P & C Prospecting/Cold-Calling List

[wins4more]

Not sure if this is the appropriate place, but the Lead forum seems to be all about life, personal, etc. - not so much about commercial account prospecting...

Anyway, I'm a Producer in the Philadelphia metro area and focus on business accounts. Cold-calling makes up the majority of my leads. Pennsylvania has a pretty good database of free info (PCRB) but doesn't provide any actual contact information so making a list is tedious. Also, I'm the newest of 4 producers and have mistakenly called a couple 'house' accounts in the past.

My question is - does anyone know of a good service for prospecting? Ideally a database like the PCRB but also including contact info (phone#, owner name) and user input (to mark businesses in the database as 'current accounts'), just some basic functionality.

I was talking to the owner about it and he said they had looked at some services in the past but were to expensive. Something like a $1 per "lead" - which wasn't even a lead, just a call sheet with contact and some WC information.

The specifics of this question might be limited to those of you in the Pennsylvania region (since we have the PCRB to get some WC account info) but I'm curious to know how those of you in other states make your prospect lists too, so please feel free to share.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could include:
1) the provider of the service (duh..)
2) what the service provides or how you utilize their service
3) how much the service costs and what the cost is based on - flat fee for 'x' number of users, a per user charge, etc.

Thanks a lot for your help!
Bob

 

[reedrhoden]

iPhone/iPad app called hoovers near here. Works great. You can filter results by industry type and geographic location. It gives you approximate gross sales, owner name, number of employees, address, phone number and sometimes email address and website. It has. Section where you can write notes and save them to each prospect. Also a function that allows you to email the contact. When I was a territory manager/marketing rep for an insurance company it was cold calling gold. It's nice to know a little about the business you're calling on before walking in and when you have a specific name sometimes it's easier to get past gatekeeping. All the info comes from Dunn and Bradstreet.

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[Josh]

If you're getting coverage specific information around $1 doesn't sound too far off. DataLister.com offers a similar service.

If you're looking for just a name of businesses with owners that's something I could help you with.

 

[EugeneM]

I have to agree with Josh on this. Data listers is the shi** they can give you WC X-dates and carrier information in certain states.

Their minimum pull is 500$ but sooo worth it. Lists without coverage specific information is like shooting in the dark.

YOUR LIST BETTER CONSIST OF UP COMING RENEWALS OR YOU ARE BURNING YOUR MONEY CALLING FOR X_DATES WHICH IS LABOR INTENSIVE AND EXPENSIVE.

sorry about caps but this is real advice...

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Out of 100 accurate X-Dates I usually can get 15 - 20 appointments over time.

Thats calling each record 4 times so 400 calls.

 

[nyc2phi]

Calling for x-dates is labor intensive and expensive ? I mean yeah it does take some time but its the cheapest way of prospecting. WC ex-dates are usually free accessible data in most states.

 

[reedrhoden]

You can get work comp ex dates for free in most if not all ex dates. If you want less competition but GL leads. Less agents will e calling on them at that time, and a ton o agent will e calling on them at comp renewal because they got the ex date for free. Buying ex dates for a line other than comp will definitely give you an edge.

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[Josh]

You can get work comp ex dates for free in most if not all ex dates. If you want less competition but GL leads. Less agents will e calling on them at that time, and a ton o agent will e calling on them at comp renewal because they got the ex date for free. Buying ex dates for a line other than comp will definitely give you an edge.

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Do you have any examples of those states or where you can get them?

 

[EugeneM]

first off x-dates from the state is crap and you can only certain industries like contractor because they have to publicly display their license and proof of insurance so chances are they have been called a million times anyway because its free.

I know exactly what you are talking about and you cannot export the list at all and it is not in CSV format. ABSOLUTELY USELESSS

Unless you want to sit and copy down the x-date information from the government website into a crm that you can manage. It is not a list and not very effective in terms of time management.

If you want something as valuable as a good list . I dont understand the problem for paying for a list its the best investment you will make in terms of marketing for yourself.

 

[Josh]

I know exactly what you are talking about and you cannot export the list at all and it is not in CSV format. ABSOLUTELY USELESSS

Where is this?
.

 

[EugeneM]

https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/InsuranceSearch/WCRequest.aspx



or home page

www2.cslb.ca.gov

go to online services then WC check

Put in any name and bam a whole slew of WC effective dates. You will see the problem of not being able to export from the website. I have exported data a million times and my head would explode before I manually transfer 5 leads into a crm.

That what you were looking for JOsh?

So what some companies do is pull info of this site and re sell it

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Calling for x-dates is labor intensive and expensive ? I mean yeah it does take some time but its the cheapest way of prospecting. WC ex-dates are usually free accessible data in most states.

If I could disagree with the cheepest way. It might be in terms of upfront capital but the time you spend calling for X-dates in the long run VS just paying a few hundred for a list is not worth it.

If you have the $ it will pay off the long run substantially. If you are short on capital then yes it would be your only choice