Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

In a bad economy, people tend to play it safe. They double down on the tried and true. Problem is, as Seth Godin says, safe is incredibly risky.

Small businesses often slash advertising in bad economies. The irony is that ad space is cheaper in bad times (which is why the Snuggie is everywhere these days) and consumers are typically choosier, which means that the companies that can get their message out will stake an even better position relative to their competitors. (That’s why Denny’s has been on an advertising spree.)

David Chase, a marketer for Altus Alliance,  blogged recently about the lessons from the Great Depression—the lesson being, Don’t abandon your marketing efforts.

“It was a time when several companies benefited from aggressive marketing while their rivals cut back,” Chase wrote.  “A good example of that would be Kellogg besting C.W. Post during that time. Consumers didn’t stop spending during the Depression; most just looked for better deals, and the companies providing those better deals came out stronger after the Depression ended. When spending picked up, consumer loyalty to those companies remained.”

We at InsureMe aren’t immune to the recession jitters. We were sitting around a conference table recently trying to decide whether to attend a conference. A few expressed reluctantance to go because none of our competitors were going. Seeing the foolishness of the situation, one person chimed in, “Doesn’t that mean it’s a good idea to go? We won’t have any competition!”

There’s a certain amount of toxic groupthink that characterizes recessions. You see and hear of people battening down the hatches, cutting staff and ad budgets, canceling travel plans. The temptation is to do the same, to keep up with the Joneses, but in reverse.

Resist!

Nina Zagat, publisher of those ubiquitous maroon restaurant guides, is branching into the health care industry. (“Noted Rater of Restaurants Brings Its Touch to Medicine,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 2009.)

Zagat is asking WellPoint Blue Cross members—who number in the millions—to rate doctors on trust, communication and availability, among other things.

What to make of this trend?

“It is curious that they would go to a company that had no experience in health care to try to find out how good a doctor is,” a doctor told the Times. “It certainly is very subjective.”

Most of the health care professionals quoted in the Times article were hostile to the idea. It’s easy to see why—this would make them more accountable. Which is why I welcome the development and hope that it catches on with more insurers.

Twitter is a web application that let’s people share tiny snippets of information about themselves with friends and family. (Some call it microblogging.)

Twitter’s search engine is particularly fascinating because it lets you take the collective pulse of thousands of people—in real time. So if you ever want to get into the head of the average consumer, just do a Twitter search on “insurance.” You’ll get a ton of results—and they’re fascinating. People have passionate feelings when it comes to insurance. As you might guess, a lot of them are negative. But it’s equally clear that people understand the importance of having adequate coverage.

Anyway, do a search for yourself and see what people talk about when they talk about insurance. (I don’t recommend starting an account unless you’ve got above-average time-management skills. Twitter is famous for its addictive quality.)

I’m not 100% sure about the provenance of this bumper sticker, but I know I like it:

“Please don’t hit me. I’m not 100% sure about my coverage.”

Our usability guy, David Lansdon, is in the midst of revamping the online application that agents use to sign up for our lead service.

After reading some consumer survey responses, it seems we may want to add a few questions to that application.

In addition to asking for their carrier information and helping them set up filters, we should quiz them about their selling techniques.

Because it seems a few agents on our service have some bad habits.

Consider this comment we received on Feb. 5:

The little @#$% was very rude. Tried selling me insurance I didnt ask for. Laughed out loud at me and said I was a fool. I will never use your service or refer your service. Will was the original salesperson but he pushed me off on another loser that was insulting. Thanks for nothing, [name and number omitted]

Perhaps we should add the following questions to our agent application:

• It’s OK to laugh at a prospect. True or False
• It’s OK to call a prospect a “fool.” True or False

Here’s another comment we receiving on Feb. 6:

spoke with a “man” named Bill on 2/4/09 and he was one of the rudest people i have ever spoken with …  he got mad and SHOUTED into the phone “well thanks for wasting my time” i would never deal with a company like that and i’m sure other people have been bothered by him also!

