Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

How do you reach the leads you receive? By phone? Email? Fax?

What kind of response rate do you get? 10, maybe 20 percent? OK, so what’s your closing ratio?

If you’ve never tried using text messaging to reach leads, you’re missing a lot of business opportunity. According to a July, 2008 survey conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, SMS (Short Message Service) campaigns are the most successful mobile ad medium, with 70 percent of those surveyed responding to marketing text messages.

That’s major when you compare those statistics with only 41 percent responding to a survey and 30 percent to emails.

Why are Americans so open to text messaging as opposed to other forms of communication? According to an article in The New York Times, “SMS is still a relatively uncluttered and spam-free marketing channel. It’s also the one form of communication that many people are tethered to 24/7.”

Consider these facts you may not be aware of:

1. 77 percent of mobile subscribers used text messaging by the end of 2007
2. More people text than make cell phone calls
3. 3.5 billion text messages are sent and received every day
4. Text messages have a 97 percent open rate

Not only does the use of SMS texting allow you to reach your leads quickly, getting the jump on your competition; it’s also well received by a majority of Americans, as you can see from the statistics above.

But besides the advantages to the consumer, text messaging has many advantages for you as the insurance agent, too. As the New York Times says, “…Its platform, when used correctly, becomes as much an extension of a client’s customer relationship management system as its marketing strategy.”

Indeed, this venue of communication allows you to contact the consumer, provide a quote, gain new business and follow up for months or even years afterward. And, after a period of time, you can again use text messaging to contact your client, ask if he or she would like to re-shop rates, conduct an annual review or even purchase another type of insurance.

That’s right, I smell an upsell!

Other benefits to insurance agents include:

• Low-cost means of marketing
• Increased customer loyalty
• Ability to track leads to sales
• Help in driving ROI

With more people than ever using cell phones as a communication hub these days, text messaging provides the perfect solution for reaching today’s leads. Give it a try, and let us know the results.

For any of our readers who are new to the business, the seasoned veterans among us can relate one simple fact: selling insurance isn’t easy. 

What makes it so difficult? You have to find the right customers, get them to take the time to listen to your pitch, convince them they need what you’re selling, and finally, get them to commit to actually buying.

It takes time and determination to work potential clients through all those steps. And often, just when you think you’ve got them snagged and they’re ready to sign on the dotted line, they wind up slipping through your fingers anyway.

No matter how long you’ve been selling insurance, you’re no doubt learning some things along the way. For instance, you know you have to establish trust and rapport with your clients up front before they’re likely to proceed through the sales process.

Maybe you’re learning to read your clients’ body language so you can gauge what they’re thinking and overcome their objections before they reject the sale. Or maybe you’ve learned some effective closing strategies that have really paid off.

Here at InsureMe, we’re grateful to have wonderful relationships with the agents on our network. And over the years, we’ve been privy to a few sales tips that have helped them become successful.

Now, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned with you. We hope you’ll take these tips to heart, try them out, and let us know the results!

Sales Tip #1: Know your product well. Not knowing a product’s features and benefits will cause you to lose credibility with potential clients and could cost you the sale.

Sales Tip #2: Have confidence in yourself. The more professional and confident you appear and sound, the more credibility you’ll gain with leads.

Sales Tip #3: Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Empathy can put you on level ground with clients and help you establish a great relationship that leads to a sale.

Sales Tip #4: Learn to listen. A prospect who feels you aren’t hearing their concerns isn’t likely to trust you enough to do business with you.

Sales Tip #5: Offer options. Rather than asking clients what they want, present them with two or three options they can choose from. Even if they choose the cheapest one, they’re more likely to buy if they feel the choice is theirs.

Sales Tip #6: Drop the jargon. Use laymen’s terms to describe what you’re selling and don’t overwhelm the customer with boring insurance terms they won’t understand anyway.

Now it’s your turn. What works for you? Have you recently stumbled across a sales technique that seems to work every time? Please leave us a comment and let us know.

Though different methods work for different people, we can all learn from one another by sharing–and become a little better at what we do.

If you’re a young agent well versed in using the Web for business, you’re probably familiar with online social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Sites like these hold much promise for the future, as insurance customers wander around online, chat with friends and business associates and talk about their lives.

Why not make insurance part of that discussion? And why not meet customers online, right where they are, and do business where they’re most comfortable? 

According to the Auto Insurance Report, insurance companies like State Farm are joining the world of social networking, attempting to connect with and service customers all over the country.

And sites like these aren’t just for young people and companies anymore–or for corporations. Small agencies and individual agents are also finding their voice in social media, amidst everyone else looking for a piece of the pie. There they can answer questions, dispell myths, offer service and talk about breaking news in the insurance industry that might affect their customers.

