Who OWNS Your Leads?

[onefastpony]

I haven't read all of the posts yet but I did want to chime in. I'm the one who bought the 47 "Bonus" leads.

I do agree that if the agent has purchased the leads then they should be his/hers.

To my understanding these are leads that went to an agent and the agent is no longer with the company. EFES in turn then I guess rather obviously, resells the leads that the previous agent had worked but did not sell.

I have mixed feelings regarding this. On one hand, yes, I feel the original agent owns these leads...he paid for them. But how much were they subsidized by EFES? How well were these leads worked since that agent is no longer with the company?

On the other hand I would rather used "Bonus" leads at a discounted cost to practice my trade so as to not waste money cutting my teeth at $24 per lead.

My only thought is that when I do start the lead program, I've got no intention of going anywhere anytime soon so they will not be reselling my leads.

 

[benefits365]

A recent poster posted this: I have put the door knocking on hold since I bought some Bonus Leads from XYZ Upline (47 of them). Their Bonus leads are leads that have been sold before and are at 90-280 days old. So...there is a little bit of a challenge with them but I've sold two of the leads so far. It is great practice for me at a discount price. I'd rather get the practice for $10 a lead compared to $24. I'm not bashing the poster for buying the ages leads but should the FMO that already sold the leads once to their agent, be able with a clear conscious to sell it again to the 1st agent's new competitor. The first agent paid full price (or a discounted price with reduced commissions) for the leads. The leads should be owned only by the original agent. HE and only he should be able to sell his leads to a new agent competitor if he wants to. The upline FMO has no cost in these leads at all. If they are allowed to sell them over and over, it's a huge money-maker for them. I don't think as an FE agent that I ever want ANYONE between my leads and me. I want them direct from the lead vendor. My leads that I pay full price for are mine forever and I will work them again as aged leads. Am I wrong on this?

I agree newby.
Double dipping ain't cool.

My personal opinion has always been that leads should be a break even proposition for the upline. Making money by selling them is, I feel, something like dishonest. That's not the right term exactly, but close.

 

[Todd King]

I want to point out a few variables.
Agents don't last long, and they certainly aren't thorough to keep going back, especially after the person initially might have been not interested.
I don't think it wouldn't be as bad if they pulled out the leads that weren't sold obviously. Also, I don't know what the agencies territories look like.

But if they were doing this behind their own agents backs (the reason my father jumped the insurance ship back in the day; his agency started to do the same thing), that is misrepresentation, but they knew these were B leads right?

As an agency owner Newby, do you think it would make agents work harder knowing their leads were thrown back in the pile after 90 days?

If I'm not mistaken, neither EFES nor Securus was/is doing it behind the agent's back. I know that Securus used to let their agents know that the leads would be resold after about 40 days or something like that. I'm thinking EFES tells the agents too. Could be wrong.

JD, do they?

 

[Agentguy5]

EFES sells their BONUS/Pre-Worked leads for $3-$12 each and makes it clear to their agents that if you don't make a sale from a lead, that lead will go up for grabs on the website...after 90 days...

 

[Newby]

Here's a call out to Adam (FexQuoting), Crabcake Johnny, Josh (Affordable Lead Lists) and anyone else that has great website chops and makes money off insurance agents...

Here is your MILLION dollar opportunity:

Build a website where any FE agent can easily go on and sell his 90-day old leads for $7, 6-month old leads for $3 and 12-month old leads for $2

Then you make leads available for $10, $6, and $2

Instead of these FMOs making all the resale money and dumping a 2nd agent right on top of the full paying agent, the original agent gets to choose when to resale the UNSOLD leads. HE makes some of his money back.

If the website owner sells 1,000 leads a day he's making good money. Heck the agents will buy in lots of 100 so 1,000 a day should be cake!

Come on guys...do I have to do all your thinking for you. Get er done.

 

[Rearden]

Damn that ain't a bad idea.

Got to do the deal on consignment though.

 

[rousemark]

A recent poster posted this:

I have put the door knocking on hold since I bought some Bonus Leads from XYZ Upline (47 of them). Their Bonus leads are leads that have been sold before and are at 90-280 days old. So...there is a little bit of a challenge with them but I've sold two of the leads so far. It is great practice for me at a discount price. I'd rather get the practice for $10 a lead compared to $24.

I'm not bashing the poster for buying the ages leads but should the FMO that already sold the leads once to their agent, be able with a clear conscious to sell it again to the 1st agent's new competitor. The first agent paid full price (or a discounted price with reduced commissions) for the leads. The leads should be owned only by the original agent. HE and only he should be able to sell his leads to a new agent competitor if he wants to. The upline FMO has no cost in these leads at all. If they are allowed to sell them over and over, it's a huge money-maker for them.

