Health insurance agencies and brokerages are always trying to land new clients to grow their business.
To do that, many of them make prospecting a continuous top priority while focusing on traditional marketing and content marketing outreach.
Although this approach can certainly help you get the results you’re hoping for, you actually stand to get even better results by launching a referral marketing program that incentivizes your clients to market your business on your behalf.
Back in the day, insurance agents and brokers would have to manually compile quotes from several different carriers every time a prospect reached out.
Not only did this process take a lot of time, but it also lent itself to human error. Agents and brokers would cross their fingers and hope they wrote down the right quote to relay to their prospect. Otherwise, that individual would probably look elsewhere for insurance because they made a mistake and quoted the wrong price.
Thanks to the evolution of technology, new tools enable insurance brokerages and agencies to streamline and improve the quoting and enrollment process considerably while reducing the likelihood of errors.
Move over Gen X; millennials are all the rage these days.
According to a recent study by Pew, millennials became the biggest chunk of the workforce in 2016. Today, more than one out of every three workers is a millennial.
In addition to transforming the workforce, millennials are also transforming the way many industries operate. For example, millennials are much less likely to own homes than previous generations, and of those who are homeowners, 68 percent regret their buying decision. Beyond that, millennials are also more likely to eat out, spend money on extras—like tech gadgets and Uber rides—and pay for experiences.
Imagine you open an Italian restaurant in a neighborhood that’s filled with sushi spots and Mexican eateries. Your restaurant will stand out because it’s a unique offering in the area; you serve food that people can’t get anywhere else nearby.
In the insurance business, you don’t have that kind of luxury. It can be hard to get your name out there and differentiate yourself from your competitors. After all, clients and prospects tend to choose insurance providers based on cost and convenience. They might run a quick Google search, check out the first thing that pops up, and buy a plan that seems reasonable.
The insurance industry is highly competitive. Even if your brokerage or agency is doing a great job, there’s a good chance some of your clients will leave—if for no other reason than that research suggests people switch insurance plans often.
To get your brokerage or agency to the next level, you need to do everything within your power to boost customer retention rates. Not only is it easier to sell to an existing customer than to a new one, but it’s also more lucrative. According to the Harvard Business Review, a 5 percent increase in customer retention can boost profitability by up to 95 percent!
Insurance is a complicated and competitive business. Plans, premiums, and regulations change every year, which confuses the average insurance buyer—who is usually looking to get the best deals.
To get ahead and stand out from the pack, agents need to increase efficiency and effectiveness—positioning themselves as trusted advisers.