Marcus Webb, Annuity Appointment Case Study
Introduction
Marcus is four years licensed, wrote $6.2M last year and is on pace for $9M, working mostly fixed indexed annuities for Roth conversions and income planning.
He had already solved the problem most producers call us about. He was buying guaranteed appointments from a pay per show vendor at $1,000 each, qualified at $250,000 in movable money, ten a month. Sixteen appointments in, his average rollover was $410,000 and he had closed two. At a 7.5% commission that is around $30,000 on a $400,000 case, so he was turning $10,000 a month into $30,000 and he knew the numbers cold.
He did not call us to replace that vendor. He called because he wanted more volume and could not get it.
Marcus's Situation
Marcus is the kind of producer most vendors never get a real conversation with, because he is not shopping. He already has something working. He is not in pain, he is in a ceiling.
Producers at this level have usually been through a dozen or more sources and have finally found one worth keeping. The instinct everyone has is to pitch them a replacement. That is the wrong read. What he wants is not new, it is more, and the thing standing in his way is arithmetic rather than quality. When every appointment costs the same as the last one, growth and cost rise together, and the producer ends up handing the upside to whoever is selling him the appointments.
Here is what he was actually after:
- More appointments per month than any single vendor could supply him
- A cost per appointment that comes down as he spends more, instead of sitting flat forever
- A channel he controls, so his growth is not capped by somebody else's inventory
- Something he could put the other advisors in his office onto without the supply running out
- The option to turn spend up or down month to month without renegotiating anything
The belief worth challenging here is that pay per show is the safest way to buy appointments. It is the simplest way. It is also the only model where your cost per unit is guaranteed never to improve, no matter how big you get.
Overall Results
We left his existing vendor alone. He kept buying ten appointments a month there through the entire quarter, and everything below is the new channel running alongside it.
| Month | Ad spend | Booked | Showed | Cost per show | Pay per show rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | $6,000 | 21 | 11 | $545 | $1,000 |
| Month 2 | $12,000 | 37 | 20 | $764 | $1,000 |
| Month 3 | $12,000 | 37 | 20 | $764 | $1,000 |
| Total | $30,000 | 95 | 51 | $725 | $51,000 |
Fifty one appointments bought one at a time would have cost $51,000. He paid $37,000 including the management fee. Eight of those 51 became signed applications averaging $265,000, so $2.12M in premium and about $159,200 in commission.
Process and Strategy
Nothing here is about lead quality. It is about who owns the economics.
Spending Into His Own Account
When you buy appointments one at a time, you are buying somebody else's inventory at their margin, and that margin is priced into every single unit forever. There is no volume where it gets cheaper, because the margin is the product.
Running the traffic in his own ad account changes the shape of the cost. Ad spend buys the appointments, and the management fee is flat regardless of how much he spends. So the fee divides across more appointments every time he scales. At $6,000 a month his appointments cost $833 all in. At $12,000 they cost $764. The pay per show line sat at $1,000 the entire time.
Scaling Without Breaking the Cost
After the first batch showed up, Marcus wanted to triple his spend immediately. We told him to double it and hold, because pushing an account faster than it can absorb is how cost per appointment gets away from you. He went to $12,000 and stayed there for two months while the cost held at $764.
Worth being honest about where this stops. The advantage flattens past roughly $15,000 a month, because ad costs climb as reach widens and eventually offset the spreading fee. It never reverses, and it never gets worse than a rate that is fixed forever, but it is not infinite.
"Same month, same commission, and the second channel cost me twenty five percent less per appointment than the first one. That's the whole argument."Marcus Webb
Moving Forward
Marcus now runs two channels. The vendor he liked is still there at ten appointments a month, and the new one delivered 51 in a quarter at a lower unit cost that improves rather than holding still.
If you are already paying per appointment and want to grow, the question is not whether your vendor is good. It is whether your cost is allowed to come down as you scale.
Figures cover 95 booked calls over three months on the new channel only. The existing vendor relationship continued unchanged.