There is no doubt that the insurance industry is rapidly changing. There are new challenges and new dynamics that we need to focus on in order to fully succeed. Remember, what we know in advance we can prepare for in advance!
Good Customer Service Is No Longer Enough
In today’s world you are either memorable or not. In fact if you provide mediocre service people would rather log in and do it themselves on THEIR time at THEIR convenience. This means in today’s world we need to be better and clearly design a gorgeous customer experience that takes into account, a greeting, a designed phone experience, follow up and customer touch points. If you aren’t sure your customers are MORE than delighted, you aren’t doing enough.
Finding Good People Is Hard
Recruiting, hiring and keeping good people is hard in insurance. A license means nothing today. A great candidate has an awesome attitude and remains teachable even if they are the veteran employee. Great people are hiding in different places. You have to go to events such as local, and statewide insurance meetings. Rockstars need to build a relationship with their next employer and then wait for things to change in that person’s life and capitalize.
You Need To Be Relentlessly Marketing
Hoping the phone rings with referrals is not a real marketing strategy. Yellow Pages is dead. Your customers want you to scream to them “Pick me!” In order to do this you need a brand, a design, and a strategy. And you need to spend $$$. If your agency isn’t investing it’s shrinking.
You Need to Embrace Metrics
Agency automation brought on the idea that we could track new details of the business with great accuracy, so why don’t we do it? There are several core metrics you need to know like retention, re-write hit ratio, closing ratio, percentage of emails. They need to be reported on religiously.
Sales Is King, Service is Queen (The Wife is Always Right)
While you need to give great service you also can’t ignore a strong sales and marketing process. You may have hired one producer and gotten burned, WHO CARES? Name one sales focused company in America who hasn’t. It’s going to happen so move on and keep investing. They need a sales process and sales training to succeed. If a salesperson is struggling do you go out on the road with them, make cold calls with them or just tell them what to do? When someone in your agency fails you need to look in the mirror too!
These trends are all the core of the APP business. Need help? Call us!