Rather than pretending their clients have nothing but good to say about them and tuning any negative remarks out, insurers are wise to listen up, participate in the discussion and know what’s being asked and said about them online. This immediately puts them on the offense, rather than the defense, and offers the opportunity to inform, engage and connect with  customers–instead of playing damage control after the fact.

Not only that, but by tweeting on Twitter or posting comments on their Facebook wall that link back to their own Web sites, agents who participate in social media strategies can increase their business by driving potential customers who need insurance directly to their own contact information.

Are you using online social media sites to increase business opportunity? If you’ve never made use of sites like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook in growing your business, we recommend you check them out. If you have, drop us a comment and let us know how it’s working out for you.

Though it does take some time and effort to establish a “following” of existing and potentially new customers, it could be well worth the time you put into it when examining your bottom line.

More Information:

Using Social Networking in Business 101

Using Social Networking for Business

Are you a young P&C agent or broker, age 40 or under, who’d like a chance to voice your opinions on the industry? 

What do you really think about the business? Do you have ideas you could share about technology, sales or how to make the job better?

If so, now’s your chance. In case you haven’t heard, you can voice your opinion by weighing in through the Insurance Journal’s Young Agents Survey.

Performed exclusively online, the survey consists of 26 questions on opportunities, attitudes, management issues and the soft market. It takes only a few minutes to participate, and you never know what changes might come as a result of getting involved.

Get what you’re feeling off your chest. Today’s the deadline, so take the Young Agents Survey now–and become an agent for change!

Are you a note taker? Could you keep Post-It Notes in business, with sticky notes stuck everywhere you go to remind you of important details and events?

Or would you, like me, be lost without your Outlook calendar?

Most of us have some sort of system to help us stay organized. And whether we use a pen and paper or our computer to keep track of things, whatever system we use needs to help us build value in our work and, above all, save time. 

If you have a time management strategy, how efficient is yours? And is it really working for you? If not, I have a suggestion that could help you get and stay organized, courtesy of Scott Simmonds of the Insurance Journal.

Today Scott offered some advice that really makes sense. In his article, Time Wise: The To Do List on Steroids, he suggests making four separate lists to help you stay focused, in both your business and personal life.

Before you panic and object because you can’t get through one list, relax! Scott broke it down like this, so you can work on one list at a time and actually accomplish something.

1. A Reminder List: A place to list everything you do every day and everything you need to do sometime soon. These are business and personal tasks. You either handle, postpone or delete each item as it ”pops up” in your to-do list.
2. A Do-Not-Do list: These are items that could steal your time and attention– if you let them.  They’re issues you shouldn’t get involved in because they no longer provide value, they’re a waste of your time, they don’t pay off, or you can delegate them to someone else.
3. A Mission Activities List: Urgent activities that require your attention and are important right now. A prioritization of your reminder list that helps you get the most important things done first, then move on to the others later.
4. A Success Activities List: These are important, long-term activities that aren’t time sensitive but make your life better in the long run.

If you have a hard time accomplishing anything, read Scott’s article and try his method of time management. Hopefully, it will increase the value of your work, make you more productive, save you time–and help you make more money.

Given that we all want to sell more policies in a shorter period of time, I thought it would be good to identify lead management businesses that can help.  Did you know that InsureMe has partnered with several insurance raters and lead management systems?  These include lead management systems, sometimes called ‘LMS’ systems,  and comparative raters, also referred to as ‘quoting engines’. These applications can all help you build a powerful book of business.

A  few quick definitions: 

Lead Management Systems, LMS, contain several features that enable agents to better manage their leads.  The LMS assists agents in managing the marketing and sales process operations for optimization and increased conversions.  In addition, an LMS performs agency management and tracking of a variety of potential outcomes.  Typically, using an LMS gives agents the ability to handle more leads and accept more volume from an internet lead provider (like InsureMe)  than if they were not using an LMS. 

 Comparative Raters (or quoting engines) take leads that are sent to them and create an automated quote – speedily, accurately, and conveniently. Comparative raters calculate a given insurance risk and rate across multiple insurance carriers to allow the agent to compare policies available. Comparative raters are primarily used by independent insurance agents and can be PC based or Web based.  Along with the companies that serve the independents, we partner with company specific quoting systems such as Progressive, Farmers, State Farm quoting engines.  

 Our desire and our plan is to decrease the time it takes you to get from lead coming in the door, to selling a policy.  Using a lead management system and a quoting engine will help you get to that customer faster and enhance your ability to convert the lead into a sale.  Check out our partner listing for more information about rating engines and LMS systems.

Ah…vacation…..doesn’t that sound nice right about now? I’m thinking of a trip that includes a lounge chair…a good book… and quiet. I’m not headed out-of-town this holiday season, but thinking maybe Spain in the spring…

 Okay…back to work. With the holidays fast approaching, I want to take a moment to discuss the option of placing your account on a “vacation” hold. Some of you may be wondering when you last took a vacation; especially some of the new insurance agents. 

