The Lead Isn't Dead, Your Follow-Up Is: A 14-Day Sequence for Final Expense and Term Leads
Four calls, five texts, fourteen days, and a way to move a texter onto the phone. Plus how to revive every lead you called once.
"I'm getting tons of responses by text, but I can't get them to transition to a phone call." That question came from an agent working final expense leads. Another new agent called eight leads within a minute of delivery and had five no-answers, two "not interested" and one sale. Both agents were told the leads were bad. Both were probably told wrong. Two other agents supply the real diagnosis. One: before you mark a lead dead, four contacts minimum, at different times of day, with a voicemail that says who you are. Two: your CRM is full of leads you called once. This post turns those into a sequence you can run without thinking about it. Speed first, then persistence The response-time research is old and still holds. The 2007 MIT and InsideSales study of over 15,000 leads found the odds of contacting a lead fall by roughly a hundred times between a five-minute and a thirty-minute response; Harvard Business Review's 2011 audit of 2,241 U.S. companies found firms that contacted a lead within an hour were nearly seven times likelier to qualify it than those waiting a second hour, and the average response among companies that responded at all was 42 hours. A readable summary of both studies is at AInora's roundup . The agent who called within a minute did the hardest part right. What he did not have was days two through fourteen. The 14-day sequence Every step is a touch on the contact record, so the next step knows what happened. When Touch Purpose Minute 0–5 Call. No answer: voicemail with your name and what they asked for. Then a text that says the same thing and ends with a question. Be the first agent they hear from. Same day, +3 hours Second call at a different hour. Two dials back to back; several agents swear by it. Different time, different odds. Day 2, morning Text: one sentence, a specific detail from their request, one question. Get a reply. Day 2, evening Call. Evenings answer. Day 4 Text with something useful: what the coverage they asked about typically costs, in two lines. Give before you ask again. Day 6 Call. Voicemail if no answer, shorter than the first. Fourth legitimate touch. Day 9 Text: offer two specific times for a ten-minute call. Move text to voice. Day 14 Final text: "I'll leave this with you. If anything changes, this number reaches me." Move to a monthly nurture. Close the loop without burning the number. That is four calls and five texts. If a lead replies at any step, the sequence stops and a person takes over. Moving a texter to a call The agent who "can't get them to transition" is usually asking for the call the wrong way. "Can I give you a call?" invites no. Three things work better, and all of them come from agents who do it: Offer two times, not permission. "I can do 12:15 or 5:40 today. Which is easier?" Make the call about something small. "It takes about six minutes to check what you'd qualify for. When's good?" Answer one real question by text first. Someone who got a straight answer by text is far likelier to take the call for the second one. And take the old advice seriously: "Stop thinking of them as final expense leads. They are just leads. Calls work better than text, but campaign it." Consent, in one paragraph Text only people who asked you to contact them, and keep the record of that request. Honor stop replies immediately and everywhere. Do not text from a personal number you cannot audit. Automated texting to someone who did not consent is the fastest way to turn a lead problem into a legal one. Reviving the leads you already paid for The agent who called the CRM "a goldmine you don't know you're sitting on" is right. Filter for every lead with exactly one attempt and no outcome in the last ninety days. Put them into days 4, 6 and 9 of the sequence above, skipping the speed steps. You paid for them once; the second attempt costs a text. Where AgencyView fits AgencyView pops the contact on screen when a lead calls in, and calls and texts placed from the contact are logged on it automatically, so "how many touches has this lead had" is a fact, not a memory. Texts go out from the agency's own number, opt-outs are recorded and enforced across the agency, and bulk text campaigns are paced rather than blasted. The sequence above is a workflow on the CRM: lead arrives, tasks and messages fire on schedule, and a reply stops the automation and hands the conversation to a person. We covered what the report on all this should look like in the Friday lead report .
Where AgencyView fits
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