Home contents leads: Plan advice time and brokerage earnings together

A home contents enquiry can introduce a new client to your brokerage. Whether that contact also makes commercial sense depends on more than winning a policy. Preparation, the personal conversation, checking the requested cover and subsequent service all contribute to the result. If you look only at the purchase price of the enquiry, you see part of the cost and can easily overlook your own working time.

That is why a clear advisory process matters. It should help the interested person reach an understandable decision sooner and save your office unnecessary repetition. This means clarifying missing floor area at the right stage, defining a specific question about the existing policy and agreeing another contact for a recognisable purpose. A short, well-prepared consultation is different from a conversation that leaves important questions unanswered.

This article shows how to prepare home contents contacts from Germany and assess them using actual earnings. A fully worked example connects contact work, proposal time and remuneration. Every figure is a freely chosen assumption, not an industry benchmark, current commission or webRichtung price. You can reproduce the calculation using your own brokerage’s records.

Understand the reason for enquiring and the household together

First-time cover, a move and a review of an existing policy begin with different questions. For a first policy, establish what the person wants to clarify about their household. For a move, ask what is changing and which documents are available. For a policy comparison, find out why the existing arrangement should be reviewed. The reason determines which preparation will be useful.

Open with a direct connection to the enquiry: “You are moving and would like to review your home contents insurance. What is changing in your household, and which question matters most to you?” The person can explain whether the concern is a different home, a stated cover preference or understanding the current policy. You begin with their task and gain a practical basis for the next stage of advice.

Distinguish an expressed preference from cover that has already been checked. Selecting bicycle or e-bike as a priority does not mean a particular benefit has been agreed. Ask what the person wants clarified, then check the appropriate policy documents. A form selection starts a conversation. It replaces neither understanding the household nor examining a specific tariff condition.

The home contents industry page shows the offered enquiry information and lets you register your brokerage. webRichtung lists the housing situation, cover preference and reason for enquiring, together with the household’s location and contact details in Germany. You can prepare your opening from those inputs. Floor area, sum insured and policy documents are not supplied; you establish the information needed for individual advice personally.

Prepare for the actual advisory question

Before producing an extensive comparison, define an actionable task with the person. “Wants to understand how the requested bicycle cover is described in the existing contract” requires different preparation from “needs an initial overview for a new household”. The first means examining specific documents. The second starts by establishing circumstances and priorities. An identical question sequence for both cases creates unnecessary repetition and can leave the real issue unresolved.

Agree which information is needed next and who will obtain it. For an existing policy, that might be the relevant contract document. For new living arrangements, it means the inputs your subsequent work requires. Keep unconfirmed details clearly open. If you use an assumption in place of a missing fact, it must not silently turn into confirmed information in the later recommendation.

A useful internal preparation note contains a short description of the situation, the advisory question, missing information and the next agreed action. For example: “Moving to a rented flat; existing policy to be checked against requested bicycle cover; documents missing; person will send the document and adviser will respond afterwards.” This is a working note, not the complete advice record. Its value is that the next person can understand the case immediately.

Efficiency comes from relevant preparation and clear explanation. Necessary consideration of wishes, needs, reasons for advice and documentation does not become optional as a result. Section 61 of Germany’s Insurance Contract Act describes the advice and documentation framework. For business planning, include the professional work required. A calculation that works only when that work disappears is not a sound basis for purchasing further contacts.

Plan service time for the whole case

The first telephone conversation accounts for only part of the effort. Unsuccessful contact attempts, organising information received later, preparing proposals and answering subsequent questions also use your team’s time. Recording those activities only for policies won makes the costs of other enquiries disappear. Cases that do not convert still belong to the same acquisition decision and must be visible in its evaluation.

For a limited initial group, record time under a few useful categories. Contact work covers establishing the conversation. Advice covers understanding and explaining the substantive issue. Proposal work covers checking and presenting the offer clearly. Documentation and follow-up complete the case. You do not need a new office-wide time recording system to examine a small group. Avoid counting the same activity twice or omitting an inconvenient category.

Use an internal hourly cost whose basis you understand. It should represent the working time used for your business decision, rather than an arbitrary selling price. If the owner and support team perform different work at different costs, you can value their time separately. The following illustration deliberately uses one rate so that the relationship between service time and financial outcome stays easy to follow.

Reserve time after proposals are sent, too. If the diary allows only first conversations, you push the actual decision support into a growing queue. A defined period for outstanding questions may therefore be more valuable than additional new appointments. The objective is not to mark every enquiry as processed equally quickly. It is to take related work through to a result the person understands.

Calculate a complete group of ten enquiries

Assume ten hypothetical home contents enquiries with total purchase costs of €180. Contact attempts take 50 minutes overall. Seven conversations take 140 minutes altogether. Five proposal preparations require 200 minutes. Add 80 minutes answering questions across the whole enquiry group and 40 minutes of attributable documentation and administration. These time categories do not overlap in the example: proposal preparation does not already contain the additional documentation time.

