Q&A Wednesdays: #1 Missed Opportunity on New Business Calls
Recently I have conducted 50 Secret Shopper calls to agencies across America. What I have found may shock you. Agents complain all the time, “all anyone cares about is the price.” In fact, in some agencies, I have actually installed the price swear jar, every time the “P” word comes out $1 has to go into the jar. So we all hate price shoppers, but what specifically are we doing to combat it?
In only 1 out of 50 calls did I recently conducted did an agency stop and explain why I should do business with the agency. Yes, that’s right 2% of calls. I even gave credit to the 1 call who told me they would shop multiple carriers. The rest took my info and couldn’t wait to get me off of the phone to give me a PRICE.
Now you may be watching this video or even overhearing a call from one of your team members right now where this is going on. Here is the reality, no agency can complain about price shoppers unless your team, on every new business and renewal call, can clearly tell someone why to choose them, other than price.
Some agencies still struggle with “why would someone choose us?” Inevitably the answer is “because we give great service.”
We need to be better than just giving great service. There is an insurance war going on outside with direct writers spending millions to target your customers. Good service needs to be followed up with exactly what you do for service. Today’s modern consumer doesn’t want good service they want mind-blowing, amazing, leave with a smile ear to ear service.
Start by outlining your service standards. This can include, call back turn around times, email response times, when you review accounts, discount checks on every call, referral programs and more. If you are reading this blog and can’t answer why someone should buy from you other than good service. Stop everything until you can clearly answer the question.
Many agencies can struggle to answer these hard questions, or they struggle to get the entire team on board to do this consistently. No worries that’s why we are here to help. Fill out a contact form so we can connect and understand your agency!
TRANSCRIPTION OF VIDEO BELOW
Hi, it’s Kelly Donahue-Piro here with Agency Performance Partners. Well, today’s Q&A Wednesday is a very important topic. So, since I launched AppX about 8 weeks ago, I’ve had the privilege of doing many, many, many secret shopper calls. What I’ve learned has been astounding, I’ve actually captured this data by analyzing it.
So, in about fifty secret shopper calls, guess how many of those calls the agent actually explained why, to a prospect, to purchase from this agency? Any guesses? One call. One out of fifty calls. So we have a little bit of an industry epidemic on our hands. As an agency, you want to be telling your staff all the time when they pick up the phone and they talk to somebody on a new quote to stop and say, “By the way, our agency is in the community, we’ve been in the business for X amount of years. We work with X amount of carriers and my goal as your agent is to find the right amount of coverage at the right price, and I want to do that by getting to know you a little bit.”
Really everybody should stop and listen to this video because not explaining why to do business with the agency is critical. First of all, we don’t know why other than price, so we’re going to go through the whole process and if you’re likeable and come with the best price you probably win the deal, but if we don’t understand the process and what you’re going to do why would I buy from you? No one has told me other than the research I’m going to have to do on my own. Two, if I do buy from you, when it comes to renewal, I have no other reason to renew with you other than price. So we all have to stop, slow down to speed up on this one. Really, write down exactly why someone should purchase from you. You have to know that there’s so much competition in insurance, if you can’t clearly decipher this and then your staff secondarily can’t say it, we’re in a problem.
Then you want to tell everybody about it, tell everybody you know on social media and email your staff, train them and listen relentlessly to understanding that people are seeing this. It’s mission critical. We will never survive and never succeed if we don’t tell the modern consumers calling in for a quote why to do business with us. By the way guys, price and service don’t count. We can’t simply say price, we can’t simply say we give great service. You have to be able to explain, in detail, what you do for a service. For example, we return phone calls same day, we respond to all emails within twenty four hours, if your rates go up a certain percent we proactively look at them, if you have a claim then call us and our claim specialist is going to walk you through the process. We have top ten carriers in the state that we’re going to quote your with, oh and also too, just so you know, we’re here on these hours so in case you have a question you can just call my cell phone or come to the office.
Whatever it is, document it, but it can’t be service because that’s too generic. Everybody expects service for the couple thousand dollars they’re going to spend with you. What they want is to understand how you’re different than everybody else, and don’t expect them to know if you don’t tell them. So that’s your Q&A Wednesday, if you need help applying these techniques inside of your agency or you’re interested in a few secret shopper calls, make sure you check out our website, fill out a contact form and we’ll be here to help you. I’ll talk to you next week for your next Q&A Wednesday. Don’t forget to submit your questions if you have any so that you can be featured in our next video. Take care!
