Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

For so long the arguments never changed in the health care debate. Each constituency—insurers, doctors, political parties—had its position, and you could count on its immutability.

So it was strange and somewhat disorienting (in a good way) when, last week, the health insurance industry told Congress that they were open to the idea of abandoning their policy of rejecting people with preexisting conditions—but only if the federal government instituted a universal mandate to buy insurance.

A subsequent article in the Times described the pleasant surprise of many Democratic congressmen, who have been clamoring for just such an scenario for years.

“It was a significant step for them to take,” said Rep. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) in an interview with the Times. “That’s certainly not been their position in previous years. I hope it moves us closer to something that we could label a consensus.”

Rewind to 10 years ago: it was unthinkable then to consider the idea of a universal mandate becoming a consensus. If you predicted such a thing a decade ago, you would’ve gotten derisive snorts.

But times have changed, and despite a long history of health-care-reform failure, it seems the stars are aligning in favor of change. So what has changed?

The way I see it, we Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving our sick people to face crushing medical costs and bankruptcy. We’re putting more pressure on our elected officials to remedy the situation. Insurers, seeing the writing on the wall, know that a universal mandate may be the only way to soften the blow of impending government regulation.

State Farm has been trying since January to get out of the property insurance business in Florida (really, who can blame them?). But it turns out that such a move is easier said than done. 

Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) issued a set of conditions for State Farm’s withdrawal, and there’s one condition in particular that has become a sticking point. In essence, the OIR would like to free State Farm agents from captivity and allow them to sell policies from other insurers.  

“That’s not something we’re willing to do because that’s in direct conflict with our business model,” State Farm spokesman Chris Neal told the Tampa Tribune. “It’s been a very successful business model.”

You can’t argue that it has been a successful business model, but I’m scratching my head about State Farm’s reluctance to give their agents the freedom to sell from carriers. In this month’s issue of the Property Insurance Report (subscription required), Brian Sullivan opined that customer service and potential damage to the State Farm brand were likely concerns. 

But Florida insurance officials see a larger problem if these agents aren’t set free: the already precarious state-run insurer would have to shoulder more risk.

“If those agents are not allowed to write new business for companies other than State Farm and Citizens, that leaves Citizens as the only alternative,” said OIR spokesman Ed Domansky. “That’s just not acceptable.”

As always, readers, your thoughts are welcome. Leave a comment below.

1. Zappos is an online clothing retailer.
2. Zappos is an online clothing retailer that pays for shipping both ways.
3. Zappos is an online clothing retailer that is committed to customer service.
4. Zappos is an online clothing retailer that is so committed to service that it makes it an integral part of company culture.
5. Zappos is an online clothing retailer that is so wildly committed to service that it once broke its own return policy and let a woman return shoes that she had purchased for her mother before she died. In addition to arranging for UPS to pick up the shoes after the official return window had expired, they sent the grieving daughter flowers.

Last week I blogged about the importance of being purple. With this post, I give you an example of a company that could have been another brown cow in the e-commerce pasture but decided to be a purple cow. As you can see, the first three items on the list are brown cow material. The fourth is verging into purple territory. The fifth, of course, is a brilliant purple.

Maybe this would be a good exercise for your company: start with a bland statement like the one that begins this post but substitute your agency’s name and industry. Then start adding as much truthful detail as you can. How far can you go? Do you venture into purple territory?

Why should I care? I used to think this was a rude statement (my mother forbade us from saying “I couldn’t care less”)…but I recently discovered it is the most important question to answer in the selling process.

Our CEO recently recommended that I meet with someone who had been calling on him. Because the CEO recommended it, I, of course, agreed.

I didn’t have much background about the product but the sales person had even less ability to sell. I learned an important, if not obvious, step in selling. The very first step in selling is making sure the prospect understands why they should care.

No matter how great your product is, no matter how current the technology is, no matter how many other people love it, no matter how many features it has, no matter how slick the demo is, and, the very worst, no matter how good you or your company is … it doesn’t matter if the prospect doesn’t know how or why the product could help them.

In this particular sales call, the woman used all her internal jargon to explain the product, but that meant nothing to me. I needed to hear why I should care in plain English. If you can’t explain what your product does without using industry-specific terms, you won’t reach many in your audience and I’m not sure you understand your product very well.

In this situation, I really wanted to hear how this product could help me, since the CEO recommended it to me, but in the end, I let the saleswoman go on with her spiel and ended the call as quickly as I could. I have the nagging thought it was a missed opportunity for both of us.

