The 5 Step Guide to Nurturing Leads - Introductory Course

WELCOME TO HOMETOWN QUOTES

Brought to you by Paula Gregory, Director of Customer Success at Hometown Quotes.

INTRODUCTION

Final thoughts

Class 3

First, I’d like to personally welcome you on behalf of the entire Hometown Quotes team to the family! We're excited to work with you and to help you grow your business in any way we can. If you'd like to get to know the team, you may do so by clicking here.

We’re only getting started on our journey together! Welcome to the first of 5 classes in this introductory series to help get you up and running, inspire, motivate and most importantly provide you with insights to help you succeed with us and reach your goals.

In this first class we’re going to look at the basics of the Hometown Quotes, now your, dashboard. This is where you will be spending most of your time managing your account and leads. 

So let’s get to it!

       What is Whitelisting?

A whitelist is a list of email addresses or domain names from which an email blocking program will allow messages to be received. Many email applications will mark unknown emails, essentially email addresses it does not recognize, as spam. We don’t want that to happen to the emails we send you, we want to ensure proper delivery of emails to your inbox. 

Every email platform; Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc., will let you add senders of legitimate emails to your Whitelist, also called the Approved or Safe Sender list.

Not all email programs are created equally. That being said we have provided a few examples below of how to add our email to your whitelist. If your email program is not mentioned below please feel free to reach out to customer service and they will walk you through it.

The email addresses you will want to whitelist are “leads@hometownquotes.com” and “myfriends@hometownquotes.com”.

Whitelisting our emails
How to login 
Where to find everything
What you have control over

In this section we are going to take a look at the following:

Gmail

1. In Gmail, navigate to the spam folder.

2. Search for emails containing the domain you wish to whitelist (eg hometownquotes.com).

3. Select all the emails shown.

4. Click More and then Not spam.

Gmail Tabs

1. If you are using Gmail Tabs such as ‘Promotions’ please open your Promotions tab in Gmail.

2. Look for an email from Hometown Quotes in your Gmail Promotions tab

3. Once you locate the email, hover over the sender's name and click “Add to Contacts”.  This adds it as a trusted contact and it will not route to spam in the future.  You can do this either from within the email, or from the folder view.

4. Now, drag-and-drop the Email to the Primary tab.

5. Select “Yes” when it asks if you want to do that for all your messages.

AOL Webmail

1. Open the email from Hometown Quotes

2. Click the “show details” link next to Hometown Quotes in the From field.

3. Move your mouse over or tap leads@hometownquotes.com to show the menu.

4. Click or tap “Add contact” in the menu displayed.

5. Add Hometown Quotes to the name fields

6. Click “Add contact”

Yahoo! Mail

1. Check your Yahoo! Bulk folder

2. If you see the email from Hometown Quotes, open our email and click or tap the “Not Spam” button on the toolbar.

3. This does not guarantee that your mail will be delivered in the future, but it does help.

Or,

Create a Filter To Ensure Delivery

1. Move your mouse over or tap the “Gear” icon in the top right navigation bar.

2. Select “Settings” from the list that drops down.

3. Choose “Filters” located on the left side of the page.

4. Click the “Add” button on the Filters page.

5. Create a name such as “Whitelist” in the “Filter name” field.

6. In the “From” field leave the default “contains” selected.

7. Enter our email address leads@hometownquotes.com in the text box next to “Contains…”

8. Choose the destination folder to which you would like the message delivered. For example Inbox.

9. Click or tap “Save…”

10. You will see in the next screen -Deliver to “Inbox” if from contains “Hometown Quotes“-

11. Click or tap “Save” on this screen.

12. You will be returned to your Yahoo! Inbox

Outlook.com

1. Check the “Junk” folder if you do not see the Hometown Quotes email in your Inbox:

2. Open the email from Hometown Quotes…

3. Click the “Wait it’s safe” link
   
   

Outlook 2003 (or higher)

1. To add Hometown Quotes to your list of “Safe senders” on Outlook:

2. Right click our email in your Inbox email list pane.

3. On the menu displayed move your mouse over or tap “Junk”

4. Click or tap on “Never block sender” in the menu that rolls out.

5. The resulting popup will say:

6. The sender of the selected message has been added to your Safe Senders List.”

7. Click or tap “OK”

To add the sender to address book:

1. Open the email

2. Right click on the from address

3. Choose “Add to contacts” option
   

iCloud

iCloud automatically identifies most junk mail (spam) sent to your @icloud.com address or its aliases and moves the junk mail to your Junk mail folder. If you receive unwanted mail, you can mark it as junk. Messages marked as junk are displayed with a junk mail icon.

