001: Jeremy Olson & Kristin Isaacson - How to Make Money Off Internet Leads

02/05/21 • 56 min

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »

On the first episode of the Insurance Agents Think Tank podcast, we’re talking to Jeremy Olson and Kristin Isaacson, who run Role Play at the Olson Agency; the first and only live sales training program for insurance agencies.

This episode is all about making money from online leads, a critical source of income for insurance agents during the pandemic, when we can’t do roadshow events or meet prospective clients in person!

In this value-packed podcast, you’ll learn:

Jeremy & Kristin’s top tips for increasing sales.
How they keep their customer retention rate over 90%.
How to make sure you’re spending your budget for online leads effectively.
And so much more!

Links & Resources

EverQuote for Agents

Jeremy Olson & Kristin Isaacson’s Links

Website: Role Play at the Olson Agency

Episode Transcript

Jeremy: [00:00:00]
On the first part of the call, we all know what’s coming. We all know people are going to say, Oh, I was just looking online. I just thought I’d get an online quote. Can’t you just tell me or send that to me in an email or I got to talk to my spouse or, Oh man. You’re the fifth agent to call me. We all know what’s coming.

It’s being the best at that and making the most of your at-bats, that’s going to really change your close rate and how many you sell from these.

Todd: [00:00:30]
Welcome everybody. I’m really happy here for a dish to kick off our episode number one for the Insurance Agents Think Tank podcast we have two amazing guests for the show today, Jeremy and Kristin, they, Jeremy is one of the largest Allstate agents in the country also has Role Play at the Olson Agency. And then of course, Kristin, who does all the work, right, the right hand, right hand for Jeremy. I’m so I’m so glad for you guys to be on episode number one. And, you know, this episode is really all about the trick to making money off of insurance leads, right? Aggregated online leads, especially with the pandemic. You know, a lot of people were relationship driven.

You should still be relationship driven. Right. but now with the pandemic, we gotta, you can’t really do road show events or, you know, there’s a lot of sources in, in person sources that got cut off. And so we have a lot of people just jumping into internet leads. And so I really wanted to create a podcast about how do you make money off of those?

Right. Cause everybody tries them out. I hear so many times that insurance leads don’t work. Right. I’m sure you guys hear that all the time, but you guys have really found a way to make that successful. And so I’d love to, I mean, Jeremy, I’d love to hear your story about how, how you came to be and how you, how you made them work.

Jeremy: [00:01:53]
Yeah, no. And, first of all, I really appreciate, and am honored to be your first guest. And I really do find it kind of ironic that the topic is internet leads because I, so I’ve been an Allstate agent. This is my 24th year now. And for my first 22 did not buy a lead. I heard all those same stories. You know, these, these types of things they don’t retain well, they just shop price.

They’re closed rates, terrible. They’re just not good. And so, ever bought leads my first 22 years. two years ago, I was given some pretty high goals by, by my company and I knew we had to change things. And so that’s when we developed this whole arm of the business. In fact, we have 11 people now on our outbound team that just work internet leads.

So we did, we went from zero leads to a significant amount of leads, and we’ve learned a lot of things along the way, things not to do things to do. And that’s what, that’s what we’ll share with you today. Perfect. Yeah.

Todd: [00:02:51]
I think, I think what people want to know most is what not to do. Right. It’s how do I, how do I save myself from making these mistakes?

I’m not paying for these mistakes. What’s the quickest way to that, you know, the, the end goal of making money off of leads. So I actually want to ask you first, you know, which, how do you know which lead provider to find, because there’s so many different lead providers, where do you even start? What would you say about that?

Jeremy: [00:03:19]
Yeah, I w I would say, first of all, that’s changing every day. and you know, that would be the first thing first tip that I would give anybody getting into the lead game. Is, you’ve gotta be consistent. This isn’t something that, you know, I hear a lot of agency owners say, O...

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »

In this value-packed podcast, you’ll learn:

Jeremy & Kristin’s top tips for increasing sales.
How they keep their customer retention rate over 90%.
How to make sure you’re spending your budget for online leads effectively.
And so much more!

