Sounds crazy right? Doing a good job won’t increase your retention. Well if doing a good job won’t help it what will?
The challenge is that today good is not good enough. Good and convenient works well but let’s be really honest, the independent insurance space is no Amazon when it comes to convenience.
Good and cheap work, but for most of us we don’t believe in state minimums so being the cheapest just won’t work.
So how can we get clients to stay, refer and appreciate us?
We have to be better than good. We have to be ridiculously amazing.
Now you may be saying, well my team is Ridiculously Amazing, Kelly. I hear how hard they work every day.
No doubt that hard work is part of the equation, but if they are ONLY serving the clients calling into the agency what about the one’s that aren’t calling? Or if we are only serving the rate increased AND the call ins, what about the people who continue to be loyal and are low service. How are we serving them? Many of your client’s may be indifferent to using you or your competitor. Good deeds only last in someone’s memory so long. In today’s highly competitive environment you need to make sure your clients are not indifferent to your agency.
Here are a few critical exercises you can run with your team to help everyone get their head around the concept:
- Ask your team to discuss the last time they left a vendor or provider that they had been with for 3+ years. Why did they try something new?
- As you are quoting new business ask your opportunity who their current agent is. If they respond with a carrier name they are most likely indifferent to that agency.
- Test it in your agency. How many clients know exactly who to ask for?
We have to realize that insurance is often the last thing on people’s minds to deal with. So we have to insert ourselves into the equation to be Ridiculously Amazing and fight indifference.
Just remember. Our best client demands the least amount of our time, and our worst clients get the most amount of our time.
So how do we tip the scale in our favor? I believe as an independent agent we must bring our services and ourselves to the client. We can’t wait for the client to have a claim or rate increase to become valuable. The reality is most of our clients are walking around every day underinsured and if we don’t bring the relationship to them, they certainly won’t listen when they have had a claim or the rate spiked. We need to instead relentlessly pursue our client’s indifference.
Did you know that 68% of people leave businesses because of indifference? In an industry where renewals are King fighting indifference should be the #1 activity.
So how do you fight indifference? Can you make your clients interact and love you? The answer is yes! Well at least we can do our part.
Our AppX Retention program does just that. We work with your entire team to get them into the habit of contacting clients annually to do a review and educate the client on coverages and other services your agency has to offer. The results are outstanding. Don’t take it from us, just look at our case studies. Or you can review one of our many testimonials.
If you think your team can’t do it because they are too busy. Don’t worry we will help with that too! Don’t let too busy interfere with indifference!