Every day, a plant or animal species quietly goes extinct. The same goes for professions. Take wainwrights, for example.

Back in the day, when people traveled by horse-drawn wagon, they paid wainwrights to keep their wagons and carriages rolling smoothly. Henry Ford’s Model T forced these specialists to find new work.

Ice cutting—that’s another line of work that fell victim to advancing technology (refrigeration). Paid journalists may be the next to face extinction, their demise hastened by bloggers who write for nothing. Closer to home, Seth Godin mused recently on the disappearance of agents:

Travel agents… gone.
Stock brokers… gone.
Real estate brokers… in trouble. Photographer’s agents, too.
Literary agents?

The problem with being a helpful, efficient but largely anonymous middleman is pretty obvious. Someone can come along who is cheaper, faster and more efficient. And that someone might be the customer aided by a computer.

Let’s face it: each year, more consumers get comfortable buying insurance online, directly from the source and without meeting an agent first. That’s the harsh truth. But does that mean that the insurance agent will go the way of the wainwright? Not necessarily, but for insurance agents to stay in the game, they’ve got the raise their game. Godin:

Middlemen add value when they bring taste or judgment or trust to bear on a transaction that isn’t transparent. … To thrive in a world of self-service, agents have to hyperspecialize, have to stand for something, have to have the guts to say no far more than they say yes. No, you can’t publish this book. No I won’t represent you. No, don’t take that flight. No, I won’t sell this house, it’s overpriced, list it yourself. [Emphasis added]

One of the most important concepts that Seth Godin has popularized is the need to be remarkable—as remarkable as a ‘purple cow’ standing in a field of ordinary brown cows. (If you haven’t read Godin’s book “Purple Cow,” buy it from Amazon.)

If there ever was a time to be purple purple, for insurance agents, this is it.

• Bonus link: Wikipedia’s list of defunct occupations

Email is a great tool that can boost productivity and make life easier, but without regular diligence, it can also rule your days and haunt your dreams.

Which brings us to ‘Inbox Zero,’ an approach to managing email developed by quasi-web-celebrity Merlin Mann, who catalogues various productivity tips on his site, 43folders.com.

The point of Inbox Zero is twofold: reduce clutter and get s**t done. If you’re like most, inbox clutter is something you’re familiar with—go ahead a do a count: how many messages are currently in your inbox? How many of those are dated or unimportant? How many are mission critical?

My guess is that a truly important message is sandwiched between the back-and-fourth you had with the guys about the NCAA tourney.

In many cases, action starts with email. That means that if you don’t have a good system of email organization, less stuff gets done.

As the name implies, Inbox Zero holds an empty inbox as its goal. This does not mean deleting important messages or coming up with elaborate yet useless filing systems. It means doing one of five things each time you get an email.

• Delete
• Delegate
• Respond
• Defer
• Do

(Not to be confused with the 5 Ds of dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge.)

All too often—and I’m as guilty as anyone—email languishes unattended, and the longer it goes without action, the greater the chance that an important message will get ignored or accidentally deleted.

What do you think? Want more information on this Inbox Zero business? Get it from the source.

Lastly, I can’t resist putting in a plug for our Agent Connection lead organization tool. Get all of your leads in one place (far, far away from your dangerously cluttered inbox) and flag them for follow-up, archive and write notes. Learn more about the Agent Connection.

A coworker and I recently attended a lunch-hour marketing seminar here in Denver. Well, it was billed as a seminar, but it was more of a product demonstration. (The company hosting the lunch makes printers and copiers.)

We knew going into the event that the ‘free lunch’ hook meant that it wasn’t going to be a pure learning or networking opportunity, but we wanted to get out of the office, and we were determined to leave the lunch with one thing—just one thing—that we could honestly say we learned. And we did.

When we arrived, we approached the sign-in table and gave our names. Then we received some rather spiffy pre-made name tags. No Sharpie on a white sticker—no, this was pretty cool. They were well designed, with our names actually a part of the graphic. We were impressed.

While we ate our lunch, one of the speakers from the company showed us how he made the name tags using their own proprietary software. Then he handed out a calendar to each attendee (there were about 30 of us) with our names emblazoned on the top. The letters of each of our names were made out of snow. (It’s hard to explain—it was a mountain scene and the letters were three dimensional and made of snow.)

