November 29, 2015
Getting off to a Fast Start in 2016 will set you up for your biggest sales year ever. A strong January will give you a full 12 months of premiums and help you to achieve and exceed your sales targets. More sales will result in more referrals and even more sales. As the old saying goes, “nothing succeeds like success”.
The following are 5 things you can do today, to prepare for a fast start in January.
1. Order inbound auto Insurance leads. Keeping your staff busy quoting prospects should be your number one priority. Pay-per-call systems are the only truly pay for performance systems where you only pay to speak with someone who wants a quote. The best marketplaces have 100% contact rates and prequalify prospects before they are sent over to your office to receive a quote. Order your calls in December and schedule them to start in January. You should order enough calls each day to keep your staff busy.
2. Create “fast start” contest for your sales producers. It is important to motivate your team to work extra hard in January to get the year off to a good start. Create extra incentives with a contest, higher commissions or even extra perks for writing more policies. There isn’t one model that works, you should consider your team and what motivates them and roll out in late December, to start January 1st. If you roll out in January, you are already missing time and opportunity to increase your sales.
3. Contact existing book of business to schedule annual “account” review. Contacting your existing book of business to review their policies creates an excellent sales opportunity. You can increase their coverages, offer new insurance products and get referrals. It is important to add value to your clients so that they stay with you for years to come. Actively contacting them is one way to accomplish this.
4. Hire additional staff. While December may seem like a bad time to hire new staff, it is actually a good time to hire people looking for a change before the start of the new year. The new staff will allow you to write more policies, add new ideas to your team and create additional competition among the producers.
5. Contact all your former clients and your “old” prospects or people you quoted over the past year. January is a good time to reach out to your former clients and everyone you quoted in the past year to see if they want you to review their coverage to see if you can save them money and/or increase their coverage. Reaching out to everyone you quoted and perhaps didn’t sell is also a time you can ask for referrals. Just like inbound insurance leads helps you keep your staff busying quoting, calling all old prospects and clients will do the same thing.
6. Send out a end of year Holiday Greeting. The greeting should be sent to your entire book of business, along with former clients (from past 3 years) and all prospects or people you quoted in the past 12 months. The greeting can be as simple and inexpensive as an email or something more personal like a greeting card or calendar. Your clients will appreciate the greeting and will it will warm them up, for when you contact them in January to talk about insurance.
November 23, 2015
Starting a new business is always a challenge, it doesn’t matter what type of business it is, the first few years will have many ups and downs. Many licensed insurance agents that decide to start their own insurance agency are superstar salespeople, they know how to sell insurance, they know how to build relationships and they know how to close deals. However, the skills and abilities it takes to be a successful insurance agent or salesperson doesn’t always translate into being a successful insurance agency owner. The following are 5 mistakes that many new P&C insurance agency owners make. Avoiding these will help improve the likelihood that the agency will achieve success.
1.Not investing enough in marketing or spending money on marketing programs that do not result in immediate sales. Many insurance agents will immediately invest in things like a website, business cards, newspaper/magazine ads and other programs that are more directed towards branding than immediate sales. One of the best things a new agency owner can do is invest in purchasing inbound insurance leads. These are qualified consumers who are looking to buy insurance. Inbound auto insurance leads are especially useful because they are usually someone who they can usually close quickly. For the first year, agency owners should have 100% of their available marketing budget spent on inbound insurance leads as that will result if the highest ROI and cash flow.
2. Spending too much on overhead. Many insurance agency agreements require a retail office or location prior to being able to open the agency. When setting this up, some new agency owners will get too big of an office and furnish it by spending too much money. They may also hire support staff prior to having the revenue to comfortably support those positions. During the first year of business, agency owners should keep their fixed expense or overhead to a bare minimum. In doing so, there will be more available resources to invest in things that will result in sales like inbound auto insurance leads.
3. Not selling to their personal network of friend, family and business associates. Some agency owners have the view that they don’t want to sell to people they know since it will require that they discuss the personal financial situation and would rather focus on strangers, this is a mistake. New agencies should work as hard as possible to see to everyone that they know. The sooner that they can generate cash flow and revenue, the sooner that they can invest in more inbound insurance leads and other programs to drive incremental sales.
4. Not spending enough time working on the business. When an agent becomes the owner of an agency, it sometimes requires that the owner work 50, 60 or even more hours per week. Some agents assume that they can continue to work 40 or even less hours per week. When an agent becomes an owner, they will need to work whatever hours are necessary to succeed.
5. Not understanding their commission agreement, closing cycles and payout timing. New agency owners need to know and understand their commission agreements and closing cycles like the back of their hand. They need to understand the amount of commission they will be making and the amount that they can spend on buying inbound insurance leads. Sometimes even more important is understanding when they will actually receive the commission payment, as bills will come in to be paid, irrespective of when the commission is paid.
Agent Ethan Kosmin Generated over $200,000 in premiums during first year in business thanks to Contact Concierge.
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