More questions to add to the agent application:

• It’s OK to shout at a prospect. True or False
• It’s OK to tell a prospect he/she is wasting your time. True or False

And another depressing one from Feb. 7:

Instruct your sales people to not act like used car sales men – they were incredibly pushy which reminds people that it’s all just about selling something. One person hung up on me in mid-sentence because I wasn’t interested in what he had to offer. Very unprofessional. I bought an insurance (because I need one now)since I do not have the luxury of time at the moment and went with the first company that called. But this was not a pleasant experience and the sales agents were incredibly pushy and rude.

Additional quiz questions:

• It’s OK to hang up on a prospect. True or False
• It’s OK to be pushy and rude. True or False

I realize that survey data can skew negative and that there are many more great agents out there than bad. But, sheesh, this is pretty discouraging.

*Rejected headline: Sales Tip of the Week: Don’t Be a Jerk

We just added a new article to the resource center that may interest you: Tips for Email Mastery.

Email is fast becoming (or already is) the dominant medium for communication. Call it impersonal, call it lazy, email is not going anywhere, so working to improve your writing skills is an endeavor that will bring significant rewards.

So check out these Tips for Email Mastery. And learn how to:

• Write better subject lines
• Set the right tone
• Get a response

While it’s not essential that you wax poetic in your every electronic correspondence, it is essential that you communicate clearly and persuasively. As legendary copywriter Donna Baier Stein said, “Response is the end goal of everything you write.”

It’s time to ‘fess up.

Does your web site have any of the following?

• Distorted and/or low-quality images
• Lack of padding around text and graphical elements
• Dated animation or MS clip art
• Loud, off-putting colors
• Lack of white space
• Bad site navigation
• Comic Sans
• Visitor counters and/or guest books
• AdSense*
• Too many fonts
• Lack of contrast

(Here’s a complete list of web design sins. Here’s a particularly sinful web site.)

According to an survey we ran last March, 61 percent of the agents on our network have web sites. That’s the good news.

But my guess is that most of them don’t look  as good as this one. In fact, I bet a lot of them [trying to find an accurate yet gentle way to put this … ] have a certain 1996 quality about them, if you know what I mean.

Design Blindness
Not everyone can see color the same way. This is not news, of course: color blindness is a well-known phenomenon. Less well-known, however,  is the concept of design blindness.

Most of us are design blind (myself included), and that’s why we have designers. The problem is that everyone thinks he or she has 20/20 design vision. (This false sense of design clarity among the general populace explains why you see so many disgruntled designers out there.)

Why mind the design?
First impressions matter—particularly in the financial world. Professionalism is essential. A shoddy web site says shoddy service, shoddy product.

But design is about more than looking pretty—although I don’t intend to minimize that goal. Good design can do a number of things:

• Steer a visitor to take a certain action
• Reinforce your marketing message
• Show your expertise
• Entertain visitors
• Signal your trustworthiness

Ultimately, design isn’t a mere luxury. As another form of communication, it’s a necessity.

Related:

• Improve Your Homepage in 8 Steps
• Winning Web Design:4 Top Tips for Personalizing Your Web Site

* Is the $3.75 you earned in AdSense revenue last year worth the visual stain on your web site?

Over the years, we’ve fielded regular requests from agents who would like to “turn off” lead delivery on the weekends.

While we can understand their point of view, when these requests arise we gently remind them that our primary goal is to help people find insurance—quickly. That’s the promise we make to consumers who visit our site—which is open for business 24/7—and we strive to do that by matching them with local agents in real time.

Further, we expect our agents to contact their leads quickly, and not just because it results in a better experience for the consumer, but because it increases the agent’s chances of making the sale.

According to research conducted by James Oldroyd, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, contacting a lead within five minutes results in a 500 percent higher response rate than waiting 10 minutes.

For many busy households, the weekend is simply the only time available to purchase insurance. (The same goes for buyers of houses and cars—which is why sellers of houses and cars work weekends.)

Sure, the life-work balance is very important, but insurance agents, like others in sales, often have to strike that balance by working atypical hours—taking days off on Thursday and Friday, for example, or logging four hours on Saturday and Sunday for lead follow-up and working a couple of half days during the week.

Veteran producers with a large book of business can more easily get away with a traditional M-F schedule, but newcomers to the industry will find it pretty difficult, if not impossible.

To sum up, as long as consumers seek to find the right insurance on the weekends, we’ll try to help them, and we hope our agents will do the same.