Links & Resources

EverQuote for Agents

Jeremy Olson & Kristin Isaacson’s Links

Website: Role Play at the Olson Agency

Episode Transcript

It’s being the best at that and making the most of your at-bats, that’s going to really change your close rate and how many you sell from these.

Todd: [00:02:51]
I think, I think what people want to know most is what not to do. Right. It’s how do I, how do I save myself from making these mistakes?

Next Episode

002: Vlad Cherchenko - Stop Throwing Away Leads: Facebook Ads That Perform

Watch the video version of this show on YouTube »

Vlad Cherchenko consistently wrote over 150 policies a month before he started Insurance Sales Lab, an online masterclass designed to help P&C insurance agents write more Auto, Home, and Life insurance in their agency.

Today Todd talks to Vlad all about Facebook advertising, and how you can use this powerful tool to generate leads! With billions of people using it every day, Facebook represents enormous potential for your agency. Tune in, and Vlad will take you through it step by step.

You’ll learn:

How to tell if your ad performance is reliable, or just a fluke.
The right way to spend your Facebook ad budget.
The anatomy of a high-performing Facebook ad.
Getting leads without competing against billion-dollar budgets!

Vlad Cherchenko’s Links

Free training: Insurance Training Webinar
Personal site: Insurance Sales Lab

Episode Transcript

Vlad: [00:00:00]
People who are not rolling with the punches and learning how to adapt, just won’t have a successful campaign longterm. And if you’re going to do any marketing, if you’re going to spend any more money in marketing, don’t just dabble in it for a few months, do it for an extended period of time.

Todd: [00:00:22]
Welcome to the Insurance Agents Think Tank show! I’m your host, Todd McLain. And this is a podcast all about how to build and scale your agency. Today’s topic is Facebook advertising. So why the topics really hot right now? And it’s been hot for quite a while, as you’ve been, I’m sure most of you, people who are following the Insurance Agents Think Tank on Facebook, our group, by the way, if you’re not a part of the group, make sure you join the group.

It’s I mean, we’re on Facebook, right? So the way constantly, always thinking about, well, I’m on this, social media network. How do I generate leads? You know, if I’m, if I’m browsing social media, how do I generate leads from the billions of people that are browsing every single day? So with that being said, my guest today is Vlad Cherchenko hopefully I didn’t hurt that.

Vlad: [00:01:15]
That’s exactly right. Vlad Cherchenko.

Todd: [00:01:17]
Cool. So remember to tune into the show on YouTube so you can see screens that we’re going to share today on the show, or go to www.AgentsThinkTank.com to see all the episodes. But again, thank you for being on the show, Vlad. Can you tell the audience about yourself?

Vlad: [00:01:34]
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on this podcast, Todd, my quick background: a little over six years ago, I was recruited to be a State Farm agent, and I was close to signing the contract and opening up my insurance agency. And I was coming from a completely different industry. And I didn’t know anything about insurance, but one of the things that I’m really glad looking back that I did was I talked to a lot of newer agents.

So get a perspective on what the first few years look like for them. And the same thing was said over and over again, where the first year they lost a lot of money. They went to major debt. Second year, they broke even third year, they started making some money. And then…

Todd: [00:02:15]
It’s not easy!

Vlad: [00:02:16]
Yeah, not easy. And I thought, geez, there has to be a better way.

So to a structured agency, build a sales and marketing system so that you can at least break even, or make a little bit of a profit in your first year. So I thought the only way that I could. Run a successful agency is if I come into it with a proven sales process and a proven marketing process, neither of which I had.

And I didn’t know anybody that had those two things in place. all the agents that I talked to were just giving some pointers and ideas, but no one really, we had a, a real plan that I could just buy or pay for a sub program. Anyways. I said, look, I’m going to be a team member. I’m going to work in an agent’s office for 18 months and try to figure out a sales and marketing process so that I could personally write a hundred policies a month individually as one producer month after month after month.

So it’s not something that just happens on accident one month. And then it goes back to like 15 some policies. I wanted to stay at a hundred or more, uh, consecutively month after month.

Todd: [00:03:18]
We call that a unicorn.

Vlad: [00:03:19]
Yeah. That one month where, where you do well or someone who does

Todd: [00:03:...