How to buy final expense leads

What are you buying when you buy final expense leads?

Buying final expense leads means choosing one of five products, and each one puts a different job on your desk. Aged leads are records from past inquiries, sold in bulk and worked by dialing. Real-time leads are fresh form fills sent to you to call right away. Live transfers are prospects a vendor's screener reaches first and then hands to you on the phone. Inbound calls come from consumers who dialed a number in an ad, and TV calls are inbound calls from a streaming or TV ad. The first two need an outbound process: a dialer, a Do Not Call scrub and calling hours that follow federal rules. The last three need agents on the phone when the vendor is sending. Pick the product your desk can actually work, not the one with the lowest unit price, then choose vendors that sell it. The lead types guide defines each in more depth.

Step by step: how do you buy final expense leads?

1. 01Choose the productMatch it to your desk: dialers and scrub lists for records, staffed phones for calls and transfers.
2. 02List the states you can sellOnly buy leads or calls from states where you hold a license and carrier appointments. See licensing basics.
3. 03Vet two or three vendorsGet consent, billing, return and data terms in writing using the vendor vetting checklist.
4. 04Work out your break-evenDivide the unit price by the commission you keep per policy to get the close rate you need.
5. 05Size a test from the published minimumStart at the smallest order the vendor allows, and know how noisy that sample will be.
6. 06Track every unit by sourceSet up the tracking sheet before the first lead or call arrives, not after.
7. 07Decide: scale, change or stopChange one thing at a time and compare cost per sale across sources.

If you are buying calls, the first 30 days guide covers account setup and the early weeks in detail. The steps here apply to any final expense vendor.

How do you work out your break-even before you buy?

Your break-even close rate is the unit price divided by the commission you keep on an average policy. It tells you, before you spend anything, how good a source has to be.

Suppose your contract pays you $600 in first-year commission on an average policy. Use your own figure; this one is only for the arithmetic. A $55 inbound call needs a close rate of 9.2% to break even ($55 divided by $600). A $17 real-time lead needs 2.8% of leads to become sales. An aged record at $1 needs one sale per 600 records, but the agent time spent dialing them is the larger cost.

If policies can lapse and the carrier recovers advance commission, use the commission you keep after chargebacks. The cost per acquisition calculator runs this math for calls.

How big should your first test order be?

Start at the vendor's published minimum, because that is the cheapest way to learn. Here is what the minimum buys at the vendors that publish one.

Small tests are noisy. If a source truly closes 20% of calls, a 20 call test lands anywhere from 2 to 6 sales about 84% of the time. On $55 calls that is a cost per sale between $183 and $550 from the same source. At 50 calls the result falls between 6 and 14 sales about 89% of the time, still a wide range. Treat a first order as a screen for obvious problems, not a verdict.

On Callmart, a first deposit earns call credit ($50 on a first deposit of $250, $150 on a first deposit of $500, $300 on a first deposit of $1,000), which stretches a test budget. The credit has no cash value and cannot be withdrawn.

What should you track from the first lead or call?

Track every unit by source from day one, or you will not be able to tell a weak vendor from a weak week. A spreadsheet works if each row is one lead or call.

• Vendor, product and price paid.
• Date, time and the caller's state.
• Contacted or not, and for calls, connected duration.
• Outcome: no sale, quoted, sold, or follow-up booked.
• For sales: carrier, monthly premium, and whether the policy issued and stayed in force.
• Any credit or return requested, and the result.

Callmart's call history already shows each call's campaign, caller number and state, duration, charge, status and recording, with CSV export. Add your outcomes beside it and measure close rate per campaign.

What rules apply when you dial leads you bought?

Buying records to dial makes you the caller, so federal telemarketing rules apply to you. The FCC's rule at 47 CFR 64.1200 bars telephone solicitations to residential numbers before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. at the called person's location, and bars them to numbers on the national Do Not Call Registry. Its safe harbor expects a registry copy no more than 31 days old.

The same rule defines prior express written consent: a signed written agreement that clearly authorizes the seller to deliver telemarketing calls using an autodialer or a prerecorded voice to a stated number. Vendor terms often put these duties on you. Aged Lead Store's terms, for example, assign consent and DNC scrubbing to the buyer. Inbound calls start with the consumer, but your recording consent duties remain. See TCPA basics and Do Not Call basics.

What mistakes do first-time lead buyers make?

• Buying a product the desk cannot work, such as records with no dialer or calls with nobody on the phone.
• Buying leads from states where the agent is not licensed.
• Testing three vendors at once with one agent and no tracking by source.
• Judging a vendor on a sample too small to separate luck from quality.
• Paying for prepaid credits without reading the refund terms first.

Common questions