Your primary goal as an insurance agent is to make sales, and of course, you want to avoid cancellations whenever possible. Remember that even if a client wants to cancel their insurance policy, it is not set in stone. You still have the chance to win them back and convince them to stay.

However, you need to have strategies to stop a cancellation. Without a process or strategy, you will have no way to stop clients from leaving and reducing your income. Incorporate the following into your processes, and you should be on your way to reducing cancellations.

Have the Right Person to Handle Cancellations

One of the most important things to do is recognizing who on your team has the skills necessary to stop a cancellation. Some people will naturally be better at this than others, and there is nothing wrong with that. A successful insurance agency will have staff that excels in varying roles; one person may excel at sales while another does great at preventing cancellations. Each of them serves a crucial role in your agency (but don’t miss an opportunity to cross-train!).

But who is the right person to handle cancellations? They should have great problem-solving skills and are empathetic. They can talk to clients over the phone or in person. They can listen and make the client feel heard while providing education and outlining how your agency will address their concerns.

Create the Right Scripts

In addition to having the right person handle cancelations, ensure that they have the right insurance agency scripts to help them succeed. The scripts should ask why the customer is leaving. They should also highlight some of your agency’s stand-out features or services in a way that seems to help the client. For example, try saying something like, “Not all clients realize we partner with several carriers.” From there, you could highlight how switching to a different carrier but staying with your agency would still deliver savings or features without the hassle of working with a new agent.

Have Confidence in Your Ability to Stop the Cancellation

A big part of your ability to handle cancellations is believing that you can stop them from going through with the cancellation. Some insurance agencies mistakenly believe that once a client decides to cancel, there is nothing you can do to stop it. This belief is usually stronger in the case of clients who have already made steps toward cancellation.

Once you believe that you can stop cancellations, you will be able to focus on the strategies and processes to do so. You will then brainstorm ways to get the client interested in your offerings and prevent them from canceling.

Understand Why They Want to Cancel

One of the most important steps to stop a cancellation is understanding why the client wants to cancel in the first place. This will not only help you keep this particular client, but it will also prevent other clients from considering cancellation in the future. After all, if one client had an issue or concern, it is likely that others will as well. Some common reasons are prices, poor customer service, no established relationship, and life changes.

You need to go a step further than just understanding why someone wants to cancel. You also need to be sure to document it. This will help you gain metrics and compare various reasons over time. This documentation will also help you stay focused and remember what the reason was.

As you record the reasons for the cancellations, stick to facts. You also need to make sure to survey the clients you lose. If a client calls to cancel, you will have the chance to talk to them over the phone. But you may still want to send a follow-up survey to see if they have anything else to add.

Get Creative to Address the Concern

If necessary, get creative to address the reason that the client wants to leave. For example, if they had found a better price, see what you can do to match or beat the price.

Or, if they have a change in location or assets and need different coverages, highlight the other insurance policies you offer that may fit their needs. If the reason is a bad experience on the service side of things, you can let them know that you will work on training, but you also need to accept that sometimes this won’t be enough. If they still cancel, don’t worry, as you can always retarget them later.

Remember to Remarket

Even if someone does cancel, that doesn’t mean that they are gone forever. You will need to address why they canceled, but once you do, you can try to win them back. For the best results, create remarketing guidelines that include turnaround times. This will help you win back lost customers without annoying them with your persistence.

You also want to make sure that you have all of their contact information up-to-date. After all, you can’t remarket to a lost client if you can’t contact them. If the client calls to cancel, you can get updated information by asking what number to call them if you get disconnected.

It’s no secret that the insurance industry is a highly competitive space to be in. Perhaps the most popular way that insurance agencies secure business is by trying to keeping prices low. Especially when it comes to mandated automobile and homeowner’s policies, people want to spend as little as possible without compromising on quality. This is why so many agencies focus on making sales based on price.

While that might seem like a good business-building strategy, it’s riddled with problems. Yes, the price that consumers pay for insurance is important.  However, there are other things considered even more critical—not just for agencies but also for their clients.

Creating Long-term Trusted Relationships

Consider this scenario. An individual receives a marketing email from an agency that offers cheap automobile coverage. Whether on a relatively tight budget or perhaps uninformed, they decide to buy a policy.

At first, everything seems fine. However, the policyholder then gets into a car accident. What should’ve been a straightforward claims process turns into a nightmare. Ultimately, it takes a long time for that person to get the money owed, and even then, it isn’t the amount they anticipated because their “cheap” policy left them drastically underinsured.

Here’s another scenario. Someone opts for a cheap homeowner’s insurance policy in response to an agency’s advertisement. It meets the lender’s criteria but just barely. Even though the coverage isn’t great, the low price proves too enticing to ignore.

Then, pipes in their home freeze and burst. Although the cheap policy covers most of the damage, the policyholder can’t reach their agent, or any other agent for that matter. That person has to wait several days to get any resolution, and the quality of customer support is just as bad as they’d heard about.

These aren’t far-fetched stories but real situations that people experience. Sure, these people saved money, but only in the short term. These individuals would’ve gladly paid a little more to have confidence in their agency and agent.

Tips for Building Trusted Client Relationships

Remember, as part of the everyday service your insurance agency provides, you want your agents to continually look for ways to provide clients with excellent yet cost-effective coverage. That ensures the policyholders always have the right protection but at the lowest price available. So, while you can certainly grow your agency by letting consumers know you offer affordable solutions, don’t make this the primary focus.

An excellent way to stay on top of pricing while building a trusted relationship with your clients is to implement an excellent insurance agency management system. For one thing, you can customize it based on the policies you sell and your company’s overall objectives.