The total is 50 plus 140 plus 200 plus 80 plus 40, giving 510 minutes, or 8.5 hours. At an assumed internal cost of €34 an hour, labour costs amount to €289. Adding the €180 enquiry purchase cost produces a total acquisition effort valued at €469. These ten contacts therefore cost considerably more than the visible purchase alone.

Exactly four home contents policies result from this group in the example. Actual attributable remuneration is €135 each, totalling €540 before the acquisition costs considered here. This means the brokerage’s remuneration, not the insurance premiums paid by customers. Deducting €469 leaves €71 for other business costs and the eventual result. Acquisition expenditure per policy won is €469 divided by four, or €117.25.

Neither the four policies nor their assumed remuneration forecasts your own order’s results. The calculation illustrates how narrow an apparently positive result can be. With only three such remuneration amounts, earnings would be €405, leaving minus €64 after the same costs. If the original four-policy case needs two additional hours of service, they cost €68; the remainder falls from €71 to €3.

Count additional business when it has actually occurred

A new client may later have other concerns. That possibility does not create earnings today. If the home contents calculation turns positive only by assuming additional contracts, you do not know whether the initial business stands on its own. Keep the actual home contents result separate initially. This shows the commercial effect of the ordered enquiries and the work your office really performed.

This does not require limiting a client relationship to one policy. You can address other explicitly expressed advisory needs as separate tasks. For evaluation, however, those tasks need their actual earnings, associated work and a traceable attribution. A possible later consultation is not a free bonus you add to the original calculation without including any working time.

Define the period being evaluated clearly as well. Remuneration that can already be attributed in the example belongs in the result. Open decisions and payments merely expected later remain visibly outside realised earnings. When the position changes, update the relevant enquiry group. This avoids mixing the costs of new contacts with earnings from older client relationships and then drawing conclusions about the new source.

Discuss this distinction with the team. “Four policies won” is a sales outcome. “€71 remaining after the recorded acquisition costs” is the corresponding financial result in this example. Both are useful but answer different questions. Together they show whether more enquiries are likely to support the intended business effect or whether the working process first needs improvement.

Derive a purchasing limit from the contribution you want

You can also read the example backwards. Suppose the four policies should leave at least €140 after acquisition. From €540 remuneration, deduct that desired contribution and the €289 labour cost. No more than €111 remains for purchasing the ten enquiries. Dividing by ten gives €11.10 per enquiry as the calculated limit under exactly these assumptions.

This figure is neither a pricing recommendation nor an offer from webRichtung. It depends directly on four policies won, the assumed remuneration and the workload used. Change the results and the limit changes too. Compare it with the price actually displayed and your available records. If the two do not fit, a larger order does not automatically make the same unchanged process profitable.

First examine unnecessary work that you can demonstrably remove. Are the same documents requested repeatedly? Is the specific question missing when a case changes hands? Do price and cover need to be explained again after sending the proposal because the initial explanation was unclear? These findings lead to better preparation. Necessary individual advice should not simply be cut to achieve a number you chose beforehand.

Match purchasing to your advisory method and availability

The area covered by your lead order should fit how you actually serve clients. A brokerage offering local meetings must account for their time. A team working across Germany needs dependable ownership and appropriate conversation slots. Both need someone available to understand the household personally and carry out the agreed next step. A new enquiry is useful when your office can complete that work.

webRichtung offers home contents enquiries regionally within Germany or nationwide in Germany. You choose the delivery option and monthly limit. Standard enquiries go to no more than three providers; an exclusive enquiry goes to one provider. Exclusivity describes this distribution and does not require the person to buy through your brokerage. The cap limits purchasing but guarantees no particular volume. The current price appears before you place the order.

Evaluate delivery options or acquisition sources separately using the same method. Do not compare a new group full of unresolved cases with a long-completed set. Record effort and actual attributable remuneration across a decision period that can meaningfully be assessed. Your purchasing decision then comes from your own outcomes rather than a general assumption about cheap contacts or strong chances of conversion.

Start with a manageable group for complete advice

Prepare a simple working overview before starting. Each enquiry should show the household question, missing information, responsible person and agreed next action. Record the associated time alongside it and add actual remuneration later. This connects the interested person’s perspective with your brokerage’s financial calculation. It also makes handovers clearer when someone is absent or another colleague completes part of the work.

Choose a volume that you can serve fully, including follow-up questions. First assess whether preparation genuinely makes the conversations easier and whether actual time matches your assumptions. Then decide whether to order more enquiries, change preparation or organise advice differently. A small start is especially useful when it produces specific evidence for your own decisions rather than just another total of contacts received.

On the home contents industry page, you can check the enquiry information offered and register your business. Use the existing access route to prepare your lead order. This adds new households with a concrete interest to your brokerage while keeping the contribution of complete service visible. The next step is therefore tied to both the client’s task and your own capacity to serve it.

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