Because email messages in the Junk folder are automatically deleted after 30 days, periodically check the Junk folder for email messages that were marked as junk mistakenly.

To indicate that an email message from Hometown Quotes isn’t junk:

1. Click the Junk folder in the sidebar.

2. Select my email message, then click the “Not Junk” button in the top right of the message window.

The message is moved to your Inbox. Subsequent email messages from Hometown Quotes will no longer be automatically marked as junk.

That’s it! 

       How do I login to my account?

To login into your dashboard use this link https://quoteengine.com/ and enter the login credentials that were sent to you in our welcome email entitled “Welcome to Hometown Quotes”. If you cannot remember this information or find this email please reach out to agent services, or you can retrieve username and password from the login page.

       Where to find everything?

In this section we will cover the following dashboard screens:

• Billing information/activity

• Viewing leads

• Territory selection

• Filter selection

• Lead delivery

Billing information/activity

To access your billing information login to your Hometown Quotes account. It will bring up your homepage automatically. Once on this screen click the “Billing” tab next to the “Accounts” tab. Inside Billing click on “view” underneath the Accounts section on the far right center of the page. 

From the Billing Activity page you can:

• view leads received

• leads accepted for return by date

• print invoice(s)
  
  

Viewing leads

To view your leads login to your Hometown Quotes account. It will bring up your homepage automatically. Once on this screen click “View” next to the account, the lead came from (by product). This will take you to the leads tab. Make sure the date range is correct for the timeframe you want to view leads from.

Territory selection

There are two ways to view your territory selection. 

Option 1: Click on the “Territory” tab on the overview page. This will be next to the “Billing” tab when you login. The territory selected will be applied to ALL product type accounts (buyer accounts) listed on the overview page/Accounts tab. 

Option 2: Login to your Hometown Quotes account. It will bring up your homepage automatically. Once on this screen click "View" next to the account, the lead came from (by product). Then click on the “Territory” tab to view the territory associated with your account. This territory applies to the buyer account/product type directly.

Filter Selection

To access filter selection login into to your Hometown Quotes account. It will bring up your homepage automatically. Once on this screen click "View" next to the account, the lead came from (by product). Then click on the “Filters” tab to view the filters selected on your account.

Lead delivery

To view your delivery methods login into your Hometown Quotes account. It will bring up your homepage automatically. Once on this screen click "View" next to the account the lead came from (by product). Then click on the “Delivery” tab to view the delivery methods that have been requested.

       What you have control over

In this section we will cover the dashboard options you fully control:

• Pause/unpause - See the FAQ for information on this topic.

• Returning invalid leads - See the FAQ for information on this topic.

• Adding/updating credit cards - See the FAQ for information on this topic.

At Hometown Quotes, understand you, because we are a team of agents just like you! We've helped thousands of agents over the years reap real benefits from our tested method and quality lead generation program. Our team of experts is always around to help you with anything you need, or just for friendly conversation 

We have a few mechanisms we have put in place to help support you beyond just a phone call:

• Hometown University - this is our coaching site loaded with tips, resources, tools, and more.

• Zendesk -  here you will find FAQs, be able to submit support requests, troubleshooting tips and find contact information.

Our goal - It is our intent to use all this information to provide a better experience for you and new agents that enroll. We actively use feedback to constantly improve our delivery and provide you with the best possible service. That being said, we are always looking to improve the content on these platforms and any suggestions or feedback you have we would greatly appreciate. Please feel free to drop us a line at  feedback@hometownquotes.com with your suggestions and ideas for ways in which we can better serve you.  

That’s where ‘Real-Time Delivery’ comes in. 

We all know this struggle way too well. Real-time in many cases can take up to 24hrs before you are even sent a lead!  What’s real-time about that?

Industry research shows that speed to contact is crucial to successfully work internet leads. The majority of successful agents have developed workflows and processes focused on contacting a prospect within minutes of receiving the lead. If your lead provider is waiting for hours to send you leads, your results will suffer greatly. That is why at Hometown Quotes real-time leads means real-time and will always mean real-time. 

