The new TCPA law basically says that you can’t call cell phone numbers from a dialer starting October 16th, 2013. Every call will result in a fine. I believe it’s $500 per call…if you called the same cell phone 3 times – that’s $1500!
For those of you that are thinking, “I don’t use a dialer so this doesn’t effect me?” (which is most of you) – well you should care because this could be a game changer for everyone.
The Opportunity
The big call centers are freaking out right now. SelectQuote, Matrix Direct etc. all depend on their dialing systems. Sure they can still use them to call home phone numbers, but who even has a home phone number these days? I would imagine that the vast majority of people that go online to request life insurance are using cell phones. Now these call centers have to hand dial these cell phones. Actually, they have to scrub their leads to distinguish if it’s a cell/home phone number first…and then they can call them. Huge PITA.
Because of this, they’ll have to slow down their marketing to factor the extra time it will take for their agents to call their leads. Call centers won’t be able to take on the amount of volume they’ve had in the past. That’s a huge win for us independent agents. Less prospects for them = more prospects for us.
Not only that, you’ll now be on a more level playing field if you’re purchasing shared leads. We all know being the first one to call a lead is crucial and competing with call center technology royally sucks. Not anymore.
How This Effects Aged Life Insurance Leads
The whole premise behind working aged leads is using a dialer. Like I said many times before – I built my business on using a dialer and aged leads. Now I’m afraid that aged leads won’t be usable anymore – we’ll see though.
I know many of the aged lead vendors are preparing for this and will add a column to all lists if it’s a cell phone (for you to manually dial) or home phone (for you to add to your dialer). They’re also exploring appending home phone numbers to the leads by referencing leads with cell phone numbers to other databases to try and scrape a home phone number.
With that said, I fully expect aged lead vendors to be crippled by this law since the majority of aged life insurance leads are called through a dialer.
I haven’t decided if this will hurt agents working aged life insurance leads because they can’t use a dialer (and the big call centers can’t either) or help agents because these leads won’t be touched nearly as much as they used to and hand dialing may be a viable option again.
Bottom Line
This law will have an impact on independent life insurance agents selling online and over the phone. How big of an impact? That remains to be seen.
