Lets start out with a survey question: Who doesnt want to close more deals?
*crickets*
Every broker and agent says they want to close more deals, but unfortunately, most of them spend a ridiculous amount of time on tedious paperwork and endless administrative tasks. Which, of course, leaves less time for things like sales and making money.
The insurance industry is traditionally a paper and ink business. Meaning, agents write policies with a pen and paper. Even the more modern systems still use scanners to image applications and send them into the home office. Theres very little, if any, integration between the brokers internal email system, the backend admin system, the agents or brokers front office, and the customer.
What a mess.
But, that all can be changed with the right tech.
Heres how to increase your agency’s profitability and close more deals by using upgraded technology.
How To Increase Sales Through an Open Framework
Imagine having your broker management system tightly integrated with Outlook, document archiving and management, your backend admin, management software, and so on.
Well, this is exactly what Novideas integrated platform does.
Novidea easily integrates helps all your existing bits of technology and creates seamless harmony between them. For example, every time a call comes in, its automagically logged and tagged with the client in your system. You get more (and lets be honest, better) reporting on every client because you have a record of who called, when they called, and why they called.
You also dont have to deal with the usual headaches of your current system, meaning less paperwork and less tedious admin tasks. Not only do agents love that sort of thing, but management does, too.
What it means for brokers:
You get more information about your customers in a centralized management system. All their contact and policy information is right there true data-driven insights. No shuffling through the rolodex (gosh, do people still use those?) or scrolling through your contacts app.
And, no more rifling through emails with 10 sub-threads about your co-workers awesome golf game last weekend. Only distilled data that matters and can help you make more sales.
But not just regular sales, intelligent sales. The kind of sales where youre a welcomed and trusted consultant, not an annoying pest.
What it means for management:
Its a lot easier to critique and help your employees improve when you know what theyre doing (and not doing). Novideas platform gives you a means to do that. You can track how long an agent spends talking to a client, what products they sell, where they sell, and obviously how much they sell.
You can keep tabs on retention rates for individual agents and brokers as well as the whole office, and even the whole company.
What it means for the company as a whole:
One of the best ways to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is to track sales. But, more than that, you want to be able to keep track of how profitable each customer is. So, it is about sales, but not just raw sales volume.
If you spend $15 to get a lead, and another $100 to turn that lead into a customer, wouldnt it be nice to know how much revenue (and profit) that customer brings the agency?
This can be a pain in the you-know-what to calculate without a fully-integrated platform. But, with Novidea, brokers can see this information pretty easily. And, this gives them an objective way to rank clients by how much benefit they bring to the company.
Clients who are underinsured? Call them up and make sure theyve updated their coverage. How do you know how much they need? The platform gives you that information. It gives you detailed information about how much they have, what they dont have, and where they are in life right now, so you can fill in the blanks (on a new insurance application, of course).
Speaking of which this is something most agencies dont have yet. So, theres a huge opportunity for brokerages that jump on the wagon right now.
The Benefits of Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is a fancy way of saying you can use data to predict what your customer needs before they ask for it. You become a super-agent, understanding your clients on a deep level better than any other agent has understood them before.
Predictive analytics works by extrapolating what a client might do based on buying patterns. The analog model for this is the old Standard Rate and Data system, which collated mailing lists of people who had purchased a variety of goods or services through the mail.
Anyway, once you know enough about what your prospects and customers have purchased in the past, you can, more or less, predict what theyll buy in the future. You can use that information in your cross-selling and upselling attempts.
For example, has a client purchased a new vehicle every 5 years for the last 20 years? Hes probably going to buy another one within the next 5 years then, right? And, if you know this, and you know when hes most likely to buy, then you can be right there delivering relevant information to him about auto insurance (specifically, what he ought to know about renewing his auto policy on a new vehicle) right when he needs it.
Another way to use predictive analytics would be to take that same car buyer and find out what kind of vehicle they just purchased. Was it a new minivan? What was their last vehicle? A 4-door sedan? Is it possible they just had another child? Maybe they need life insurance (or at least a review of their current coverage).
These types of upsell and cross-sell opportunities are difficult to spot in siloed systems where one agent, selling one line of insurance, may not share information about their client. Or, may not even know what type of information should be shared or what opportunities for upsells are even possible.
With a fully integrated system, the entire agency functions as a well-oiled machine, so your sales team can do what they do best and automate the busy work.
And really, thats the way its supposed to be, isnt it? Upgrade your business today and start closing more deals with the help of Novidea.