5 reports every agent needs for their business

The best life insurance agencies run on data. By crunching the numbers on your sales pipeline, you can understand your customers better and uncover new ways to improve your processes.

Some of the most important lessons your data can teach you include:

Which types of leads work best for your business
What’s working and what’s not on your sales calls
The performance of your underwriting team after customers apply for a policy

Ideally, a good life insurance agent will track every part of their sales and marketing process, but reporting can be a struggle for many reasons. A lot of agents just don’t have the time or the tools to gather results and compare them with relevant benchmarks. Even if you do have a process to follow, if you aren’t reporting regularly, your numbers may be outdated or inaccurate. Reporting can be especially challenging for high-volume agencies because of the sheer amount of calls to sift through.

To help our agency and agent partners gain the insights they need, eIndependent’s PowerBI tools offer real-time reporting and powerful analytics capabilities. No matter how you’re managing your own data, here are five reports to put at the top of your list.

Lead-to-app conversions by source: Seeing how many leads turn into sales is a strong indicator of agent performance, as well as lead quality. For agents or agencies using a mix of lead sources and types, such as data leads and warm transfer leads, this report helps you understand what’s performing best so you can create an ideal mix. At eIndependent, we only provide pre-screened warm transfer leads to our agents, helping them close one in three sales on average.
Cost per app by source: This report can help you understand how much it costs to generate each insurance application. If Lead Source A is 50% more expensive than Lead Source B, but results in twice as many sales, it’s ultimately cost-effective in the long run. When comparing costs, you’ll also want to consider the time it takes your agents to close a sale and other indirect expenses.
Lead to client by source: This report gives you a better understanding of which applications are actually translating to paid cases. If there’s a big discrepancy between your lead-to-app rate and lead-to-client rate for a particular source, it could indicate problems with lead quality, since they aren’t being approved. Those problems could include anything from health issues to financial concerns, so dig deeper into the reasons behind declined applications.
Decline rate by source: A decline rate by source report can reveal the quality and efficiency of each type of lead you use. Examining common objections from leads can also help you understand and refine your own sales pitch. For example, if a lot of your leads aren’t moving forward because they want to talk to their spouse first, figure out how to frame the conversation to address their concerns.
Time from app to client: This report shows how many days an app spends in underwriting, so you can make the process as efficient as possible. If customers are getting stuck on a particular step, such as taking a medical exam, talk with your back-office team about how you can work together to move things along.

Perfecting your pipeline through reporting

When building a reporting program, the goal is to understand your full sales pipeline, from the first call to final approval. You also want to understand the baseline percentages based on industry best practices and your own history. Whether you’re using sophisticated Power BI tools or tracking data by hand, reporting should be a priority. Try to commit to monthly reporting at a minimum and determine actionable steps based on what you find.

Want to gain a better understanding of your own performance? Ask the eIndependent team how our reporting tools can help you grow your life insurance business.

At eFinancial, our goal is to make life insurance simple, affordable, and understandable for everyday families. This content is intended for educational purposes only. Each post is carefully fact-checked, reviewed and updated regularly to ensure the information is as relevant as possible.