How to Work General Life Insurance Leads

General life leads are the hardest of the eight types to work well, precisely because they are the easiest to buy. Every other lead type tells you something before you dial — a mortgage, a service record, a truck, a retirement strategy. A general life lead tells you someone wants life insurance and nothing else.

Which means the product is decided on the call, by you, from what they say. That is a skill, and it is the whole game here.

Four Questions, In Order

Everything about a general life lead is discovery. Run it in this sequence and the product picks itself:

• “What made you look into this now?” There is almost always an event — a death in the family, a diagnosis, a new baby, a policy that lapsed, a birthday with a zero in it. The event tells you the emotional driver and usually the product.
• “Who depends on your income?” Dependents decide face amount and term length. No dependents and age 68 is a final expense conversation; two young children and a salary is term.
• “What are you comfortable spending monthly?” Monthly budget, never face amount — that is how buyers think, and it prevents designing something they will lapse.
• “What do you have already?” Employer coverage they will lose when they leave, an old whole life policy from a parent, nothing at all. Each answer changes the recommendation.

Notice that none of those four questions is about a product. If you find yourself naming a product in the first two minutes, you are guessing.

Route It Honestly

Where those answers land is where the sale is:

• Older, no dependents, modest budget → final expense. Work it with the final expense playbook.
• Working-age with dependents and a mortgage → term, sized to the debt and the years. See mortgage protection.
• High discretionary income, long horizon, retirement-focused → possibly IUL, but qualify the funding first.
• Veteran → ask about SGLI, VGLI and VA benefits before anything else. See the veteran playbook.

The temptation with a broad-market lead is to route toward the product you like selling. The prospect can tell, and it shows up later as a lapse.

Why This Type Rewards a System

Because the discovery is long and the product varies, general life is the lead type where good notes decide your month. Two agents with identical leads and identical scripts get different results almost entirely on whether the follow-up remembered what the prospect said on call one.

Practically: capture the event and the budget in the note, link the household so a spouse's policy is not a separate unrelated row, and let the cadence schedule the next attempt rather than your memory. That is what Conversations, Add Lead and Lead Linking exist for.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a general life insurance lead?

A broad-market prospect who inquired about life insurance without indicating a specific product or situation. Unlike veteran, mortgage protection or IUL leads, they arrive with no built-in context, so the product is determined during discovery on the call.

What product should I sell a general life lead?

Whatever their answers point to. Older prospects without dependents on a modest budget are usually final expense; working-age prospects with dependents and a mortgage are usually term; high discretionary income with a long horizon may fit IUL after funding is qualified.

What should I ask first on a general life call?

"What made you look into this now?" There is almost always a triggering event — a death, a diagnosis, a birth, a lapsed policy — and it reveals both the emotional driver and, usually, the right product.

Should I ask about budget or face amount?

Monthly budget. That is how buyers think about insurance, and designing to a face amount they cannot sustain is how policies lapse in the first few months.

Why do general life leads need better notes than other types?

Because discovery is long and the product varies, so the value of the lead lives in what the prospect told you on call one. Two agents with identical leads diverge mostly on whether their follow-up remembered the event and the budget.

Discovery Is the Whole Job

Ask why now, who depends on them, what they can spend, and what they already have. Then route it to the product those answers name — not the one you prefer.

See what is available in your states, or read what you are actually buying.