How to Get Clients for an Insurance Business

 

How to Get Clients for an Insurance Business

How do you go about getting clients for your insurance business?

Technically, insurance customers are everywhere. Everyone should probably review their insurance more frequently. But, building a successful insurance book of business requires a solid sales and marketing plan – a system to acquire new insurance clients as well as retain and cross-sell current customers.

Simply dialing for dollars is not necessarily the best way to build a sustainable insurance business. Here are several ways to get insurance clients fast.

Face-to-Face Networking

The prevalence of social media and networking often leaves us forgetting about good old fashion face-to-face networking. This can be your secret weapon in acquiring new clients for your insurance business.

Here are a few of my favorite networking opportunities:

·         Partner with Professionals – meet and exchange referrals with real estate agents, mortgage brokers, attorneys, and CPAs

·         Community Service Organizations – network through your local Rotary, Kiwanis, VFW, Elks, and other community organizations

·         Schools, Churches, and other – anywhere you gather with friends and other families present opportunities to network and grow relationships that you can possibly help in the future

·         Local sports teams – baseball, basketball, volleyball, wrestling, and a whole host of other little leagues, school athletes, and travel teams put us into contact with families that need better insurance

No amount of technology can replace the power of personal, face-to-face, natural in-person relationship building. Simply building relationships and listening will present opportunities.

Always carry plenty of business cards with up-to-date contact information. Listen for opportunities and be prepared to introduce yourself, your business, and share advice about insurance in a brief, consultative way.

Not everyone will be interested in your products or services, but if you’re helpful and informative in sharing what you know most won’t mind the chat. Even if they’re not interested or already feel confident in their current insurance, let them know that you would love to help anyone they might refer you.

Use a Consultative Sale – Listen More

Speak less and listen more.

Whether they are personal relationships or new prospects, practice listening with the intent to understand their needs. Listen to their questions, what’s concerning them, or what might have changed in their life, family, or financial situation.

Don’t just jump into your products and services. You’re the expert, but letting them talk first allows you to truly diagnose your new prospective client’s insurance needs. The consultative sales approach is one of the most powerful for any financial services sale.

Offer Multiple Products

Partner with many carriers to expand your product offerings. Most customers need a variety of insurance products and can benefit from bundling personal lines. Even beyond that many prospective customers have the need or ability to refer you to opportunities for commercial lines – E&O, bonding, workers compensation, etc.

Cold Calling Small Businesses

Don’t underestimate the power of cold calling, particularly when it comes to small businesses in your local area. Small firms of 100 or fewer employees are often in need of competitive insurance to cover a variety of business and employee risk factors.

When using this approach, do a bit of planning and research. Do a little research about each of the businesses, their potential risks, and who’s potentially in charge of managing these matters. Then, approach the business from a point of strength of knowledge and ready to offer a valuable consultation.

Create a Referral System

Referrals are at the center of any successful insurance agency.

But, how do you create a consistent and sustainable referral system?

My favorite book on this topic is The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself. This book goes beyond just asking for the occasional referral from a friend or colleague. Instead, it encourages you to build these referral systems into your business practices and operations.

A good referral system looks for ideal moments and opportunities to ask friends, colleagues, customers, and past clients for referrals. Building these surveys and requests into your processes and workflows makes asking for referrals automatic. It also increases your comfort level and makes asking for referrals more natural.

Online Marketing

Online marketing might seem too complicated and technical, but these marketing tactics are getting more and more accessible. Start with the basics – a simple website and maybe one or two social media platforms (e.g., Facebook and Linkedin).

Use your website and social media to answer and document common questions from your prospects and clients. Use this content to not only help and inform current clients but also point new prospects to these resources. One of the best ways to do this is by emailing this helpful content to your client database – you might be surprised how many clients have new insurance needs.

Once you have this rhythm working, try to expand your online marketing tactics to grow a bigger and bigger audience.

The next phase of developing your online marketing to get new clients is to start growing your email list to include people that aren’t even clients yet. Use “lead magnets” – ebooks, checklist, and guides – to gather in email subscribers.

Finally, expand your online marketing strategies and tactics to include paid advertising – Google Ads or Facebook Ads – to increase your new insurance leads.

Gathering these tactics together will help you build a fairly robust lead gen system and lead nurturing system that will consistently and sustainably generate new insurance clients.

New technologies can always be daunting, but the opportunity to reach real people – at scale – who have expressed an interest in your products and services makes it worthwhile.

Buy Aged Leads

Another great tactic for getting new clients is to purchase a supply of aged leads.

Every day, thousands of people request a quote for insurance online. Some leads, about 2 – 5%, will buy right away, often by the first agent they talk to. But what about the rest? About half of these thousands of leads will eventually buy, but many aren’t ready yet.

For those that buy these aged leads, discounted web leads that are 30, 60, or 90+ days old, the ROI can be very good with the right tools and system.

Most agents, about 95%, in fact, give up on these leads after the first week. So aged leads put in a quote request, get hounded for a few days with sales calls, then ignored. They’re overwhelmed, and they might need more information, education, and sales nurturing to close. This is a great opportunity for the sales agents who know how to create sales and marketing systems to work these leads. It can also be a great way to build a large book of business or grow your insurance business to the next level.

Are Your Ready to Build a Client Acquisition System?

The real secret to getting insurance clients faster – building a large and sustainable book of business – is creating systems to network, grow an audience, and then market to them to generate leads. Take one or more of the strategies above to get more clients for your insurance business.