The best health insurance agencies are always trying to generate more sales. Of course, the majority of sales occur during the annual enrollment period (AEP), when clients shop for health insurance products that will meet their needs over the ensuing year. Once the AEP is over, however, things slow down for many insurance agencies, with most of their work being done.
Just because many other agencies might take things easier after the AEP ends doesn’t mean you need to do the same. You can grow your business and delight your clients by choosing to sell ancillary insurance products, including:
- Short-term health coverage
- Life insurance
- Dental insurance
- Accident insurance
- Vision insurance
- Critical illness insurance
By doing so, you can deliver more value to your clients while bolstering your bottom line.
Need a little more convincing as to whether the decision to sell ancillary insurance is the right one? Here are four reasons why your agency should consider adding ancillary products to its offerings if it hasn’t done so already.
1. It Helps You Establish Yourself as a Trusted Adviser
The best insurance agents anticipate their clients’ needs and don’t steer them in the wrong direction. They work tirelessly to make sure their clients are kept in the loop regarding changing regulations, new technologies, and new insurance products, and they try to add value at every step of the customer journey.
Your decision to sell ancillary insurance products can help your agency establish itself as a strategic consultant—a body that works hard to make sure your clients’ insurance needs are met. Your clients might not even know some of these ancillary products exist—or they might think that certain things (e.g., dental coverage) are included in their regular health insurance packages, only to find out the hard way that’s not the case.
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By selling ancillary products, you can help your clients get the coverage they need throughout the year—not just during the AEP. Over time, your clients will view you as a trusted adviser to the point where they may not even think about getting insurance anywhere else.
2. It Boosts Client Retention
Building off that idea, you can become a one-stop shop for insurance needs when your agency is able to offer a robust insurance product portfolio. That’s because a recent study from Justworks found that 88 percent of employees consider the health benefits a company offers when deciding whether to accept a job offer.
When your clients are able to offer more than simple health insurance, their benefits packages become more attractive. In turn, it’s easier for them to hire top talent and keep their best workers engaged.
Add it all up, and selling ancillary insurance products boosts client retention for your agency—making it that much more profitable because it’s easier to sell to existing customers than to new ones.
3. It Supports Preventative Care
Improving and optimizing the U.S. healthcare system starts with preventative care. Just like a car owner brings their vehicle in for routine maintenance, tune-ups, and oil changes to keep it running smoothly, all of us can take the same approach to our healthcare to help keep costs in check across the country.
For example, people who don’t have dental insurance might not go to the dentist until they have a serious problem with their teeth. Not only is this approach more painful, but it’s also more expensive and can lead to even more expensive outcomes in the future.
By selling ancillary products and making sure your clients have access to additional kinds of coverage, you can support preventative care—and do your part to help streamline the healthcare system.
4. It Helps Your Agency Generate More Commissions
At the end of the day, we all work for money. Ancillary insurance can help your clients enjoy healthier lives and build stronger businesses, and it can also help your agents—and your agency as a whole—generate more commissions.
With more money on hand, employees will be happier—which, in turn, will rub off on the client experience. At the same time, your business will have more money to invest in your company and new initiatives.
Now Is the Time to Start Selling Ancillary Insurance Products
Although standard health insurance will likely account for the bulk of your sales year in and year out, you don’t want to overlook the importance of ancillary insurance products.
By adding the right products into the mix—and investing in tools and technologies that make it as easy as possible to sell ancillary insurance—you can go a long way toward impressing your clients and making your agency stand out against your competitors.
That’s the ticket to happier clients who are not only committed to your agency but also might even go to bat on your behalf and sell your business to folks in their network. And that, of course, translates into a happier business and a healthier bottom line.
