Does your trucking insurance agency leverage telemarketing to set up profile appointments with demographically selected prospects in your target geographic area? If so, how successful are your initiatives and is there anything your agency can do to refine them? For example, are they producing 10, 20 (or more) in profile citations per month? And if your trucking agency isn’t taking advantage of an appointment setting initiative, why are you ignoring this pipeline filling opportunity? Let’s review some of the key tips, techniques and best practices to ensure an effective appointment setting campaign:

1. Call script: It all starts with an effective and concise script. Synthesize your value proposition. Think of it this way, if you had a 30 second Super Bowl commercial, what would your agency tell viewers? Why should truckers (whether owner-operators, small fleets, or large fleets) talk to you about their insurance needs? What do you bring to the table that is especially helpful to these target prospects? You may need multiple versions of your call script, especially if your prospects range from owner operators to fleets with 50 or more power units. And you should have a list of the 10 most common objections, with answers, to improve the effectiveness of the calls. For example, do they insure tow trucks, ambulances or tow trucks? These and other questions/objections and answers should be available to help the appointment makers.
2. Prospect List: Your agency needs to use a current list of DOT prospectuses with fleet size and X dates. If you don’t have one, there are many sources that offer them (ranging in quality from fair to good). Remove your active customers and prospects from this list, and keep in mind that it is often better to do this on a monthly or quarterly basis, rather than an annual pull, depending on target geography, X dates, and fleet size.
3. Lead Management: Even the best leads won’t be able to close if your agency lacks a formal lead management process. This doesn’t have to be automated, it just has to be tracked and traced! Once an appointment has been set, which producer will manage that appointment and how will they follow up to ensure the best closing relationship possible? And of course, how it will be tracked.
4. Appointment setter: Last but not least is the citation builder. His quote maker will make or break his main initiative. And one of the challenges of some agencies revolves around the hiring, management and training of this resource. Additionally, most agencies will only hire an appointment setter, and industry standards show that only one in three callers are likely to succeed in this challenging position. At a minimum, your citation builder should have:

• Telemarketing experience
• Truck insurance experience (or training)
• Call script training and practice
• Lead Handling Training
• professional behavior
• Ability to consistently deliver your ringtone (20+ times per hour)

Trucking agencies with enough time, tools, and talent can bring this lead generation initiative in-house. Those agencies that cannot, should consider outsourcing this opportunity to a competent trucking lead generation company.