Hello again to all my friends in the Insurance World! I made it back from Iowa and had a great time while I was out there. I got to meet some really awesome individuals with great agencies and a desire to not only better themselves but to first better their agencies! All told, I walked away with a lot of great contacts and I was very excited to get started with them which leads me into this week’s blog topic of: The Art of the Follow Up!
It’s no surprise that when we go to these events it’s with the hope that we walk away with opportunities that will help grow our business, grow our agency’s business and ultimately promote all of the cool things we are able to do at APP. However, in order to do that we have to sell to these agencies in the same way that you have to sell insurance and without a sales process to follow I’d have to admit I’d be a little lost. The same rule applies to insurance because let’s face it, it’s getting pretty competitive out there!
Follow up is something that I’ve seen many agencies struggle with. The most typical problem we encounter is there is not enough follow up on leads that come through the agency. Whether they are phone calls, walk ins, web leads, or even referrals, I find that these opportunities do not get enough follow up. I commonly hear that we don’t want to be pushy, annoying or overbearing and I absolutely get that. However, did you know that you have about 39% chance of making contact on your first attempt? Not great odds, I admit, but if you know that then you can prepare for that.
I believe in the rule of 6. Every lead should be contacted at least 6 times in a 12 day period before we can rule it out as not interested. The contact attempts don’t always have to be phone calls either. You can use email to send a personalized contact attempt, you could connect with the person via Social Media(Linkedin, Facebook,etc.) or you could also do a drop by. Regardless, the fact remains that you need to try different attempts to get different results.
We recently presented to a group of agents where we discussed the importance of following up and to help illustrate my point I thought it would be great to add some statistics to my blog. I challenge you all to think about these while you are hunting new opportunities.
- An agent has a 93% chance of making contact after 6 attempts versus 39% on the first attempt.
- There is an 87% increase in making contact just between your first attempt and your second attempt.
- Leads that are called within 1 minute of submission are 391% more likely to convert to a new piece of business
- On average, leads that were first contacted after a 24 hour period had a 17% chance of conversion.
You can see that follow up can make a drastic difference to your bottom line. If you are an agent or agency owner who believes you and your staff could use a refresher on follow up or the sales process you’re in luck. It’s challenges like this that allow us to exist today. Give us a call and learn how we can help your agency create an iron clad sales process!
