10
PLAYS
TO ACCELERATE
INSURANCE SALES GROWTH
WINNING PLAYS FROM INSURANCE INDUSTRY EXPERTS
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Meet the Experts
Michael D’Arelli
—
David Williams
—
AGENCY OWNER
ALLSTATE
VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING
MERCURY INSURANCE
EXECUTIVE RECRUITER
THE CARLISLE GROUP RECRUITING
Stuart Ganis
—
Tommy McDonald
—
Daniel Sanchez
—
Ryan McClintock
—
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
AMERICAN AGENTS ALLIANCE
DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
VELOCIFY
Brandt Minnich, CPCU
—
VICE PRESIDENT
MARSHBERRY
MARKETING MANAGER
RELIANT GENERAL INSURANCE SERVICES
Adam Kerr
—
William J. Hold, CRM, CISR
—
TRAINING SUPERVISOR
PLYMOUTH ROCK ASSURANCE
Maury Hennessy
—
CEO
KANOPY INSURANCE
VICE PRESIDENT
THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF INSURANCE EDUCATION & RESEARCH
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Game Time
Top Insurance Performers Share Tips from
Their Winning Playbooks
It’s a whole new ballgame in today‘s insurance market when compared to only a few years ago. The pace of
business is accelerating and buyer expectations are changing. Today’s buyers expect near real-time response
to their inquiries, personalized choices and advice.
With football season underway we were inspired to call upon some of the best minds in our industry for
coaching advice to help insurance professionals stay in top shape. We’ve collected a playbook of their best
strategies for winning at the sales game to inspire you and your team to top performance.
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
3
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #1
Create value to avoid the price-driven sale
As an insurance agent or broker, what sort of value do you create for prospective insurance buyers? If
you want to move away from the limitations of the price-driven sale, then you must create real value by
accumulating knowledge and becoming the very best in your niche. Know your products inside out and
sideways and never stop developing professionally. Make every effort to build relationships and become a
trusted advisor instead of simply being a vendor filling orders for commoditized, price driven insurance.
With a solid foundation of knowledge to make you an expert, you can rework your sales approach. For
example, approach prospects by asking, “What’s important about insurance to you?” Do not break the
awkward silence after you ask the question, as they soul search for a minute trying to answer the question.
Why? Because their answer will be very revealing; it will tell you what is important to them, what motivates
them to purchase. If they say they need it by law, you’ll learn they likely don’t value coverage and could just as
easily leave you tomorrow for any lower-priced online competition.
What sort of prospects do you want in your book? You need to determine if you prefer prospects that read the
menu from right to left at the restaurant, or prospects that value the protection and counsel you are providing
to ensure that their family and business are protected.
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Michael D’Arelli
@agentsalliance
Executive Director,
American Agents Alliance
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #2
The structured sales process
No matter what the sport, knowing the current score at every point in the game is essential to winning
because that knowledge informs the team’s strategy and next play. The same lessons apply to business.
I’m a firm believer that understanding and knowing the score every day in your business is critical to success.
We track and measure critical parts of our
business
WINNING
PLAY #so that we can make a change the moment we see a
negative trend and quickly turn it around. We also track and measure productivity of our team members -- not
only as a tool to hold them accountable to a certain standard -- but also recognize the positive behaviors that
are contributing to results.
By tracking calls per hour, average time on the phone, contact rates, and conversion rates we can measure
productivity across all of our team members.
We also track and measure the exact return on investment (ROI) of each and every one of our marketing
sources and know which source or lead provider is providing us the highest contact and conversion rates.
If you want to increase your productivity and success, make sure you know the score in all aspects of the
acquisition side of your business.
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David Williams
@Allstate
Agency Owner,
Allstate
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
5
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #3
Get back to basics
Knowledgeable agencies and producers understand the need for a disciplined and consistent sales approach
and exceptional execution to succeed in today’s environment. Lead your agency by requiring that the right
processes are learned in basic sales training and ensure they are consistently being followed. Here are a few
that should be part of every agent and producer’s tool box:
•
•
•
•
•
Always ask for and obtain referrals. Reward customers for sending people to your agency.