So yeah, they were trying to sell their software, but they made a great demonstration of the power of personalization. Personalization is a form of flattery—which, as everyone knows, will get you very far. When we saw our names, we were thrilled that they had taken the time to give us a personalized gift. And that was their point—people love to see their own names. We appreciate and respect it when strangers take the time to learn them and use them.

After all, we all see ourselves as individuals, not as faceless customers.

We recently invited three local insurance agents to the office for lunch. We wanted to get their thoughts on our service, the lead industry in general and whatever else they felt like discussing.

While we’ve been discouraged by some of our agents’ antics, these three agents, it was clear, were of the highest caliber, and the discussion was worth ten-times the amount we spent on sandwiches from Udi’s deli. (Next time we’ll be sure to splurge on Maggiano’s.)

One of the attendees, a health agent named Jerry, inspired us with his approach to working leads. He said he treats every lead as an asset—even the ones that don’t convert. If you treat the ones you don’t sell with gratitude and understanding, he said, you’ll have earned their respect, and that in itself can generate a referral, turning a “worthless” lead into a lead generator.

In a sense, Jerry acknowledges that every lead is a potential advocate. Treat them as such, and you’ll soon have a legion of advocates doing your marketing for you. Makes sense to me.

Throughout the hour-long meeting we received welcome praise and equally welcome criticism. On the praise side, the agents agreed that we offered great lead volume and quality, excellent service, and useful tools (notably, the Agent Connection lead management application). On the criticism side, they said it’s tough to sell a lead that’s matched to more than four agents, and all three agreed that our filters are awesome but too expensive.

After the lunch was over, it was agreed that we ought to host such ‘lunch and learns’ regularly. Although we talk to our agents on the phone every day and survey them on a regular basis, there’s just no substitute for face-to-face interaction.

Whether you consider it your morning coffee or a mouthpiece for leftist propaganda, National Public Radio (NPR) can rake in money like no other, and we could all learn a thing or two from them.

Slate.com contributor June Thomas has an excellent piece that dissects the “cunning genius” of NPR’s pledge drives, and her article inspired this blog post.

While you’re not a non-profit media organization, the principles that NPR uses to raise cash are the very same ones that will help you build your for-profit insurance agency.

Here they are:

Know your market. NPR knows exactly who they’re talking to: middle- to upper-middle-class people who drive Volvos and bring their own shopping bags to the grocery store. Can you come up with a similarly specific portrait of your average client? The better picture you have, the better you can tailor your marketing message.

Give a gift. NPR understands the law of reciprocity. They give away their product for free and then oh-so-subtly shame people into paying for it later. While you can’t exactly give away a car insurance policy, you can give a smaller gift. Recently I saw that an insurance agency in Denver was giving away free atlases in exchange for coming in and getting a quote. Perfect. The law of reciprocity holds that when you give something, people feel social pressure to give something back.

Raise the stakes. NPR does this by pushing the notion that you’re not simply giving money to a radio station—you’re contributing to a cause, joining a community, saving journalism, etc. You can raise the stakes too. Try to instill the idea in prospects that they are not just buying a insurance: they are getting an advocate (you, the agent), building a safety net, gaining valuable peace of mind, supporting a local business, etc.

Use social proof. During pledge week, public radio hosts constantly update you with who has just donated. Often they include a quote from the person explaining why he/she made the donation. “Kathy from Englewood just pledged $120, saying she couldn’t make her morning commute without Steve Inskeep’s comforting baritone.” Hearing about other people pledging makes others more likely to pony up.

Be awesome. The last way you can be like NPR (and this is where I reveal my radio-listening bias) is to be really good at what you do—so good that people give you money even when they don’t have to.

If you ever want a readable and accurate description of any aspect of the financial crisis, check if Joe Nocera has written anything about it.

Nocera writes the Talking Business column for the NY Times, and his latest description of AIG’s outsized role in our current morass is a veritable must-read. It will help you get a better idea of what a ‘credit-default swap’ is and, more importantly, why they were (and still are) so destructive.

Nocera’s article will raise your hackles when you learn just how irresponsible AIG was, and how despite (and because of) that irresponsibility, they are currently the largest benefactor of U.S. government bailout funds—$150 billion since September. In essence, AIG thought it could get away with collecting insurance premiums (in this case, fees from issuing credit default swaps) without paying out any claims. (The lesson: bad things happen when insurance isn’t regulated.) But enough preamble. Read the article.