Video Transcription
Hi, this is Kelly Donahue-Piro here with the Agency Performance Partners and we’re trying something so cool, so new that we think you guys are going to dig it. First of all, check out our new office. It is so awesome here. We have a great new office that we’re super excited about. It’s the new headquarters for the Agency Performance Partners. But in addition to new offices, we’re going to start video blogging.
We’re going to start vlogging which means that every time we blog there’s going to be a video attached to it and in the blog section below, you’ll see the transcription. So, what we’re super stoked about is we will be doing blogs on some of our products because a lot of people ask “What do you do?” Therefore our next couple blogs are really going to focus on our AppX Retention Program which, by the way guys, is super killing it. We just got reports from two other clients who have been at it for about four to six months, that they saw a 4 percent jump in their retention rate in personal lines. I think that is just fantastically outstanding. One of them we’re going to be releasing as a case study very soon.
But really, let me tell you a little bit about how our retention works in agencies and personal lines particularly. First, so many agencies have retention all screwed up in their heads. They think “Hey, we give good service, we’re in the community, these are the things that matter”. I’m going to tell you guys that there’s a whole different philosophy out there that we have to embrace, HAVE TO EMBRACE. The direct writers want your customers, those big guys want your customers and a lot of times we’re not really in a good defense mode. Now, I don’t want to turn any of our vlogging viewers off but we are in Patriots country and what we’ve learned from our Patriots is that we need to defend the quarterback, right? So, you have to have a good defense in order to keep your book of business.
Let me tell you a little bit about what we see real common in agencies. First of all, you walk into a personal lines team and it’s as stressful as the delivery room in an emergency at a hospital. It’s crazy; everyone is running around, people are frustrated, people are growling when their phone rings. It’s like “hello” or the phone is ringing and we hear “Uggghhh, another call?!” We see piles of paper everywhere, everyone’s running around, everyone’s grumpy and it doesn’t make for a good look. So, what we’ve found though is that there’s a great strategy where if you start calling your renewals and you’re proactive, you call them upon Download – that’s a huge resource that we use – that all of a sudden, the whole world changes.
Well, let’s go through the scenario of “why”. So, let’s just say when I was a little kid I wanted to be a ballerina, I know, it’s shocking I didn’t think I was going to be an insurance consultant! And, you know, I said thought I was going to be a ballerina so, imagine I’m a ballerina. I come home from a very long day at ballerina practice. Maybe my partner dropped me or maybe I screwed up and he threw potato chips at me and now I’m not going fit in my tutu tomorrow. All those things are going on. And in the mail is my insurance renewal, my credit card bill from the expensive toe shoes I have to buy, and by the way, I just learned that rent’s due and my roommate is moving out.
How do you think I feel about my insurance all of a sudden? Not great, right? And most likely my rates have gone up. If I go to my mom, my roommate, my other dance troupe members, even my husband, what does everybody think? “Oh, our rates have gone up again. We’re totally getting ripped off”. That’s all it will take for me to sit down, while watching The Voice at night, to look on my phone and start searching for insurance because I’m getting hit with insurance commercial after insurance commercial after insurance commercial. I get another quote and what happens is it makes your team’s job harder. When I call you the next day, let’s be honest, what’s to be going on? One, I’m grumpy. Two, you’ll have to tap dance around now and pretty much try to reshop me. Three, you’re going to say “Oh, that’s not great coverage” but let’s be honest. I’m a ballerina; I know about pirouettes, I know about plies, I know about all the barre working positions but I don’t know about insurance. It’s great you say it’s not great coverage but I don’t trust you that much because all I’m seeing is my rates go up. I went online and got a different rate and now you’re telling me that this might not be great? Where is the productivity, where is the caring, where is the explaining on a complicated product?
