September 03, 2015
1. Education and Training As you look to grow your business and book of business you need to make sure you are up to date on all legal and regulatory insurance requirements. You also need to keep up with product and coverage changes that impact your clients. You can use this information to share with your clients and prospects via your social networks, newsletters and in your sales presentations. This will help you to provide the best service to your existing clients and close more sales. As you share this information and are actively notifying clients of changes impacting their coverage, you will become known as an expert in your field and more and more clients will want to have you help them. Very few agents actively contact their clients and usually rely on the carrier to communicate coverage changes, by reaching out first, you will be better positioned to keep and grow that business long term.
2. Customer Service Speaking with your existing clients should not be seen as a hassle that should be avoided. I know of many agents that will allow calls to go to voicemail, rather than answer a phone call from an existing client who might be unhappy or looking to cancel their policy. A client calling in should be seen as an sales opportunity, as you can ask for referrals, cross-sell and upsell. You can use that opportunity to provide policy and coverage information and build your relationship with the client. Clients like to be communicated with in multiple ways, via Facebook, email, text, phone and more. You should allow your clients to contact you in a wide variety of ways as well. Additionally, you should consider establishing a policy to respond to all clients within 24 hours or less, if they leave a message or send an email or text, even if only to let them know you need more time.
3. Inbound Insurance Leads The most important thing is to keep your phone ringing. Inbound insurance leads or live transfers are people who are qualified insurance shoppers looking for a new insurance policy. All these calls are sold on a pay-per-call basis, so you can purchase as many as you want to keep your agency busy quoting and writing new business. You can also purchase a wide variety of inbound insurance leads; inbound auto insurance leads, inbound home insurance leads, inbound life insurance leads, inbound health insurance leads and inbound commercial leads. Another great benefit is you will become much more efficient with your marketing budget. You will no longer be spending money on marketing without knowing what you are getting.
4. Referrals Next to inbound insurance leads or live transfers, referrals from happy clients will be your most important source of new business. On a regular basis you should be asking clients for referrals or people they know who might be looking to get insurance. Clients with adult children are especially a great sources of referrals. As you communicate with clients and they tell you about what is going on with their life, you can get new information on opportunities to make more sales; a marriage, divorce, birth of a child, new home purchase, child turning 16, etc.
5. Upsells and cross selling Closely related to customer service and referrals, you need to provide, when possible, all the insurance needs of your clients. In many cases, you are able to offer significant discounts to clients who are purchasing multiple products. You should periodically offer these products to your existing clients as a means of saving them money and protecting their financial interests.
6. Technology It is extremely important that you are up to date with new technologies. You need to have a mobile enabled website, access to sending and receiving text messages, a phone system with voicemail and access to email. You should also have a advanced CRM or customer relationship management system. This system will allow you to follow-up with your inbound insurance leads and customer inquiries. Most of these systems also give you the ability to send our regular emails or newsletters to your existing clients.
Agent Ethan Kosmin Generated over $200,000 in premiums during first year in business thanks to Contact Concierge.
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