There’s a movement afoot, people are breaking away from group health care and setting out on their own to find individual policies. The reasons are varied, but the fact is people are leaving the group marketplace and they have to go somewhere for their health insurance needs.
As a result more and more carriers are beginning to offer individual health plans.
This is new territory for many health insurance agents and brokers. Recently, I attended a seminar given by a major insurance brokerage firm. And the speakers offered some ways to react to this boom in individual health.
Develop a strategy. Don’t just offer health insurance; offer people a three-year healthcare, or wellness, plan. Healthcare costs are rising. Offer them solutions to keep their expenses under control by educating them on preventative measures.
Differentiate. Become an expert in consumer driven health plans tax strategy. Become a wellness expert. Leverage online tools that set you apart from competitors.
Be consultative. There are many insurance agents to choose from. If you can offer your clients advice, you are offering something different. Listen more. Talk less.
In a changing industry, the best advice is to learn how to roll with the punches and take advantage by filling the holes that those changes will inevitably leave.
Are you as nervous as re-insurers about global climate change?
When the people who are paid to assess and manage risk start openly panicking about the perils of climate change, you know that the excrement isn’t far from hitting the air conditioning.
Reinsurers, the people who insure the insurance companies, are the folks who have the most on the line. And they’re starting to get nervous. “At Lloyds, we feel the effects of extreme weather more than most,” Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyds of London, said in March. “We don’t just live with risk — we have to pick up the pieces afterwards.” Lloyds predicts a hurricane will hit the US with twice the destructive price tag as Katrina and will thus bankrupt 40 insurers.
We’d do well to look at their anxiety as the canary in the coal mine. After all, reinsurers aren’t treehugging doomsday prophets.
Many have the vague feeling that maybe the weather is going to get flukier as the climate changes–and maybe even a little balmier. They think the climate, particularly something as innocuous as a 1 or 2 degree change in average temperature, doesn’t affect their lives. It reminds me of how people probably reacted to the stock market crash of 1929. “I don’t own stock, so what’s the big deal?”
The stakes really couldn’t be higher, particularly for you insurance agents. Take it from Lloyd: “The insurance industry must start actively adjusting in response to greenhouse gas trends if it is to survive.”
If it is to survive. I hate to freak you out, Agent Blog reader, but we’ve got a pretty freaky situation on our hands.
Touch point branding means making sure every point of contact you have with your customers is positive, informative and memorable.
Make these common touch points work for you.
Voicemail. It’s been around for awhile. So unless the person calling has discovered a wormhole and time traveled 20 years, they probably know to leave a message after the beep. So what does your voicemail say about you?
I recently called my insurance agent, and here’s what his message said: “Hi you’ve reached Chris. I’m currently with a customer exceeding all of their expectations. What expectations do you have? I look forward to working with you.”
Email. You don’t just receive it on your desktop anymore. People check their mail on a whole slew of gadgets. So, think about technological advances. The new devices are smaller, so your email should be too. It’s all about multitasking, so your emails should be brief and make an impression in a matter of seconds.
Portfolio. It’s all about customized information. If you act as an advocate for the consumer, you are offering something few agents do. Insurance is confusing. Simplify it.
Your business card. Your lasting first impression. Do something different with it. Maybe a picture, bright colors an unforgettable quote. Just avoid the status quo.
As an insurance agent, you are your brand far more than the products you sell, so be a brand that is succinct, meaningful and unforgettable.
What do a doctor with a framed medical school degree on his clinic wall and a peacock with tall, bright feathers have in common? Answer: Expensive plumage. To be more specific, they’ve both got expensive plumage that sends signals, or messages, to potential patients or mates that they are reliable, trustworthy and safe.
In the case of the doctor, the framed degree sends a signal to a patient that a lot of sweat, tuition money and all-nighters went toward earning the credentials to practice medicine. The patient spying the Johns Hopkins medical degree while nervously sitting on the butcher paper receives the comforting signal: I can trust this person to stick the needle in the right place, because they don’t hand out degrees like that to anyone on the street.
Are you Facebooked? LinkedIn? A closet MySpacer? If so, you’ve undoubtedly dealt with unsolicited “friend” requests which leave you wondering: Should I let this person into my network? What does she want with me?
Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly Radar is calling for some manners when it comes to inviting people into your network:
Most of these [friend requests], relying solely on the boilerplate invitation text, go right into the trash. “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” Sure. Who are you? What do you do? Why should I care? (Even if I’ve met you, I might need my mind jogged, especially if you might have the same name as other people I know.)
Instead of using the typical boilerplate invitations, O’Reilly suggests writing your own, explaining who you are and why you’d like to connect, like Janet here, who briefly explained why she’d like to connect with him:
So, the next time you try to befriend someone via the intarwebs, make sure you offer a little about yourself. Otherwise, your invite–and potential business relationship–might just end up in the trash.
It seems we’re into a new type of thematic blogging here at the Agent Blog. Last week’s posts dealt primarily with e-mail and this week’s with health care. This post will explore the concept of employer-linked health insurance.
Whenever I get to thinking about it, the less sense it makes. Why should people get health insurance through the workplace? They don’t get their car or homeowner’s insurance from their employer, and as far as I know, there is no one lobbying for this to change. It would be weird to get a new auto insurance policy every time you switched jobs. Yet there are passionate advocates out there for keeping the link between your health care and your paycheck. Why?
All of you agents selling health insurance can breathe a sigh of relief.
Because in the event that Hillary Clinton wins the nomination and then the presidency, her plan for overhauling America’s health care system has a place for you in it. A rather big place, in fact.
Yep, Clinton is back on the health care bandwagon, and she says she’s learned some big lessons from her failure, in 1993, to revamp the system. This new plan shares the ambition of covering every citizen, but it’s perhaps more pragmatic and less combative than the one she promoted as first lady.
Google Analytics is a free program that generates comprehensive stats about the people who come to your web site. It’s a cool program that we use here at InsureMe on our myriad sites to see who’s stopping by, what they’re looking at, how they found us, etc.
The factor I haven’t considered when previously recommending Google Analytics is that it can be hard to know where to start–afterall, there’s so much data! And what does it all mean? How do you use it to your advantage?
Seth Godin points us to a book (and blog) that helps us quickly and easily answer these questions. So if you’re new to analytics programs, this is for you.
Since this week has taken on an e-mail theme, I figured I’d add my own couple of pennies the subject.
Before I add anything new, though, I’d like to say I heartily agree with everything Megan has written on the topic. Check out her posts here and here if this is your first visit to the blog this week.
“Inbox Zero”
Productivity maverick Merlin Mann popularized the concept of inbox zero, in which the goal is to leave your e-mail inbox as uncluttered as possible–to the point where there is nothing in there. Zero. Zippo. Zilch.
The idea is not to delete e-mails willy-nilly. Nor does it require responding to every message the moment you receive it. E-mail enslaves people who feel compelled to reply right away. Worse, as Mann says, “If you’re just doing meta-work inside of e-mail, you’re not getting stuff done.”
Are you as nervous as re-insurers about global climate change?
What do a doctor with a framed medical school degree on his clinic wall and a peacock with tall, bright feathers have in common? Answer: Expensive plumage. To be more specific, they’ve both got expensive plumage that sends signals, or messages, to potential patients or mates that they are reliable, trustworthy and safe.