Differentiate your agency by your diligent follow through. Follow up on unsold leads. Continue marketing
to potential customers. Don’t give up if they don’t buy day one.
Cross sell your existing book. This is a significant lead source right at your fingertips.
Measure your results. Hold your staff accountable to execute these processes daily.
Further develop skill sets. Use coaching tools like call recording and find teachable moments to help your
team grow.
Agencies that relentlessly follow these timeless principles grow, regardless of market dynamics.
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Brandt Minnich, CPCU
@MercuryIns
Vice President of Marketing,
Mercury Insurance
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
6
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #4
Hire a high-performing producer
You’re a pro at managing your business and you can spot great sales talent during an interview. However,
many sales people can talk a good game, but are they really producers who can grow your business
profitably?
One sure way to determine if a producer is credible in what they say is to require them to provide you with
documentation of their success. Every good sales producer knows his/her premium production to the penny.
Ask them to share copies of their monthly premium goals and results (after they remove any client names and
other confidential or proprietary information).
A true producer will be proud to show you their results and accomplishments including loss and retention
ratios. In order to verify their income and production, require that they provide a copy of their W-2’s or 1099’s
for the past two years, being sure to blackout any reference to their social security information.
Inspecting what you expect is one sure way to know you are hiring top talent.
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Maury Hennessy
Executive Recruiter,
The Carlisle Group Recruiting
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #5
Build a world-class sales process
Building and developing a world-class sales process starts by studying the behaviors of your top producers
and what they’re doing to drive sales success. Here are some best practices that when combined, increase
revenue every time:
•
•
•
•
•
Speed: Develop a strategy to contact
prospects
WINNING
PLAY #quicker than your competition. Research shows that
conversion rates increase by 391% when leads are called in under a minute.
Persistence: Be appropriately persistent so you’re maximizing every lead, but not wasting resources.
Consistency: Managing your process and ensuring that everyone in the agency is following it, is a key
component to your success.
Cross-Sell: Adding a component to sell additional lines of business will help you retain the business you
work so hard to acquire.
Referrals: The best way to get referrals is to ask for them. Make it a part of your process on every call.
Focusing on these core principles for your sales process will grow your book of business. Automating most
of your sales process will guide your team and remove any guesswork, so you can focus on selling instead of
managing the entire step-by-step processes.
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Stuart Ganis
@StuartGanis
Director, Business Development,
Velocify
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
8
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #6
Identify differentiators to help outperform quality competition
Agency leaders with mediocre sales performance who lack the ability to win profitable business typically have
not built quality depth within their organization that institutionalizes the sales process. The agency then relies
on strong relationship-based sales people without much stickiness to the agency’s value proposition.
Defining the firm’s differentiators, developing a process around these competitive advantages, and then
building a team-based sales approach that can clearly articulate, sell and reinforce the value proposition is
needed to overcome this challenge.
Throughout this process, agency leaders may come to the conclusion that they may not have the right players
on the team. You need sales people that can sell more than $100,000 in new business production, service
people that can execute client-facing service work and manage a relationship, and a quality internal process
for executing on a clearly defined value-added service platform that proactively engages the insured.
Winning agencies build depth within their organization from the top to the bottom.
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Tommy McDonald
Vice President,
MarshBerry
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
9
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #7
Bulk up your team’s expertise for improved business performance
As with any consumer-focused business, retaining insurance clients is essential in order to build a profitable
book of business. Cross-selling a variety of valued products to every client will directly influence retention in
your agency.
They tell you they want Auto only…but they also need homeowners/renters coverage. They want commercial…
but they need life & health coverage too. Don’t be an order-taker. Let them know you have other valuable
insurance products that fit their “needs,” and quote every policy they need.
Don’t forget that you’re the insurance professional they sought out. Sell them more than one insurance
product and watch your renewal income grow!
