Your insurance agents devote lots of time to recruiting and warming leads. Then, once they sign someone to a new policy, they likely go back to the drawing board, looking for new leads. While lead generation is a critical component of running a successful insurance agency, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. You can increase profits dramatically by cross-selling insurance to current customers. This is easier than trying to warm cold leads, and it provides value to your customers.

Here are a few tips to help your agents excel when cross-selling products.

Gather Customer Information

A successful strategy begins by gathering as much information from customers as possible. Your agents cannot recommend the appropriate products without knowing what their clients need. Your insurance agency management software will include several fields that help you get to know your customer base. Make sure your agents fill out each field so they know if clients are renters, property owners, run a business, and more. The more the agents know, the easier it will be to recommend the appropriate products.

Take Care of Initial Needs

Cross-selling insurance should be value-based. Some agents attempt to push additional policies on new clients, and that isn’t always wise. Agents can discuss additional products with new customers, but they need to meet the client’s initial needs first.

For instance, if a business owner contacts an agent to buy a new homeowners insurance policy, the agent can mention business insurance but shouldn’t push it. Instead, the agent should ensure the customer is satisfied by providing the requested homeowners insurance policy. If the agent pushes too hard during the initial meeting, the client might go with another agency.

Identify Opportunities for Cross-selling Insurance Products

Insurance agents should be trained to look for and identify opportunities for cross-selling insurance policies. This is easy to do with insurance agency management software. For example, our insurance agency management system, JenesisNow includes a marketing feature that provides opportunities for agents. Agents can access reports to discover additional policies clients need based on the information collected. Once an opportunity is identified, it’s easy for agents to suggest policies that add value.

Seize the Moment When Cross-selling Insurance Products

Cross-selling insurance is far different from cold calling prospects. Your clients are already interested in your offerings, so it’s really about seizing the moment when it arises. Sometimes, clients will open the door for you by making offhand comments about their life. For instance, a renter might talk about a break-in in the apartment building down the block. That’s an opening to talk about renter’s insurance.

Cross-sell During Check-ins

You can also create opportunities by checking in with your existing clients. Agents should contact clients before renewal periods. During the call, they can make sure that the customer is satisfied with the current policy. They should ask about the coverage, cost, and more to gauge the satisfaction level. If they are pleased with the current policy, they can then discuss supplemental coverage options. Supplemental coverage is generally easy to budget, so those who don’t feel like they are overpaying are more likely to sign up for an additional policy as long as it provides the necessary protection.

Try to Cross-sell When Policies Are Set to Expire

Your agents should collect expiration dates for policies clients purchased from other companies. They can then attempt to sell them policies when those expire. For example, if your client has auto insurance with you but homeowners insurance with another agency, you need to know when that policy expires. Then, when the expiration date is getting close, an agent needs to contact the client and go over the benefits of having homeowners insurance with your agency.

Set up an Email Marketing Campaign With Cross-selling in Mind

Your insurance agency should have an email marketing strategy in place. You can use email to educate your current clients about additional lines of insurance that you offer. This is the ideal way to build awareness. Then, when your agents contact specific clients, they will already be aware of their options.

Keep in mind that this will only be successful if you segment your email lists so people receive emails that add value. This way, homeowners won’t receive emails about renter’s insurance, and people who work for companies won’t get messages about business insurance. By sending people emails specific to their situations, you can increase your open rate and show that you can provide value to your customer base.

Cross-selling Insurance Is an Ongoing Process

Your agents shouldn’t give up after a prospect turns down a policy option. Cross-selling insurance is an ongoing process. While agents shouldn’t contact the same clients daily, they need to continue trying to cross-sell policies. A “no” today could turn into a “yes” months down the road. However, many clients won’t seek out additional policies. Instead, they will agree to sign up after an agent explains the benefits to them. Sometimes, it takes a while for the benefits to sink in fully, so agents need to stay on it.

Increase Your Revenue With These Tips

These tips will help your agency make more money. Cross-selling insurance is much easier than finding new clients, so educate your agents so they can begin the process immediately. Remember to take full advantage of your insurance agency management software to identify cross-selling opportunities to get the best results.

Ready to see how JenesisNow can help make cross-selling easier? Request a demo, today!

Your insurance agency handles lots of important data. From the financials to client information, you need to have access to the data at all times. A computer virus, formatting errors, and other problems can cause data loss, harming your insurance agency. Fortunately, you can keep data secure by using our customized cloud backup for insurance agencies. The system will back up and store your data on the cloud. Then, you’ll always have access to your data, even if something happens to your hardware or network. Let’s review some reasons that make cloud backup essential for your insurance agency.

Limit Downtime by Restoring Lost Files Quickly

Our cloud backup solution for insurance agencies includes a data recovery plan. If anything happens to your computers or network, we can quickly restore your data. It’s estimated that insurance agencies can lose thousands of dollars per hour of downtime. If you don’t have a backup, your downtime could turn into days, weeks, or months. Sometimes, it can take a year or longer to fully recover. Fortunately, with our cloud backup solution in place, your insurance agency can quickly get up and running again, limiting your downtime. In fact, our team will handle the recovery and restoration process for you, so you can focus on serving your customers.

Keep Important Marketing Leads

Insurance relies heavily on leads. Your agents warm up leads to turn them into customers. Without a data backup plan, you may lose all those leads if anything happens to your network. Then, your agents will have to start from scratch, spending their time searching for and warming up leads. This will frustrate your employees and hurt your insurance agency’s bottom line. Our cloud backup solution keeps your insurance agency’s lead information safe, so you don’t have to worry about losing it.