 Placing your account on vacation status doesn’t mean you are actually taking a vacation, setting an account to vacation status can be used for a couple of reasons: actually taking a vacation and the need to stop the leads for a period of time or placing a temporary freeze on the account to catch up with the leads. For whatever reason, you can place a hold on your account by setting the account status to vacation.

 You can access your account online anytime and set vacation start and stop dates. Simply go to http://agent.insureme.com, logon to your InsureMe account, click on the Account tab and click on Set Vacation.

 I’d love to hear you if have an upcoming trip to an exciting location. Safe travels!

Do you sometimes feel managed by your leads? Are you tired, run-down, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? Oops, sorry….I started thinking of Vitameatavegamin from I Love Lucy…that was a great episode.

Our veteran agents may remember when InsureMe used to fax the leads to them, before the Internet. You probably had to file the paper fax once quoted. Time has certainly changed, and with the advent of the Internet, more consumers are now comparison shopping. More shoppers may lead to more leads, and with this, a difficulty in managing them.

We do understand there are more facets to an insurance agent than just quoting rates, and that your time is valuable. Therefore, for those who may not be aware, lead management systems/comparison raters/quoting systems may be an option in managing your time and leads.

The following overview is courtesy of InsureMe’s Lead Management Specialist:

Lead Management Systems (LMS) contain several features that enable agents to better manage their leads. An LMS will assist agents in managing marketing and sales operations for optimization and increased conversions.

In addition, LMS performs agency management and tracking. Typically, agents using an LMS are able to handle more leads and accept more volume than if they were not using an LMS.

Comparative raters (or raters) assess the given insurance risk across multiple insurance carriers for comparison. Comparative raters are primarily used by independent insurance agents and can be PC- or Web-based.

Quoting engines are used to generate multiple, automated quotes for ease and convenience. InsureMe has integrated with several company quoting engines to decrease the time it takes to quote consumers.

Sounds great, don’t you think?  Check out InsureMe’s LMS and quoting partners.

Don’t turn to Vitameatavegamin to cope with your leads successfully. Please stay tuned for a listing of our lead integration partners, available on the agent site soon!

Blue Cross Blue Shield now uses Twitter as another customer service channel. You might consider doing the same.

What’s Twitter? It’s a web site that lets you share 140-character messages with your friends and followers. For those who use Facebook: it’s essentially Facebook stripped down to the status-update feature.

More and more companies are using the tool to connect with their customers, and the best among them, like BCBS, use the site less for aggressive marketing than for customer service and low-intensity PR.

(The companies that simply use it as a platform to say how great they are typically quit after a short period, realizing that few people are interested.)

Here are a few other examples of how organizations are using Twitter:

• During the height of the Swine Flu scare, the CDC used regular ‘tweets’ with sober, straightforward information in the midst of a media-fueled panic.
• The Kitchen, a high-end restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, uses the service update followers on their latest culinary concoction.
• Novelist and journalist Susan Orlean updates followers on her life as a writer, generating buzz about her upcoming book in the process.

Twitter can serve as a useful signaling strategy—it conveys a sense of technological savvy, accessibility and even a modicum of hipness. In the case of BCBS, it conveys the sense that, with every new technology, they’re going to try to use it to help their customers.

There’s a lot of hype around Twitter, about its promise and the prospect of parlaying a Twitter account into a glorious money-making and popularity-generating venture.

Problem: if you approach the service with that mentality, you’re probably going to do it wrong, get discouraged and give up.

The real promise of Twitter is that it’s another way to connect with your clients and provide something of value, and like any social endeavor, you get what you give.

Most agents have no qualms about asking a client for a referral, but what about asking for a friendly Yelp? Depending on where you do business, the latter might be more lucrative.

Yelp.com is web site where people can post and read reviews of local businesses, from unruly dive bars to starched CPAs. Since starting in San Francisco and few years ago, the site has grown exponentially, gathering adherents in every major city in the country, and even one across the pond.

For whatever reason, Yelp emerged from the thicket of local-review web sites as the clear winner, and every day people invest millions of hours writing helpful, funny and cool reviews. Businesses, in turn, spend an increasing amount of time monitoring what people are saying, for both PR purposes and market research.

Because of the site’s popularity and the strong influence of social proof, a positive review from a credible Yelper can generate a tsunami of new business, and while the majority of reviews are of food and retail establishments, more and more people are writing about their experiences in the insurance and financial services realm.

So I recommend registering your agency with Yelp and encouraging your favorite clients to write a review.

Think about the possibility of being able to say this to a prospect: “I pride myself on my dedication to my clients; check out what people have said about my customer service on Yelp.”

That would be persuasive!