Daily sales & marketing tips for insurance professionals

My wife and I insure our cars and home with Safeco (which, as it happens, is now teamed up with the awesome Liberty Mutual) and we bought our combo policy through The Denver Agency, a well established and respected independent agency located in, you guessed it, Denver, Colorado.

When we decided to consolidate our home and auto policies last year (we had been insuring our cars direct with Progressive), our agent was incredibly helpful and responsive, and the process went smoothly.

Point for The Denver Agency.

However, where The Denver Agency comes up short, and I’m looking at this as both a client and a student of marketing and customer service, is in conveying the sense that they care about me. To be sure, every time I call or email, I get excellent and attentive service. But the rest of the time there is … silence. No communication whatsoever.

For some consumers, this is just how they want it: forget the boring newsletters and mail-merged holiday cards, they say, just get me covered and leave me alone.

While I can understand this point of view, I think it’s risky for agencies to assume that it is widespread. I would venture that most consumers want to have some kind of regular interaction with their agent or agency, even if it’s as simple as a yearly email asking if there’s anything they can do. Such touch points reinforce the relationship, and they give people a reason to stay.

Without any communication, consumers are left to wonder if the agency takes their business for granted, and such thoughts, needless to say, prevent any kind of loyalty from developing. My experience is case in point: to put it bluntly, inertia is perhaps the only thing keeping my wife and I with the Denver Agency, and while inertia is a powerful thing, it’s not something a business should bank on.

Earlier this year, J.D. Powers’ surveyed independent agents, asking them to rate their satisfaction with their insurers. The survey results revealed that “agent satisfaction typically increases the more often agents interact with the business contact from their insurance company. Agents prefer to receive business contacts via phone or e-mail at least once or twice a month.”

As a matter of fact, independent agents value their relationships with their carriers more than their compensation.

Consumers are the same as agents. We all want to feel valued, connected. Regular touches can create this feeling, generating satisfaction and loyalty in the process.

You know the saying ‘it never hurts to ask’? Seth Godin recently blogged about this phrase and he added some caveats, namely that it does hurt to ask sometimes—that is, when you don’t have permission to.

Godin, a prolific writer and web entrepreneur, popularized the concept of ‘permission marketing,’ a revolutionary yet simple idea that holds that you need to get people’s permission before you can successfully market your services to them. Note the ‘successfully’ in the previous sentence. You can shill for your product or service to anyone on the street, anyone with an email account, telephone, television or front door, but you won’t be successful unless you establish a relationship first.

Godin’s conception of permission marketing isn’t some warm and fuzzy notion that requires you to sacrifice old-school effectiveness for new-school niceties. In fact, permission marketing is all about being more effective. It’s about being more precise and less indiscriminate. “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t,” says Godin. To give you an example, permission marketing is about trading the 2 percent response rate of direct mail for a 90 percent response rate among a highly targeted group that is willing to hear from you.

Permission can be built on something as simple as an introduction. It can be based on a gift. The point is, if you ask before you’ve earned it, you’ll hear a dial tone, or the digital equivalent—which is the sound of someone clicking the spam button.

Godin: “If you run into Elton John at the diner and say, ‘Hey Elton, will you sing at my daughter’s wedding?’ it hurts any chance you have to get on Elton John’s radar. You’ve just trained him to say no, you’ve taught him you’re both selfish and unrealistic.”

And what about insurance leads? Do you have permission to ask for the sale the minute the lead arrives in your email inbox? The good agents realize that while they’re dealing a targeted prospect, they do not quite have permission yet. A warm and professional introduction coupled with a demonstrated willingness to answer questions is usually all it takes to establish a permission-based relationship with a lead.

Still, deciding when to ask—knowing when you’ve secured permission—is a tricky thing that relies on intuition more than anything else.

We’re not in the business of reinventing the wheel here at the Agent Blog, so we’re going back to basics with these tips. You’ll find nothing fancy or groundbreaking. There will be no new buzz words or clever metaphors. But if you can master each of these directives, you will be an unstoppable sales force.

