LIFE INSURANCE PROSPECTING
TRAVEL BUSINESS
The love of travel shared by many people can bring lots of insurance business. Here is a simple, two-step process that can be used as an effective prospecting tool to bring new accounts to your agency, and develop Life business from your existing insureds.
First, create a chronological file of trip or travel dates of prospects. There are many ways to build such data. You might have an enclosure in the agency's outgoing mail, offering a gift-key chain, maps, household inventory forms, safety tips-for a few answers about pending trips. CSRs and P/C producers could ask each person about vacation plans during any conversation, also offering a gift. You could advertise in the local media. And you could arrange for travel agencies to relate your gift offer, perhaps as a joint service. (Some P/C agencies use travel as a primary business builder; that's a topic for a future issue.) After you've gathered a list of prospects, agency insureds should be identified (perhaps by number-code or color-coded cards) and distinguished from non-clients.
Next, the service offered is a review of all insurance policies-P/C, Life, Health-as a service to the prospect. (You may want to charge, for example, $10 to $25 for the service, then waive the fee to return it if the prospect becomes a client; check that there are no problems with anti-rebate or other laws.) Staff or producers will pick up all policies (except those already written through your agency, of course). A premium calendar can be made; it will be handy all year, showing each policy's premium due date and each premium.
Your staff will check to see that no coverages will be in danger of lapsing while the travelers are away, and also advise about the potential problems. For example, many Medical Expense plans-HMOs, PPOs, Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, and the employers' self-funded plans-reduce, restrict, or even exclude coverages away from home areas. It is important, therefore, to review Group certificates of coverage, as well as policies.
A Life/Health producer will also examine the Life policies, of course, to identify possible improvements. There will probably be many; hardly any existing Life program is beyond serious improvement potential. Many participating policies have serious dollars fast asleep, unknown to their owners, in the form of accumulated dividends or in cash values of paid-up additions. Life producer(s) should address these, and many other, potentials for service.
Picking up Life policies for review is 90% of the sale, according to many managers. This is a timely, practical way to achieve that step on a service basis.
Life producers often provide better, more up-to-date, less costly insurance programs as a result of such reviews. That's a much-appreciated service at any time, but even more so during a recession.
As other parts of the pre-travel services, you might also provide:
- Tips on loss prevention, such as checklists of household concerns to attend to (mail; newspapers; garbage; lawn care; fire-prevention procedures; timers for lights/identification of important items; and so on);
- inventory forms for household goods, and tips on photo, video, and/ or audiotape inventories; and
- auto-theft prevention tips, as well as safe-driving and property-protection tips, if it's to be a driving trip.
Many companies provide such forms or brochures, and they're also available from commercial sources.
It's also worthwhile to review the P/C coverages, of course. Without belaboring the point, it should be noted that expensive cameras, camcorders, portable computers, or FAX machines and other high-value items can exhaust Homeowners polices' off-premises limits handily. Collision- and Loss-deductible Waivers-two more modern inventions-should be discussed, if appropriate, as well as out-of-state Auto liability requirements. And perhaps scheduled articles should be re-appraised or reviewed, or a trip-travel policy taken.
There are several corollary benefits to pre-trip reviews:
They make an agency stand out; few competitors offer such services in a planned manner. They help prevent E&O suits, since you're going on record as offering a thorough review of all insurance needs. This can be important when an insured has one or more other agents handling coverages, and a gap or overlap causes problems. They create opportunities for follow-up service or prospecting calls, updating the premium calendar to reflect changes that are sure to come.
Most important in terms of Life sales, of course, is that they create favorable conditions to review obsolete policies in a service-oriented way, providing a useful and appreciated result, regardless of whether the prospect buys. It makes a client, or rounds out a line. In that sense, a traveling prospect is a golden prospect.