines. Some of the attributes of your ideal customer might include revenue, growth rate, customer type (business or consumer), and market niche. For example, are you targeting companies with revenues between $5 and $10 million? Are your best prospects fast-growing companies, trucking companies, manufacturers, or consumers?

If you’re selling to consumers, are they high net worth, middle income, millennials, or seniors? Do your prospects work in a specific niche market such as banking, insurance, biotech, consulting, education, etc.? Create a scorecard with your ideal attributes and a custom qualification shortcut to help you decide if you’re selling to a profile lead.

Insurance agencies and brokers looking to reach the next level with insurance marketing and lead generation, but who lack the in-house resources to achieve their marketing goals can reach out to an accomplished insurance agency marketing company.