One of our passions at Agency Performance Partners is to help agents do more with less. What we find is the largest opportunity to grow often lies right in your own sales process. Independent insurance agencies need to understand the relationship to hopping on opportunity and letting it sit for even minutes. Every moment that goes by you start spinning your wheels and the hot lead becomes a cold mess. In this blog we will review the statistics behind speed to conversion, why leads often sit, how to prioritize new business and the opportunity to discuss accountability.
Speed and Opportunity For Insurance Leads
All too often in insurance agencies we work around our schedule not the prospects schedule. Think about it we are open when most people (the ones who pay… work), some agencies close at lunch (please stay open) and we even shut down before a client could contact us after work. We will save those challenges for another blog but, when the agency is open we need to rise to that occasion and hop right on new business.
Velocify, is a CRM tool for insurance agencies that need lead management, has published customer experience white paper for the insurance industry. They indicate the following telling stats:
- 61% of the online leads received a call back 2 days and 8 hours later
- 44% of the online leads received calls and emails
- 17% of the online leads received no communication from the agency
- Contacting a lead within 1 minute of the online submission increased the likelihood to convert that opportunity to a paying customer by 391%
- Only 1.3% of online inquiries were responded to within 1 minute
- 46% of potential buyers waiting weeks or did not receive a call back
- Only 3% of potential buyers received the recommended and optimal 6 follow up calls
- 93% of leads are either under called or not called at all
When we talk about how to make the phone ring and covert opportunity we need to understand that responsiveness has to be the name of our game. Now you may be thinking, well we don’t want to right THAT TYPE OF BUSINESS. The problem is that type of business is the modern consumer. At APP we conduct secret shopper calls where the agency approves the high quality scenario of the type of business they want to target, our results are not much different:
- 100% of agents did nothing to build value in themselves or doing business with an independent agent
- 73% of agents did little to build rapport and the shopper felt it was more of a transaction than a relationship
- 57.14% of the time the agent quoted what the caller asked for and didn’t make recommendations on other lines
- 79% of callers either never received a quote OR received an emailed quote
- 33% never obtained a quote
- 13% of callers received 1 follow up after getting the quote but 86% received no follow up after getting the quote
- Only 20% of the secret shoppers would have bought from their agent
If your agency is interested in having secret shopper calls conducted you can learn more on our line store:
Why Do Leads Sit at Insurance Agencies
If you think this isn’t happening at your insurance agency, I would challenge you. It may not happen all the time but it can happen. For many agencies they simply have not made the move to become a sales culture. Here are the defining factors of a sales culture:
- Goals
- Sales meetings
- Leads that are not transferred to voicemail
- Marketing budget
- Competition
- Sales closing ratios tracked
- Leads handled on nights and weekends
Unfortunately for some agencies what we find is new business is an inconvenience. Everyone is so busy that they focus on everything but new business. Many sales and service agents comment that, if I quote it, I have to bind it and then service it… not a sales culture.
In fairness however, many agencies have never taken the time to explain how important speed is to new business. People can’t fix what they don’t know is a problem. We need to take the time to educate agents and embrace them to understand the new common challenges in insurance sales and how we can blast through them with better processes.
If your agency needs sales training consider our 6 Month On-Site Sales Training Program!
How To Make New Insurance Leads A Priority
Your first step to embracing this problem is to educate your team. You can share with them this blog, video and the velocify study. When people understand the importance if speed in the process.
We also have to work to embrace the “busy” desk of the account manager. Everyone from the front desk to the processing team has to be able to start taking down information on a lead if no one is available. Effective immediately no quotes should be transferred to voicemail and we call start gathering basic information until an agent becomes available.
In insurance, we rarely have emergencies. We have things that need to get done that day but very few items should take precedent over new business. New business has to be the priority over almost everything else.
We also recommend agencies start tracking leads. While management systems do a terrible job of lead management you need to invest in a system that tracks your marketing investment. ROI from marketing comes from both lead generation and the ability to close the opportunities. One doesn’t happen with out another but based on the stats we shared above lets be honest your not going to sell any insurance unless you have speed and follow up.
Holding People Accountable
To move toward a sales culture you need to identify that not all leads need to be distributed equally. They should go to the person first who is most likely to close it. Putting a lead in the hands of someone who isn’t going to reach for it is burning money. More importantly if the team is not following a defined sales process they are presenting a just plain terrible customer experience that can get around your community pretty fast. You have to hold the team accountable so your reputation and marketing dollars don’t go up in flames.
Holding people accountable is rarely fun but as a business owner incredibly necessary.
Conclusion
As the world becomes more fast paced agencies need to develop clear sales processes that serve the new demands of the consumer. We cannot build processes that make our lives easier we must push through and build a plan that serves our community and opportunities. Once you have created the process you can hold people accountable and maximize your marketing.
