ROI & Benchmarks
Realistic close-rate benchmarks by lead type and vertical, customer acquisition cost math, time-to-first-sale expectations, lead-volume planning to hit specific revenue targets, break-even close rates, and a three-phase scaling roadmap from solo producer to agency.
ROI & Benchmarks — Questions & Answers
Benchmarks vary widely by format, vertical, and agent experience. Live transfers: 15–30% across verticals, with Final Expense and Medicare on the high end and ACA on the lower end. Exclusive real-time web leads: Final Expense 8–15%, Medicare 10–18%, ACA 4–8%, Life 5–12%, IUL 3–8%, Auto 6–12%, Home 5–10%. Aged leads (30–90 days old): 2–6% across the board. These are averages across hundreds of agents on our platform — top quartile beats them by 30–50% and bottom quartile underperforms by a similar margin. The single biggest driver of where you fall is speed-to-lead: agents who call within 5 minutes convert at roughly 2–3x the rate of agents who call within 24 hours. Script quality and follow-up cadence matter almost as much.
CAC per policy = (cost per lead) / (close rate). Worked examples at our published prices: Final Expense fresh exclusive leads at $50 and a 12% close rate = $417 CAC per policy. Medicare at $70 and a 15% close rate = $467 CAC. ACA at $45 and a 6% close rate = $750 CAC. Life at $65 and 8% = $813 CAC. Interest-verified live transfers shift the math: Medicare transfers at $125 and a 25% close rate = $500 CAC — higher cost per connected call, far higher close rate, so the end CAC lands near the web-lead number on much less dialing time. Compare these to first-year commissions — typically $300–$600 Final Expense, $700 Medicare, $400–$600 ACA, $400–$1,000 Life. In Medicare and ACA the first year roughly covers acquisition and the renewal stream is the margin; in Final Expense and Life the first year has to carry itself, which is why close rate matters more than lead price.
For most agents, first sale lands in week 1 or week 2 from real-time leads. Live transfer buyers often close on day 1 because the prospect is on the phone at the moment of billing. Web lead buyers typically close their first in the 20–60 lead range — if you have bought 50 leads and closed zero, something is off and your account manager should run diagnostics with you (common issues: calling speed, script, voicemail quality, or filter too tight). For aged leads, expect first sale in the 100–200 record range given the lower base rates. Time-to-first-commission-check depends on carrier cycle time: Final Expense pays in 1–2 weeks after issue, Medicare pays CMS cycle (roughly 30–45 days after effective date), ACA pays monthly once the policy is in effect.
Rule-of-thumb reverse math on Final Expense: $10K/month at a $450 average first-year commission = ~22 issued policies per month. At a 15% close rate — the top of our published exclusive-web band — that is ~150 fresh exclusive leads at $50 each, or $7,500 in lead spend against ~$9,900 in commission. At a 10% close rate the same 22 policies need ~220 leads, or $11,000 — more than the commission it produces. That is the whole point: at published prices the variable that decides whether the month works is your close rate, not the lead price. Interest-verified live transfers reach the same 22 policies on ~90 units at a 25% close rate ($125 each in Medicare) — fewer dials, higher spend per issued policy. This is why we recommend starting at the $1,000 minimum, proving you can hit target close rates, and then scaling — not the other way around.
Break-even close rate = (cost per lead) / (first-year commission). At our published prices: Final Expense fresh exclusive at $50 ÷ $450 avg commission = 11.1% break-even — about 1 in 9 to cover lead cost. Medicare at $70 ÷ $700 = 10.0% — about 1 in 10. ACA at $45 ÷ $500 = 9.0% — about 1 in 11, before renewals. Interest-verified live transfers carry higher break-evens (Medicare $125 ÷ $700 = 17.9%) but convert at 2–3x the web-lead rate, so they still clear the bar. Aged leads at $3 ÷ $450 = 0.7% — break-even is so low that almost any contact rate clears it, which is what the age ladder is for. These are lead-cost break-evens only; to cover overhead, license fees, office costs, and your own time you typically want actual close rates at 2–3x break-even.
Scale in three phases. Phase 1 (0–100 leads/month): prove you can hit or beat our published close-rate benchmarks on your chosen vertical and state. Do not scale until you have two consecutive months at benchmark. Phase 2 (100–300): add a second vertical or a second state, hire your first setter or appointment-setter so your licensed time is spent on closing calls rather than dials, and add live transfers on top of web leads for a higher-margin mix. Phase 3 (300+): move to agency-style ops — multiple licensed producers under one master account, a centralized dialer, a CRM with territory routing, and defined SLAs on lead response time. Agencies that try to skip Phase 1 almost always burn cash; agencies that follow the three-phase path typically hit 10x within 12 months without quality degradation.
Yes. Our /success-stories page includes agent testimonials with named outcomes (close rates, monthly premium written, CAC), and /research contains longer-form reports including the State Insurance Market Report and the Insurance Agent Compensation Survey 2026. For prospective buyers who want specifics before signing up, your account manager can share (under NDA) a redacted performance snapshot from anonymized agents matched to your profile — same vertical, same license states, similar buying volume — so you can see real close rates, return rates, and ROI for agents most like you. We do not publish aggregate averages as "guaranteed" performance because the variance between top and bottom quartile is large enough that an average is misleading for any individual buyer.