For any business, attracting a large volume of leads is top priority. However, according to Marketing Sherpa, 57% of B2B organizations have taken that priority a step further and determined that converting qualified leads into paying customers is in fact the top concern.

Does your insurance agency have a plan to convert qualified leads into paying customers?

It all starts with identifying your sales funnel. Next, you want to be sure that your agency knows the right strategies to properly attract, engage, nurture, and capture your leads. Staying top of mind is essential, and optimizing your sales process is the difference between success and failure.

Qualifying Sales Leads: Lead Scoring and Lead Grading

Think about the top of your sales funnel – you start with the entire available marketplace. Are you burning too much time focusing on the wrong leads?

• 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. One reason could be that sales prospects are not being properly qualified before they are sent to the sales team.
• 61% of leads are sent directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads are qualified.
• A 10% increase in the quality of leads translates to a 40% increase in sales productivity.

Good news: There is a way for your agency to spend your effort on the right type of lead.

Since today’s consumer is more control of the buying process than ever before, your agency needs to lay the framework for qualifying what type of customer is ideal and ready to buy – before they ever enter your sales funnel.

How? Lead scoring and lead grading. Impact your agency’s bottom line by target marketing your ideal customers and nurturing the right leads.

What Is Lead Grading?

Think of lead grading as a way to rank your prospective clients. Ask yourself: What type of client will give my agency the highest lifetime value?

• Your ideal client is somebody that your agency has the greatest potential to keep – it is completely internal and unique to your agency’s sales and marketing strategy.
• Your agency will determine who the ideal client is, and be able to assign a “grade” to all future leads based on a grading system you determine on a sliding scale.
• The system you use to grade leads will vary depending on the type of leads you are looking at – personal or commercial.

Lead grading is a great way for your agency to determine when to say “no” – if someone is not the right fit, why waste your effort?

What Is Lead Scoring?

As much as 50% of leads are not yet ready to buy. Why send a prospect to the sales team if it is not ready to buy? Lead scoring allows your agency to focus on prospects that are most warmed up for a sales opportunity by assigning a value to completion actions based on your insurance marketing efforts.

• A prospect’s lead score grows as you discover more about a lead – it will fluctuate.
• Lead score values are associated to completion actions, which are determined by your agency.
• Your agency will determine how to weigh different campaigns in terms of the value to “warming up” your lead.
• A rule of thumb: The information gets the prospect “warmed up” if it increases their knowledge about your agency, and further demonstrates why they need you, leading them to make an informed decision.

79% of marketers have not established lead scoring. If you recall the fact that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales, it is easy to connect the value of lead scoring.

Lead Scoring and Lead Grading for Insurance Marketing

As with any insurance marketing and sales strategy, your agency will have to take some time initially to get everything set up – but the value will be immense.

Does your agency want to take advantage of lead scoring and grading to better follow up on sales leads? Do you want to learn industry specific strategies to set up your own lead scoring and lead grading process? Learn how you can deliver the right message at the right time with hard data: Download our Lead Scoring and Lead Grading Strategy Guide and register for our July 23, 2014 webinar today.