[Video Blog Transcription)
Hey, it’s Kelly Donahue-Pio here again from Agency Performance Partners. What we’re gonna break down in this video blog is Step One of a Proactive Retention Process better known as AppX Retention.
So, we always, always, always stress to people that the best way to handle these calls is to go into every one with a plan and here’s why: You can’t just distribute a list or hand out downloads and have everybody call, it needs to be super structured and it starts on day one. So, a lot of times we recommend people put activity codes into the management system so you can track account review attempts, account review success. Now, in the account review attempts notes is going to go a little checklist that you need to create, we have samples. That’s part of our program so we can’t give them to you, they’re only for our awesome clients. But if you come up with a checklist, it’s great.
So now if I’m going to do an account review. I just have to answer simple questions: yes or no; cellphone – yes or no; coverages – go list them. What do we need to talk about? You need to find the coverages that needs to be increased. If you find out that they are 50/100, we need to talk about that. And what happens is when you go into the call with a plan of attack, you control that call, you show you’re awesome and you make recommendations that people actually receive. So, there’s a whole list of information that you can go through. You know, who their auto loan is with, who their mortgage loan is with, clean it all up at once. And then the next part is you have all these notes written in and everybody’s doing them super uniformly. That is the key. Because, often times you go into management systems somebody’s note is one way and somebody else’s is another way. People are using weird acronyms that no one understands other them and so when a colleague calls in and you’re at lunch, everyone’s scrambling around. It’s more time, more energy, more stress and going against our whole efforts, right? If everybody’s doing it uniformly, we’re in a good spot.
Now, the next trick is whenever there’s a renewal call being made, that person should be able to be handled by anybody in the agency, right? So, if I call in or you call me, and I call back and you’re at lunch, I can talk to the person next to you because the notes are just that freaking good. And always, always, always there’s got to be a spot for recommended increase, recommended underlines, because when you have to write it down, you’re more likely to ask. No one’s writing them down and we’d just cut to the end and chicken out because we don’t to sound pushy. We don’t want to sound like we’re just trying to sell them stuff, so we stop making recommendations. But the reality is when we go through their policy, they ask questions (which we are going to get into next) you know, we’re just talking about the prep for the call right now. We should prepare for what we want to talk to them about.
So, this is little idea of, you know, making sure everybody’s notes are uniform, helps in another way too. Next year when you need to do the review, you just have to kinda update everything, it’s right there which is pretty awesome. And then when you do you call somebody, you get them on the phone, you use account reviews success notes on the call. We made X calls, we talked to X people and then you can start tracking it through those activity codes in your system. It’s awesome. You’re gonna hold people accountable making the calls, you can see the success of the calls, we can look at the notes and this is really making sure we’re having those authentic ridiculously amazing conversations with our clients.
So, here’s what I know. If you’re going to send a call based on a download today, make the call today. When I come home and get that rate increase in the mail, all I’m gonna think is “Oh, they called me today, I’ll call them tomorrow”, and we stop that entire reshop overnight. We stop the idea that they’re looking online and talking to everybody they know. They’re tipped off, they’re frustrated, but instead it’s “They called, this must be what it’s about, I’m gonna call them tomorrow”. Mow you have the opportunity for the review. It’s a life saver, it’s a game changer and it decreases all that stress in the office. But now we have the first opportunity that we can see that we’re tracking things, right? So, we know people are making the calls, we know how many people we’re talking to, we know our notes are uniform and we know that if they call during the middle year or the next year, we already have a starting point. I mean, how amazing is that?
So, that’s our first starting block that we’re gonna launch with our agencies. But I’m telling you right now, don’t do it alone, we’re here for you. OK? So, check out Appex Retention Program, we’re going to have our next video blog. Be a little bit more in the making the call, how do you get it to happen, how do you get it into your schedule. But by all means, check out our case studies. If you don’t want to do it alone, we’re happy to help.
I’ll talk to you soon.
