While you as a CSR might not be directly responsible for selling new business, you are often asked to help the agency develop its book of business. Successful growth in any insurance agency requires you to be in front of buyers when they are ready to buy-not when you are ready to sell.
A common sales practice is to buy or create a prospect list, mail a letter to each prospect on the list, and follow up with a phone call. With this approach, the caller is basically saying, 'I'm ready to sell you something. Are you part of the 25% of business owners who have policies expiring in the next 90 days?' When the prospect says no or fails to respond at all, the agency person making the contact usually loses interest. The agency ends up with an aborted campaign-and a lessened appetite for mass mailing.
Another approach to selling uses telemarketing to gather information and set appointments, which produces better results than hit-or-miss mailings but still has drawbacks. Businesspeople who get a telemarketing call in the middle of the day often feel it as a disruption. Even a prospect who seems interested may fall through the cracks if you cannot get an immediate commitment for an appointment.
A better approach-and one with a proven success rate-is to let the prospects control the process. Let them call you when they are ready to by. Rather than feeling pressured, they will feel comfortable and more open to the sale.
Steady as She Goes
The key to this approach is finding a way to have the prospect think of your agency when he or she is ready to buy. But how do you establish a relationship with the prospect without being intrusive or spending a lot of money?
By polite, consistent communication. Mail a series of letters at regular intervals to your prospects. In each letter, remind them that a previous letter was sent, introduce one concept (some useful information on insurance, or maybe something to help them grow their business), and promise a subsequent letter on a particular date. While giving them business tips or educating them, you are developing your own name recognition.
This results in a stronger relationship-and a stronger likelihood that the prospects will call you the next time they face an immediate insurance need. Calling you demonstrates a level of commitment unachievable by telemarketing or other forms of advertising.
Some people limit the amount of contact they have with prospects and customers because of the time and money it costs, but it's worth the effort. Polite, continual contact turns cold calls into warm calls-and successful sales. Most agencies and producers give up after two or three contacts, but studies have found that 80% of sales are made after six or more contacts: proof that persistence pays.
A consistent marketing campaign is a laudable goal, you may be thinking, but you may be wondering how to manage it. An automated marketing approach is the answer; in fact, it can help you manage several different campaigns at once. Each day, the system can find the letters scheduled to be mailed and print them out. It can also create follow-up call reports for producers and telemarketers.
A single campaign may be made of many contacts: introductory letters, information reports, invitations (offering more information or personal assessments), requests for an appointment, closing actions, customer-satisfaction surveys, and cross-marketing efforts.
Step by Step
Start plotting your marketing campaign by defining the first contact you plan to make. Include in that a reference to the next contact and how much time should pass before making it. Once you define all contacts that will be made in the campaign, you can create the text for each one. Enter this information into the computer system, either by typing it in or using the data-import utility on a purchased list (or your existing database) of prospects and customers.
At this point, the software takes over. Every day, the operator selects 'automatic follow-up' from the software menu. The system will scan the database for things that must be done that day. If a prospect is scheduled to be sent the third letter in the campaign, the system will print it out and schedule the fourth contact, as defined by campaign strategy. If the prospect needs to be called that day, a call report stating this will go to the CSR or telemarketer. If someone should have been called within the last few days and wasn't, the omission can generate an exception report for management, if so desired.
Relationship marketing is a lot more than software. It is a fully implemented marketing system that any agency can use to create a stream of new customers, without adding additional staff or increasing the workload of the current staff. An automated marketing system allows any agency to follow its plan for success with consistency and care.