Do you ever get the feeling that insureds aren’t totally psyched to hear from their insurance agent? When you call them, do they have less than 30 seconds for you? In order to get to the good stuff of being their insurance concierge we need clients to open up and spend a bit of time with us. We are people too! The challenge we all face is without a willing insured, how can we do our best jobs and live our best lives ever? The bottom line is, in customer service and in sales, the ball is in our court to get the person to open up.
The Biggest Myth In Customer Service
It’s time for the truth bomb to drop. Giving great customer service is not about doing what the customer thinks they want. It’s staying strong to your process that delivers the best result. Let’s use an analogy. Say you go to the dentist and you tell them you don’t have much time and want nothing to do with drills or pain. They say, “sure, no problem,” and completely ignore your cavity. Now you need dentures. They pleased you today, but when you go to reach for your Fixadent you aren’t so happy. Well, the same is true for insurance. We need to stay true to our process and our goals to drive the best result.
Just because a client starts the call with ‘how long will this take?’ don’t give up! It just means you need to go into customer service ninja mode. You can easily translate:
“How long is this going to take?” means “I see absolutely no value in this call.”
Rather than appease them so they continue to see little to no value in speaking with you, we need to CONVERT THEM!
For many service people we are taught to serve, the customer is always right, don’t be too pushy. I’m here to say we need to follow our process because their protection is our responsibility. That means sometimes we have to tell them things they don’t want to hear, but when we show VALUE people listen.
So your main goal is to take someone who isn’t seeing value and work with them to show your worth.
What Are The Reasons People Are Not Interested In Connecting On Their Insurance?
In Dave Siekman’s recent e-book he talks about why people don’t return your calls. In order to fix the problem we first must define it:
- When agencies have done little to market to their existing clients, the client may not know who you really are, or think this is only a sales call.
- We are inserting ourselves into their day. We simply cannot expect that everyone is waiting around their phone for their agent to call them once per year.
- If you have never made renewal calls, the client could be wondering, ‘What is this about? If it’s important the company would have told me.”
- We missed the opportunity to control the call; the client jumped out and beat us to controlling the call. Now we have to defend our value.
- Something could be more pressing, and the client didn’t mean to pick up the phone.
We have to switch our thinking. We are trying to get a result not just a response, right?
So when you get “I’m busy” or “How long will this take” you have to identify this as one of two things:
- This really is a bad time
- This really is a blow off (Here is a great article on too busy)
Bad timing is easy. The person clearly sees the value but it’s inconvenient this second. A simple response is to connect at a mutually agreed upon better time.
If it’s a blow off, your main mission is to take 3 attempts to show your value before you politely move on.
Steps To Breaking Through To These People
You Start By Controlling the Call and Adding Value IMMEDIATELY
Introducing yourself is nice for sure, but if you are calling someone you have only a minimal relationship with, you need to start by adding immediate value. This also means in order to add immediate value you need to stop asking people “Is now a good time to talk?” What a great way for the client to have an out on the call before we even begin. Instead we need to take a confident approach.
“Hi NAME, this is Kelly, your POLICY NAME Insurance Agent from AGENCY NAME. I wanted to give you a call, because with the recent hurricane we have had a lot of clients with questions. I wanted to take a moment to see if you had any questions on how your insurance would work in the event of a tree falling or water damage to your home. Did you know… “Go into one tidbit”.
The key is to start to get them talking. Add value first.
Another option is “Hi NAME, this is Kelly, your POLICY NAME Insurance Agent from AGENCY NAME. Your renewal is coming up and I wanted to review a few discounts with you. Everyone could use a bit of savings on their insurance. May I ask you a few questions?”
You want make sure you control the call first so you can break the ice and show your value.
Humor Always Works
While you don’t want your call to be a stand-up comic show, adding in some humor is a big step. When you can become engaging and enthralling, that always works. If humor isn’t your thing then, make sure you are storing client details in your management system. This always instantly breaks the ice. Try for things like:
- Kids’ names
- Pets
- Favorite vacation spots
- Hobbies
- Sports teams
When a call starts off like a friend is calling, it can only go up from there.
Tone of Voice
We all think we have a positive upbeat tone. I can tell you just based on the number of agencies I get to interact with, we all DO NOT. If you leave a message or call someone and sound disappointed when they pick up, great news, that call is not starting off in your control. When the client is an inconvenience we all have problems. Focus on sounding positive, clear and on a mission to help.
Stop Taking It Personally
In far too many agencies I see it. We spend more time talking about the one call that was rushed and less on the ones that we hit home runs on. Imagine you have 20 calls in a day and 2 seem rushed and uninterested ….Awesome! You crazy!
90% of your calls were awesome and 2 people started the journey to get to know you better. Put your positive pants on!