So, I call in, maybe give you a shot to remarket me. What we’re seeing in so many agencies, so common today by the way, is that the remarket team comes in and they’re prioritize based on the renewal date. Well, the problem is I’m mad but I got my renewals and maybe I’m 4 -5 days out. So mine goes to the bottom of the pile. Now, I wait maybe three days, maybe five days, maybe two weeks. No one really knows. And right now, in today’s world, where I get a quote over the phone or online like this, remarketing me cannot wait. So, your team goes and does the remarket, “when they get around to” because they’re always very busy. Well I’m already gone. And even if they do give me the shot and end up saving me money, my sentiments are “Why didn’t you do that all along? How long have I been paying too much? What is going on?” The trust keeps getting deteriorated and deteriorated. And so, we need to come up with better ways to decrease the “busy”, increase the productivity, increase the opportunity to serve and love our customers. We need to fend them, hug them, and love them. It’s time that we take things differently. Now, you may be saying to me, “Kelly we’ve tried this a million times. We tried the call renewals, no one’s got time and everyone falls off the wagon.” Or “I don’t want to poke a sleeping giant because this is going to lead to remarkets”. You have to go to our website and check out our case studies; every agency we’ve launched this with boosted their retention, boosted the opportunity for account rounds, boosted the increases, and decreased the reshops.
So, you have to really think about these things in today’s world because a lot of times we’re doing a lot of activity and we’re not seeing the results. Now, I will say this. If you’re not doing a quality authentic good renewal call, it can hurt your retention. If your team gets on the phone and says “Hi Kelly, I’m just calling to see if anything changed in your life?” “No, nothing. I don’t think so”. “Okay, great. Let us know if you need anything”. And then I go home and there’s a $700 increase in my mailbox, how do you think I’d feel? Not good.
You have to have a quality authentic renewal call. It may take some time but they’re worth it. They’re worth it for many reasons and not just for the decrease in stress because you’re not scrambling around all the time. We’re really proactive, we’re educating, we’re really being valued as agents and that to me is so incredible. So, you have to stop and to think clearly and ask, if you’re opening an agency today, how would you define a 5-star customer experience for your renewal, and I’m not going to guarantee you it wouldn’t be “My team’s running around super busy, we can’t get through it”. What I think we really need to excel at is getting the team’s buy in and getting them over the hump and saying “Hey, if we do this for six or eight weeks, we’ll start to see it get easier and easier and easier”. And by the way, we’re going to track it for you give you some scripts with different opportunities. We have bi-weekly meetings to make sure everybody’s doing it. It’s not just have a meeting, say goodbye, and go forth.
So, what I’m excited about this video blog series is talking about this awesome program we’ve been doing for a couple years now but we’ve really polished it up, really refined it and just made it into six months of awesomeness. So please follow our video blogs because I’m going to take you step by step through each component so that you can follow along at home. But also too, we’re happy to come in and help. We do it every day. That’s why you see me on Facebook on so many different airplanes. But we go out when we get the team going. I’m telling you, in six months you’ll see a huge difference; if not only on just the stress level but also the opportunity that comes out of these calls when they’re done authentically, and that people are really coached on it. We break it into those bite sized chunks so it’s not just this one big conglomerate, it’s every two weeks there’s another little strategy that we’re implementing so you keep seeing those results. And then here’s the coolest part.
At the 6th month mark we send a survey out to all the agency team members and 95% of the people over three years we put through this program, would not go back doing those same ways they were doing before it. They would stay on the proactive trail. Now, the remaining 5 percent has been relocated outside of the agencies, if you know what I’m saying.
So, check it out. Check out our retention program. It’s super awesome. Take a look at these video blogs we’re going to be doing over the next couple weeks because I think you’re going to pick up some helpful tips. If you’re like “Kelly, I just can’t do that” or “We’re doing renewal calls and they’re kind of flat”, make sure you check out our video blog in this because this is something I’m excited about and I think you should be too.
So, I’ll see you next week and we’ll talk a little bit about how to get ready for those calls and how to really maximize them. What we know is if you have a good plan for them, everything changes on that call, literally EVERYTHING.