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Daniel Sanchez
@dsanchez1006
Marketing Manager,
Reliant General Insurance Services
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
10
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #8
The right talent can help you become an outbound
prospecting success story
In the past, most insurance agencies grew their business by finding ways to bring warm prospects into the
agency for an easy going face-to-face sit down with an agent. An agent who is accustomed to those warm
inbound opportunities will almost always fail when working outbound opportunities. It’s a totally different sales
WINNING and
PLAYhire
#
dynamic. It’s important to know the difference
accordingly.
One way to succeed is to hire hunters, not gatherers. A hunter is not afraid of rejection or picking up the
phone and understands more no’s lead to more yes’s. Gatherers don’t typically have the “fight” within them
to put in the work and tenacity required to work online leads. Hunters on the other hand have the innate
intangibles that will make an outbound call center successful.
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Ryan McClintock
CEO,
Kanopy Insurance
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #9
Take the long term view
When investing in leads, you should have a pre-determined plan of how you will measure performance.
One of the aspects of that plan is how long you are going to wait until you label a campaign profitable
or unprofitable. Different lead types will have much different development times. For example, if you are
engaging in a branding campaign and advertising one central phone number, it will take a long time to
measure the success or failure of that program. The same is true of internet or other purchased leads. Sales
teams may have a lot of great activity on those leads, but they may not close those leads for days, weeks or
months.
If you don’t give a marketing campaign enough time to develop and mature, you’ll miss out on campaigns
that yield a positive return on investment (ROI). By taking a long-term approach to measuring your return
on marketing investment, you are going to accelerate your insurance sales growth by identifying effective
marketing investments.
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Adam Kerr
@PlymouthRock
Training Supervisor,
Plymouth Rock Assurance
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
12
INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Winning Play #10
Sell from a point of knowledge
You wouldn’t let a well-meaning third-grader perform your root canal. Why, then, would you entrust the wellbeing of your family or business to an insurance salesperson who is clueless about how to protect your
interests? Competent salespeople understand their clients’ situations and know how to protect them with
insurance and risk management strategies.
Studies show that selling from a point of knowledge can, in fact, double your sales production. Selling from a
point of knowledge is an effective game plan to add value to your service. When selling on price alone, you
can’t build the trust you need to accelerate your sales growth.
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William J. Hold, CRM, CISR
@WjholdSCIC
Vice President
The National Alliance for Insurance
Education & Research
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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INSURANCE PLAYBOOK
Coaches
Winning Corner
Play #
What’s your winning game plan?
We want to thank our distinguished experts for sharing so many inspiring strategies to help insurance
professionals succeed. These ideas are sure to energize your team’s performance as you build your
business for tomorrow. Though many of these ideas can be implemented without a big technology outlay,
achieving scale and sales process efficiency is much easier with the support of the right software. Using
technology efficiently frees up your team’s
timePLAY
to pursue
the winning plays recommended here. At Velocify,
WINNING
#
we provide technology that helps insurance professionals keep pace with the speed of opportunity and
increase revenue by driving rapid lead response, increased selling discipline, improved productivity, and
actionable selling insights.
Lead Capture
Lead Scoring
Funnel Insights
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Integrated
Sales Dialer
Velocify Intelligent
Sales Automation
Sales Activity
Prioritization
Lead De-Dupe
Name
Lead Distribution
Automated
Guided Selling
@Name
Title, Company
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
14
Do you have all the winning plays
to reach your sales goal?
Learn how intelligent sales
automation technology can enable
your insurance team to work
smarter and close more policies.
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Email: [email protected]
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Blog: velocify.com/blog
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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Velocify is a market-leading provider of cloud-based intelligent sales software, designed for high-velocity sales environments. Velocify
helps sales teams keep pace with the speed of opportunity and increase revenue by driving rapid lead response, increased selling
discipline, improved productivity, and actionable selling insights. The company has helped more than 1,500 companies across a variety of
industries improve customer acquisition practices and sales performance. Velocify was recently recognized as one of the fastest growing
velocify.com
companies in North America by Deloitte and a Best Place to Work by the Los Angeles Business Journal. For more information, please visit
Velocify.com or follow the company on Twitter @Velocify
Winning Plays for the Insurance Industry
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