Our prospects take an average of two and a half minutes to fill out our insurance quote request forms. We then validate the prospect’s information, looking at things like email address, phone number, and physical address to eliminate as many bad leads as possible. After checking your custom filters, and making sure the prospect is NOT currently insured with your company, we deliver the lead to you in 2 minutes or less - giving you the best opportunity to close a lead. Now that’s real-time!

Volume expectation

Buying insurance leads is an excellent way to find new customers, explore new markets, and build a book of business. Since Hometown Quotes only delivers real-time leads, the customization of your account is reliant upon the type of leads you will receive. If your volume is suffering, try expanding your territory, altering your work hours, and/or tweaking your filters.

Expanding your territory

Consumers are spending more time shopping online. As the trust in online purchasing grows, so does the number of people buying insurance from someone they will never meet in person. If you are licensed to sell in a state and the current territory selection is not producing the volume you would like, you should consider expanding your territory. You want to fish in the largest pond that you possibly can. If the event that a consumer brings up a concern where you are located, you can respond: “Your account was assigned to us because we handle the entire state of X. You’re in the right place!” Then continue the conversation.

 Altering your work hours

There is a large cohort of workers who don’t work typical hours and many people working 8-to-5 who can’t or don’t want to do personal tasks like shopping for insurance on weekdays. If they can’t reach you, you don’t have the opportunity to make the sale. So, another way to give yourself a competitive advantage is to take leads at hours when other agents are not. This means early mornings, evenings and/or weekends. 

At Hometown Quotes we often offer special pricing for leads generated during these nontraditional hours. You can find out more by calling 800-820-2981.

Tweaking your filters

While it can make sense to apply some filters on your insurance leads, it may take some adjusting to find the right ones. If you represent only one insurer and know that you won’t be able to write policies for certain consumers, filter those leads out. Again, though, using the angling analogy, the right filters attract the right fish. 

If you ratchet your filters down too tight, you’ll miss out on some good fishing holes!

ROI Expectation

Working internet leads is not something you can do for a week and expect to see a return on your investment. Working internet leads is a long-term commitment. Revenue matters and the goal is to generate revenue and to do that your process matters. Working leads is what will increase your ROI. For example, simply calling 10 leads will not be the most important task a sales team can perform. But, closing just 1 lead - that is a real ROI.

“We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and 
undervalue the things we cannot.” 

― John Hayes

Lead nurturing will take care of the “we are not ready yet” consumers. Leads come in at different stages of the buying cycle. Nurturing the leads through that cycle will get them sales-ready. Building your pipeline sets your agency up for lower volume months of lead generation and will continue to build upon your sales team process. Play the long game and your ROI will increase. Play the short game and your ROI will suffer.

We will discuss this in greater detail in class 3: “Set your office up for success with leads”.

Contacting Customers 

Now that you’re all set up in the dashboard and the leads are flowing in it’s time to start contacting customers. In class 3 you will learn more about cross selling, building a sales plan and time management. Those techniques mixed with what we’re going to discuss now will turn you into a deal closing machine!

The way consumers make purchasing decisions is constantly changing, so it's important to continually reevaluate your sales strategy. Selling any type of product or service can be a fine line to walk--you have to find that perfect balance between being persuasive but not arrogant or annoying.

This takes careful planning, but fortunately, with a solid strategy in place you can make sure you’re staying consistent and closing more deals.

When the first contact is made with your customer, it's important to take the time to understand their pain point. The key is listening, really listening to what they have to say. Unfortunately, we don’t always have that opportunity when we are working with certain types of leads. So we need to read between the lines and craft ‘first touch’ content that will trigger our prospects to open up and give us the information we need to close the deal.

This is where careful planning comes into play. With the right preparation, we can devise scripts for any occasion or type of contact: a phone call, voice message or email.

Always remember that the customer sent you the quote request. They have a need and they are reaching out to you for help!  You are simply "continuing the conversation"... 

There’s an old sales saying …  

“Every single time you pick up the phone, you’re getting closer to a yes.”

―  Anonymous 

To help make this easier we have provided a cheat sheet to help you get started writing you're own scripts - you can view it here.

Now that you have completed this class of the 5 Step Guide to Nurturing Leads you are well on your way to achieving success and real growth. We hope this class has been beneficial for you and stay tuned for next week's class where where Patrick Ruddy, CSO at Hometown Quotes, will discuss how to “Set your office up for success with leads”.

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