I had a great conversation the other day on the topic of lead volume per agent/ loan officer. The discussion evolved from the question I asked regarding how many leads each agent had in their pipeline at any given time. The answer was 150  to 200 leads. Based on my experience that seemed like a lot of leads to be in one agents pipeline and they couldn’t possibly be working all those leads properly. Each agent at this company was required to price out and process each loan they received and in many cases were not able to call leads while performing these duties.

What is the correct amount of leads an agent should have in their pipeline at any given time? I think this is a question that is often overlooked and is usually answered with a simple guess, but I am going to suggest something very trivial and that anyone can implement. Sometimes the simplest things are overlooked, but can have the biggest affect on conversions and ultimately your ROI.

The first moving variable that needs to be considered is the average amount of dials made by each agent. This may be different for each and every agent, but in most cases there will not be a huge disparity between the lowest and the highest contributors. If there is a significant disparity it would be wise to make exceptions for those specific instances. Lets assume that your average agent makes 70 dials per day. Lets also assume that you require your agents to call each lead 3 times per day until the lead is contacted. On average each lead is called 1.5 times per day until it is proved to be a dead lead. The reason for the acceptable average to be 1.5 is because a lead maybe called for the first week 3 times a day and there after only once per day. Their are also days where the average duration on the phone will be lower then average and require more leads to call (This is where it is good to have a pipeline of leads that can be accessed by each agent to pull aged leads if needed).

Average Dials / Required Times a Lead Should be Called = Correct Daily Lead Volume per Agent.

In this case the correct amount of leads an agent should receive should range between 47 and 55 leads per day. Note that in my opinion 70 dials per day is low, especially for agents with 100 plus leads. These agents should be making at least 100 dials per day.

There are a few adjustments you can make if you are buying too many leads. The first, of course, is to reduce your lead spend and require your agents to continue with the same call volume. The second may be a little more dramatic and it includes hiring agents who simply call each lead and then transfer interested leads to closers who then follow the consumer through the application process. This will allow your company to process as many leads as possible and as efficiently as possible. Clearly an ROI analysis would need to be done within your company to determine whether this is a suitable option.

Are you buying too many leads?

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