Overcome Agents’ Mistakes

You likely have a team of amazing agents, but even the best can make mistakes. They might accidentally erase critical data on your network or make an unauthorized change to an important document. With an easily accessible cloud backup in place, your insurance agency can access any lost or changed data with ease. This puts less pressure on your agents to be perfect all the time. While everyone strives for perfection, it’s nice to have a safety net in place just in case something happens.

Have a Plan in Case an Agent Goes Rogue

While this is rare, sometimes, insurance agents leave on bad terms and decide to make an impact while walking out the door. They might purposely erase data on your network to harm the agency. This can be a disaster if you don’t have a backup system in place. Fortunately, if you have such a system, you can escort the former agent out the door and restore the data.

Maintain Client Trust With Cloud Backup for Insurance Agencies

Imagine losing important customer data and having to find a way to get it back. You might have to contact your clients and admit you lost all their information in the hopes they’ll provide it once again. Even if the loss is due to a natural disaster or something out of your control, this may erode some of the trust that they’ve placed in your agency. Maintain client trust by using a cloud backup system. Then, if something happens to your insurance agency’s network, you can restore the data without your clients realizing that anything happened.

Avoid Issues With Insurance Carriers

Your reputation is vital for your success. If you lose data, your reputation with insurance carriers will take a hit. It makes carriers look bad, so they might not be as enthusiastic about you selling their products. You always want to look your best when dealing with insurance carriers, so having a data backup system in place is a must.

Choosing Cloud Backup for Insurance Agencies

Jenesis Software’s cloud-based business data backup system allows you to protect your insurance agency’s valuable data. When you use this tool, Jenesis will automatically and continuously back up the data within our JenesisNow system and store it offsite in a data center. There aren’t data caps or surcharges, and you can easily access your data when you need it. With monthly pricing based on the amount of data you need to back up, you can use the system while sticking to your budget. Contact Jenesis Software to learn more about cloud backup for insurance agencies.

Please note that, while our cloud backup solution will ensure that your insurance agency’s management system is backed up, you’ll still want to look into a backup solution for the remainder of your files (like your photos, accounting files, etc).

Starting a new insurance agency is exciting. You can’t help but think of all the money you can earn as the head of the agency. Before you bring in revenue, though, you need to make sure you get everything in order. Find out what you need to start your new insurance agency. Once you have the essentials in order, you can hit the ground running.

Business Plan

Before you start an insurance agency, you need to create a business plan. The plan should describe your company, provide market analysis, and go over your organizational structure. You also need to list the products and services you’ll offer, as well as your sales and marketing strategy. Finally, you must include your financials in your business plan.

Capital

You need to raise capital before you start your new insurance agency. The money you need depends on the type of agency you want to run. Some small insurance agencies only need $5,000 to start, while larger firms might require much more. Consider your costs, including rent or mortgage payments, licensing, insurance, staff, office equipment, and software, to determine how much you need to start your insurance agency.

License

You have to obtain a license before you can sell insurance. Depending on where you live, you might need a permit for every line of insurance you sell. Licensing requirements vary by state, but you can expect to go through pre-licensing education before taking the licensing exam.

Carrier Appointments

You will need insurance carrier appointments before you can start your agency. Insurance carriers will evaluate your business plan, location, automation, and business mix when making a decision. They will also review your experience selling insurance, as well as projections for the future.

While getting the first carrier appointment can be challenging, it does get easier as you build your business. Once you reach a certain number of carriers, though, you might have difficulty adding more. Insurance carriers are less likely to provide authorization to agencies that already represent lots of other carriers.

Insurance Agency Management System

You need to have an insurance agency management system in place before gathering leads and selling policies. Choose a system that automates tasks. For instance, you can get a system that includes prefilled ACORD forms, automated carrier downloads, and automated notes. You can also get a system that provides marketing options and more. The right system will help you reach leads and manage your existing clients. It will make your agency more efficient and help you build relationships through cross-selling and more.

Insurance Agency Website

An insurance agency website is also a must. You can use a website to get more leads for your agency and stand out from the competition. Your website can also provide relevant information to warm the leads before they reach out. Make sure that your website is 100 percent responsive, so it looks great on all devices. It should be specific to the insurance industry and explain each line of insurance you offer. Also, make sure the website is SEO-friendly, so it ranks high on Google.

Existing Book of Business (Optional)

When you start an insurance agency, you have the option to buy an existing book of business. Before you go through with a purchase, find out why the agency is selling the book. Often, agents sell books of business because they are retiring. If that is the case, make sure the agent hasn’t neglected clients due to the upcoming retirement. You also need to make sure the carriers line up with the ones you’re authorized to represent. You should also consider the current market value of the book. Is it a good deal, or will you overpay for potential business? When you’re just starting out, you may not know the answer to those questions. In those situations, having a mentor that you can lean on can be very valuable. Whether you’re evaluating a book of business, coming up compensation plans, or just trying to figure out which steps you should take next, being able to lean on the experience of successful agency owners who’ve gone before you can be an amazing resource.

You also have the option of generating your own business. This can take a bit longer, but you can hit the ground running with the right insurance agency management system and website.

Start Building Your Insurance Agency Today

Opening your insurance agency is hard work, but it can pay off in dividends if you do it correctly. Make sure you follow all the steps to position yourself for success.