Beyond relying on a robust insurance agency management system, here are some ways to build trusting relationships that last.

• Become an Expert – The more you and your agents know about the insurance industry and the products sold, the more prospects and existing clients will consider your agency “the expert.” By nature, people prefer to get information or make purchases from an organization they believe is on top of its game. This mentality certainly applies to the insurance industry.
• Stop Overselling – You don’t want people to compare your agency with an unsavory auto repair shop that constantly tries to get customers to buy things for their cars they don’t need. Well, if your agents oversell, that could happen. Remember, consumers are smart. So, once they feel an agent is just trying to make more money by selling unnecessary coverage instead of focusing on their best interests, they’ll go elsewhere for insurance. Instead, focus on advising your clients and let them make the ultimate decision.
• Respect the Industry – Even as part of a highly competitive industry, you never want to say anything negative about your competition in front of clients. Doing so would likely make them question what you say about them behind their backs. Badmouthing the competition is a poor business practice that destroys client relationships as opposed to building them.
• Promises Made – Another way to build long-lasting and trusted client relationships without putting all your efforts on price is to follow through on promises made. Whether that involves getting them a more affordable policy or better coverage, applying a discount, or something different, make sure you can do exactly what you say. This is another way the right management system can help. It’ll keep everyone in your agency on track so that promises don’t get broken.

The Bottom Line

Yes, providing your clients with affordable coverage is important, but it’s not the most important factor. The goal is to build relationships with the people your agency serves and make sure that they’re properly covered. As a result, you’ll have not only their business but also business that comes from their family members, friends, and other referrals.

 

When you run an insurance agency, you have tremendous responsibilities. That includes hiring the right people who can help the company grow. Also, you want to provide your staff with training so they can consistently hone their skills and give them the tools and systems they need to perform their jobs optimally.

Unfortunately, there’s another responsibility that no business owner or manager enjoys: terminating employees. Regardless of the industry, that’s tough. However, if you’ve done everything possible to help a person change, but they still fail to meet the agency’s standards, you don’t have any other choice.

If you own or manage an insurance agency, that would include all support staff, managers, and the agents themselves.

The Right Time to Terminate

So, how do you know when you’ve reached that point? The following are some examples that show when it’s the right time to fire an employee.

Excessive Tardiness

Especially in the insurance industry, the only way for your business to grow and thrive is to have dedicated agents who work hard to sell new policies and renew existing ones. If someone’s constantly late to work, they’re doing your business a disservice. If you’ve spoken to the agent and given them more than one warning but don’t see any improvement, it’s time to let them go.

Tardiness among the support staff in your agency is just as big of an issue. For example, a receptionist who’s supposed to start work at 8 a.m. but doesn’t bother to show up until nine or later creates two problems. First, there’s no one available to answer incoming calls. Second, that means one of your agents has to pick up the slack. So, instead of selling policies, that person is fielding phone calls.

Stage Fright

To sell insurance, you want agents on your team who aren’t timid, afraid, or shy to assertively sell policies. When hiring someone new, there’s no way to tell how they’ll do in an actual work scenario. Unfortunately, the only real way to gauge an employee’s performance is to watch them after you’ve brought them on board.

You might have a brilliantly minded and creative agent who comes up with some incredible ideas. This person also works hard and genuinely wants to do a great job. Even so, they also have “stage fright.” For them, meeting with prospects and existing clients is beyond awkward and scary. For an employee like this, you want to provide them with every opportunity possible to improve.

However, if you’ve sent them to training, given them plenty of pep talks, and even tried to find another position in your agency for them, all without luck, you’ll need to let them go. As sad as it is, this scenario is not that uncommon in the business world.

Unacceptable Behavior and Attitude

Your employees are a direct reflection of your insurance agency. One person’s poor behavior and attitude could prove devastating to your business. You want team players, people who get along and respect each other as well as their clients. An employee who acts out can quickly and dramatically affect employee morale. In turn, that can have a significant impact on sales and the client’s satisfaction.

Drama King or Queen

As the owner or manager of an insurance agency, you want to show empathy to your employees. After all, everyone is human, and sometimes life deals some pretty hard blows. So, you can expect someone to bring their personal life to work from time to time. However, when you have an employee who’s a bona fide drama king or queen, it’s time to terminate them. Typically, this shows that the employee is more interested in themselves than your agency.

Failing to Abide by the Agency’s Standards

You know you need to fire an employee if they blatantly disregard the standards you’ve established for the agency. These rules and regulations serve multiple purposes. For instance, rules streamline operations, and they can prevent your business from getting penalized by an employee who violates the law. You can’t afford this kind of liability.

Set Your Employees Up for Success

To run a successful insurance agency, you need to do everything in your power to provide your employees with what they need to achieve great success. Again, that consists of hiring the right talent, providing training, having honest and open communication, and giving them the necessary tools and systems. A perfect example of this is an insurance agency management software program.

This type of insurance agency software benefits support staff members, insurance agents, and clients. When you select the right software, you’ll find that your business operates far more effectively and efficiently. Most important, choose a system that your employees can learn to master quickly and go with a reputable source that offers tremendous support during the learning phase and after.

After doing all this and giving an employee ample notice that they need to correct something but to no avail, it’s your responsibility to fire them. Although this might require some firmness on your part, terminating someone doesn’t equate to acting mean or judgmental.

No, firing an employee is never what you want to do, but there are times when you’re left with no other choice. The bottom line is that you have a business to run. If you want to see it thrive, you need an outstanding group of employees who work as a team and respect the agency as a whole.