1. Be considerate: If you are contacting a client after hours ask if they are free to talk. Just because your friends may immediately respond to IM’s or texts doesn’t mean your client wants to. Have the same expectations as you would from an email correspondence.

2. Remember the concept of “business hours”: Follow the weekday 7am-9pm rule. Not everyone wants to speak to you late night or on weekends, you must respect that.

3. Only contact the people you talk to regularly: Texting a colleague that sits next to you is totally acceptable. Texting a client you rarely speak to is not.

4. Put your phone away during face-to-face meetings: There is nothing more annoying then having a conversation with someone who is constantly checking their cell phone. If you can’t focus during a 30min meeting what kind of impression does that give your potential clients.

5. Texts and IMs should be reserved for simple, non-critical topics: If your texts is longer then a sentence or requires deeper communication send an email or schedule a call.

6. Be wary of abbreviations and emoticons: Be aware of whom you are texting, if you would not include LOL or a smiley face in an email to them why would you via text message.

7. Never send sensitive information: Hackers can easily obtain this information and cause severe damage.

8. Stay professional: Be sure to still use spell check and write professionally via text as you would by email. Remember you are still conducting business.

Lets talk about car insurance for a minute.  If I can give you ten people that are truly interested in getting insurance for their car does it really matter what make and model? Are advertisers just being choosy where they can make more money or all in all, is it about helping the consumer find the services he/she needs? Let’s bring up health insurance.  Everyone needs health insurance.  When people are going online and they need an agent to assist them with more information so that a comfort zone can be built and they can understand what type of health insurance would work best for them? Is that a bad lead? No, I think not!

A lead, everyone has a different definition.  The true definition is simply a consumer that is interested in the product or service and need your help! So are leads with name, phone numbers, email, and address in a lead exchange a bad lead.  For a lesser price I actually think its a steal! Be thrilled that you can actually talk to someone on the phone. Its better than picking up the yellow pages and aiming at getting yelled at.  Contact is all you need, cross sale, offer a relative of theirs that service as well, make a quality impression that the consumer will tell their friend how helpful you were.  A lead is only as strong as the person working it!

Let’s really look into insurance, we all need it and its a necessity.  Its a healthy part of life.