Insurance sales has dramatically changed over the past decade. In today’s world people are doing more googling, searching and researching for insurance solutions. While many agencies are starting to adopt more modern marketing strategies such as SEO, email marketing and local listings many have not addressed the need to modernize their sales process. One stark reality is that your sales process must change based on the type of lead that you are selling. If you are working on a referral, your lead comes partially sold; you still need to evoke your sales prowess but you have a definite advantage! With a web based or marketing generated lead, you need to lay on your sales skills to close the deal.
Too many agencies have not trained and defined their sales process based on the lead type. Instead they throw out the leads like garbage when they aren’t a referral.
When a lead has no real reference to you other than your website or Google search you need to think differently. We like to encourage agents to slow down to speed up. Rather than falling into the trap of moving fast to get the caller off the phone we encourage you to take 2-3 minutes to build rapport and earn control of the call.
Agency Performance Partners has created the following outline for building rapport at the beginning of any sales call. By taking the time to educate the consumer about you and the agency as well as learn what’s important to your lead you can accomplish the following at a higher level:
- Account Round at the Point of Sale
- Stop the Shopper from Calling Other Agents
- Gain Insight on How to Overcome Common Objections
- Pre-Qualify Leads Before They Waste Your Time
Here is the defined process we have created that drives the highest result:
- Formally and Professionally Introduce Yourself: You must build value in your experience and your approach helps stop the caller from contacting any other agents.
- Clearly State Why This Agency: Your entire team should have 2-3 sentences on why to choose your agency. Make it about the problems you solve for your consumers, not about you.
- Tell Me A Bit About Yourself: You want an open ended question that gets them talking. When they talk you will learn what they do, who they are and what’s important to them. This allows you to make personal recommendations on coverage they need.
- How Did You Hear About Us?: This will allow you to structure your sales based on what they know about you and your agency.
- How Many Other Agents Have You Contacted? By knowing this upfront you know when to walk away.
- Other Than Price, What’s Important To You In Selecting Your Agent? We love this question! You can find out their secondary motive to help overcome the price objection!
We have defined a 5 step sales process through our new APPX Sales Training Program. This includes onsite training days, video training, scripts, sales meeting and tracking. It’s the whole package to make your agency a sales organization!
In 3 months we see an increase of 37% in written premium and 57% increase in written apps.
We are launching the new program officially on 6/1 but if you want details now contact us today!
