Insurance Telemarketing Service
By: Mark Swanson
Insurance telemarketing has been a staple part of the telemarketing services industry for decades. However, in order to actually sell insurance over the phone telemarketing services agents need to have insurance licenses. There are essentially two different types of telemarketing agents in the insurance world a Tier 1 and a Tier 2 agent. Tier 1 is licensed and Tier 2 is unlicensed.
In the beginning many telemarketing firms would simply generate leads for insurance agents. While this is still the case, additional telemarketing services providers have taken this practice a step further by actually offering the insurance sales over the phone, eliminating the need for an agent. Telemarketing agents are actually licensed at the telemarketing service provider’s facility and trained to make the insurance sale right over the phone. Although leads can still be sent to agents, the industry has managed to move to more successful methods.
Insurance telemarketing will also work well in conjunction with Credit and debit cards. For example a person can get certain credit card and in a few weeks expect to receive a telemarketing call for a telemarketing services provider. The agent will be a Tier 2 telemarketing agent and without a license, however, they will essentially sell the insurance with their telemarketing pitch. Once the customer has agreed to parts of the insurance the telemarketing agent will then “Live Transfer” the telemarketing call to another agent in house or in another facility that is a Tier 1 or licensed telemarketing agent. The interesting thing to note here is that the Tier 2 agent was allowed to call the customer because of an existing business relationship as a result of the debit card. In addition, when the buyer agrees to looking at the information of signing to the insurance policy than that telemarketing customer can get billed on the card that the telemarketing call originated from.
Many firms that are looking to outsource their telemarketing activities will do so by having a telemarketing firm with only Tier 2 telemarketing agents do the bulk of the calling or the initial interest telemarketing until their find a customer that would like to sign up for the insurance program. Once a telemarketing agency has a successful lead they then “live transfer” that lead to a telemarketing facility or an independent agent who is licensed to close the final sales. Paying a Tier 1 telemarketing services firm can be an extremely cost effective way to ensure telemarketing success.
In the 90s telemarketing for insurance was a very popular issue. However, the Do Not Call rules have significantly affected the insurance telemarketing industry. Most of the telemarketing services for this industry was based on cold calls. However, with the rise of numbers on the Don Not Call list most of the telemarketing activities have been changed over to telemarketing services that are based on existing business relationships. This means that in order to make a telemarketing call the telemarketing services provider has to be able to prove the customer has purchased a product from the telemarketing client in the past 18 months.
Another way to avoid the problems with the Do Not Call list involve the 90 day business inquiry exemption where individuals who have requested information can be contacted 90 days after they made an inquiry. This allows for a growing number of Internet leads based telemarketing programs, or telemarketing programs where the inbound telemarketing center received a call from a customer who has not purchased a policy but they can be called back within 90 days of their call. Although the lead pool for these programs are much smaller they do yield some very profitable telemarketing results.
According to the DMA and a study published by them insurance telemarketing has reached nearly $80 billion in revenue during 2006. This ever growing revenue means that telemarketing and insurance telemarketing can be very successful tools in the direct marketing for insurance arsenal. With they damage done by the do not call list, it seemed possible that the profitability of insurance telemarketing would disappear. However, with smart marketing insurance telemarketing has become a more focused on consolidated effort resulting in still high profits and still successful telemarketing.