I don't think as an FE agent that I ever want ANYONE between my leads and me. I want them direct from the lead vendor. My leads that I pay full price for are mine forever and I will work them again as aged leads.

Am I wrong on this?

I agree with you.. If I pay $24+ for a lead, I expect to own it..If the IMO/FMO wants to resell it, then it should have to be with my permission and they should have to split the income form the resale with me. But it is not just IMO/FMOs that are reselling the leads.. I have had lead vendors that n agents deal with direct email/call me offering "aged" leads which I would bet have been sold before at full price..

 

[jdeasy]

If I'm not mistaken, neither EFES nor Securus was/is doing it behind the agent's back. I know that Securus used to let their agents know that the leads would be resold after about 40 days or something like that. I'm thinking EFES tells the agents too. Could be wrong.

JD, do they?

I'm not sure on how long EFES waits to resell leads. But there is no secret to it. All EFES leads are coded so you know you are using old leads and you also know who's leads they were.

I was with with EFES for almost 5 years. You do have a protected area so I really couldn't buy old leads because they were my leads. Another agent couldn't come into my territory and buy my old leads so it was never an issue.

Now that i am not with EFES they will have my old leads up for sale. Good luck to whoever buys them. They have decided to not fill my spot, {last I knew anyway}, so those old leads are up for grabs to anyone with EFES wanting to come work my old areas. Get you some!!

As far as who owns the leads? Good question. I suppose it's who paid for them. In my case it cost EFES about $43 to generate a lead for me. I get that figure by counting their cost to mail 1000 pieces at $300 since they own their mailhouse. They disagree with me on that and say it's more but that's what I figure. They averaged about .7% return over my 10 counties.

I paid $11 per lead. That means they paid $32 for them. Who owns the lead?

Newby's premise is great but it's just not that way in the real world. What if I just generated the leads myself? I can't do a 1000 piece mailer for $300. It would cost me $425. Those same 7 leads would then cost me almost $61 each. Yeah, I would own them but I just paid $50 more per lead for the cost of ownership.

When I was with NAA they said they "rented" the leads to agents and that's exactly how they ran the business. Of course they would sell fresh leads to multiple agents.

Plus ownership of the lead is a non issue anyway. It's not like these folks only mail back the one card. I was in a home today that had sent replies to EFES, Bankers, LH, OA and CL.So what if I owned the EFES lead? I didn't own the others.

 

[slushpuppyking]

A recent poster posted this:

I have put the door knocking on hold since I bought some Bonus Leads from XYZ Upline (47 of them). Their Bonus leads are leads that have been sold before and are at 90-280 days old. So...there is a little bit of a challenge with them but I've sold two of the leads so far. It is great practice for me at a discount price. I'd rather get the practice for $10 a lead compared to $24.

I'm not bashing the poster for buying the ages leads but should the FMO that already sold the leads once to their agent, be able with a clear conscious to sell it again to the 1st agent's new competitor. The first agent paid full price (or a discounted price with reduced commissions) for the leads. The leads should be owned only by the original agent. HE and only he should be able to sell his leads to a new agent competitor if he wants to. The upline FMO has no cost in these leads at all. If they are allowed to sell them over and over, it's a huge money-maker for them.

I don't think as an FE agent that I ever want ANYONE between my leads and me. I want them direct from the lead vendor. My leads that I pay full price for are mine forever and I will work them again as aged leads.

Am I wrong on this?

Well you aren't wrong but if this is all disclosed to an agent before he purchases leads than they aren't wrong either.

Full disclosure makes all the difference.

 

[Newby]

Well you aren't wrong but if this is all disclosed to an agent before he purchases leads than they aren't wrong either.

Full disclosure makes all the difference.

I'm not saying it's wrong if it's well disclosed. And I can see where some agents would agree to these terms if they are getting leads cheap enough and the commissions aren't cut too much.

But let's say I'm Joe Average FE agent and I sell $8,000 monthly. I have a choice of 110% commissions with the usual 10-year renewals and buy my own leads anywhere I want in any zip codes I want and any demographics I want.

Other choice is that I take 90% contracts, lower or in some cases NO renewals, limited zip codes, and the draw to all this is I get my leads for $21 monthly which is a savings of around $7 per lead on average. So I save around $140 per week but I give up around $400 per week in first year commissions. I also take lower renewals.

Now after about a year of this, I decide to go independent.

Now all those leads I bought and really paid more than full price for are used to fund my new competitor and possibly sold several times to put several competitors right back in the homes I sold and the ones still in my pipeline. My own leads are being used to take business away from me AND make a lot of free profit for the people who are doing it to me.

I'm trying to gauge how much agents even care about such things.