Demonstrate authority by showing your thorough knowledge of your industry and products. Authority is persuasive.

Provide social proof. Use the words of past clients when possible. On your web site, in your email signature, etc. Tell a story about how you saved someone a bundle of money.

Be honest. Do what you say you’re going to do, etc, etc.

Be nice. It’s amazing how far nice will get you.

Be generous. Go out of your way to do something for the client. He or she will feel an obligation to reciprocate.

Work on your tone. This should be at the top of the list. Take your cue from barbers and hairdressers—seriously.

Go for the early up-sell. This may make the original quote seem more reasonable.

Keep your message simple and sticky. Even if you have 10 great reasons why the prospect should buy your product, give three. People can hold three bits of information. Give them ten and they’ll retain nothing.

Send notes. Even to those that got away—they will be pleasantly surprised and may just change their minds.

Ask for the sale. (Hey, you’d be surprised … )

As always, your comments are encouraged. What did I miss?

It’s tough to sell insurance when you’d rather be in bed watching TV and eating Cheetos. Your sales pitch will lack that necessary enthusiasm and urgency.

Let’s face it: Winter is not for the faint of heart. Even the heartiest among us experience a mental dip in these cold and dark months, and those susceptible to seasonal affective disorder (SAD) experience a drastic and prolonged decline in mood. SAD affects 11 million Americans, according to WebMD.

Good news: there are a few simple things you can do to boost your mood in the winter.

Marc Salem writes a column called “Mind Control” for Men’s Health magazine. He recommends a few “mental fakeouts” to trick your sunlight-starved brain into a brighter state. His mood hacks: Listen to a favorite tune, put on a blue shirt (naturally relaxing), and sniff a lemon. Another tip, which sounds ridiculous but is supported by a couple of scientific studies, is to force a smile. Doing so may trigger an actual physiological response. Just don’t walk around with a big fake grin. That’s a little creepy.

You might also consider taking a walk during your lunch break, especially if it’s a sunny day. Not only does physical activity help raise spirits, the sun’s rays will deliver much-needed vitamin D to your body. Vitamin D is associated with mood. You can also increase your vitamin D intake by eating fatty fish (salmon and tuna, for example) and milk.

Raise your mood, increase your effectiveness, boost profits. Go!

Comedian-musician-slacker Chris Hardwick has a great article in this month’s Wired magazine on his “flirtations with the 4-hour work week” and other productivity schemes.

As a freelancer with an internet-age attention span, Hardwick maintains a constant struggle to get stuff done. “My days are like eBay shipments: a few tangible things and a whole lot of packing peanuts,” Hardwick explains. “I obviously need help being the boss of me. So I decided to try an experiment: I’d spend two weeks absorbing, in succession, three well-known productivity systems and see if I could find one that worked for those of us who count income in 1099s instead of W-2s.”

Hardwick chose three popular productivity books: David Allen’s Getting Things Done, Julie Morgenstern’s Never Check E-Mail in the Morning, and Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. His article chronicles his progress under their respective teachings. The result is pretty hilarious, particularly the part when he uses Allen’s GTD method to kill a black widow spider living in his drainpipe.

Our mania for productivity has spawned a major industry, and paradoxically, a great wasting of time, especially for people with easy access to the internet, where getting stuff done is known as “lifehacking.” I know from experience—I’ve spent more time than I like to admit on sites like Lifehacker.com and 43Folders.com.

That is not to say that productivity books and web sites aren’t helpful. You just have to realize that it’s easy to become addicted to the idea of productivity—which is, psychologically, a close relative of the idea of utopia.

Utopias will never exist (at least not temporal ones). Nor will total productivity. By all means, read books and try to create more free time for yourself. Most of us could trim some fat from our days. But know when to give up on the idea of total efficiently—chasing after that ideal will only make you really, really, inefficient.