Selling is essential to growing your agency. A critical element to sales is understanding how prospective customers think and act. In our experience with Partner Platform agencies, many don’t have the best tools to follow how a prospect moves to a client in the “buyer’s journey.” This fairly predictable path has some critical points where you can either move or lose a potential customer.
We’ve thought about the buyer’s journey a lot here at SIS as we introduce new Partner Platform elements to help agencies succeed at each stage. With the help of our parent company, sales as a service provider NuGrowth Solutions, we’ve matched Partner Platform elements with the buyer’s journey in the table below.
Use this resource to inform your agency on how to leverage Partner Platform to move prospects from one stage to the next
Following the Buyer’s Journey with Partner Platform
Stage
Description
Partner Platform Tool
Unengaged
Just a name on a list. This prospect hasn’t engaged with any element of your marketing or sales outreach.
Customers need attention, too! Once they’re on-board, customers should be re-engaged regularly and monitored for cross-sell and referral opportunities.
An All-in-One Sales, Marketing, and Agency Management Tool
Beyond these sales and marketing specific capabilities, each stage in the buyer’s journey also benefits from Partner Platform’s integrated email and custom workflows to make data entry simple.
It’s hard to believe one system could have all these capabilities, but Partner Platform truly does cover agency needs across the sales, marketing, and agency management spectrum.
Find out more about each of our Partner Platform enhancements below – all integrated with our cloud-based, intuitive management system.
You need new customers to stay in business. It’s a truth all agency owners know, and one that plagues many. Identifying and closing leads seems like a never-ending struggle.
Often, these same struggling owners aren’t investing in insurance prospecting software. Therein lies ones of their issues. Insurance and sales technology has exploded over the last decade, and anyone that hasn’t adopted these technologies will be left behind.
What are these essential insurance prospecting tools? We’ve outlined a few must-haves below.
Effective marketing is integral to sales, and marketing automation is critical in modern marketing. With marketing automation, you can set up campaigns to target different audience segments, schedule messaging to deliver at critical points in the buyer’s journey, and gain volumes of valuable data. You can use this data to personalize outreach, yielding higher response and conversion rates.
Customer Relationship Management Tool (CRM)
If you’re in sales, you need a customer relationship management tool (CRM). CRMs are designed with sales in mind, created to track and nurture leads. Marketing automation and CRM tools need to be connected, sharing data, and working together to qualify and convert leads. CRMs are your centralized place for all prospecting activity, showing you where you stand with each individual prospect and overall. This full picture can tell you what methods are working, which need improvement, and what you can expect from leads in similar segments.
We’ve all got our smartphones in our pocket, and successful agents need their agency management system there, too. Sales happen on-the-go, so you need to be able to get the info necessary to close a deal no matter where you are when you need it. Mobile management system access allows you to look up contact info and view and take notes on interactions among other pertinent actions.
Integrated Text and Email
The more information you have on interactions with each contact, the better. When texting and email messaging are integrated with your management system, you increase that data gathering. Integrated texting and email guarantee every message you send links to that contact without any extra work on your end.
This one may seem disconnected from prospecting, but a proposal creator, in fact, hits right at your prospecting goal: making the sale. With a proposal creator, you can quickly create multiple options for a potential client and move through the underwriting process faster. When it comes to making your pitch, time is of the essence, so the quicker you can get a proposal into a prospect’s hands, the better.
A Partner in Your Corner
Our goal at SIS is to equip our Partner Platform agencies with the tools they need to bring in more business. That’s why we’ve integrated all these prospecting elements into our robust Partner Platform agency management tool.
Each of these capabilities came right from our Partner agencies, through interactions with our community at our National User Conference, Regional Learnings, and User Groups as part of our Partner Agents community.
Customer service is getting speedier and more personalized across industries. From banks to grocery stores, people expect to get their needs met almost immediately.
These same customers are your customers. If you don’t have the insurance tech needed to match these growing expectations, you’ll be counted out. So, what tech do you need to keep up?
Top Self-Service Insurance Tech for the Independent Agency
We’ve seen a lot change over our decades of service to independent agencies, but the recent jump in self-service tech is a whole new ballgame. We’re here to stay on top of these advances and equip our Partner agencies with the tools they need to serve their customers better. Below are the top self-service tools we’ve identified and our recent posts detailing the benefits and importance of each.
Customer Self-Service Portals: Customers want instant access to policy information, including plan details and insurance cards. Find out how these portals can cut down service responses, saving you time and money while improving customer service. See our post “Why Agencies Fear the Self-Service Portal and Why They Shouldn’t”
Mobile Websites & Apps: We hold a wealth of information in our pockets, and your customers expect to be able to access your agency info via that mobile device by their side. See why mobile access is critical, especially for things like submitting accident info and getting claims updates. Read our post on “Top Agency Management System Tools: The Insurance Mobile App”.
Integrated Texting: Texting is now the number one mode for quick information exchange. Your customers expect to be able to reach you by text, and your management system needs to be able to capture that exchange with texting integration. Learn more about integrated texting in our post “Insurance Management System Musts: Integrated Texting”.
Partner Connect is a multi-level offering that includes a custom client self-service portal, agency mobile app, and branded website designed for customer convenience, agency availability, and brand promotion.
There are two significant factors consumers take into account when deciding where to bring their business: price and customer support. In fact, American Express found 90% of Americans surveyed consider customer service in their purchasing decisions. However, people will remember service before they think about price. In many cases, customers are willing to take a price increase as long as their service remains superior.
Independent agency owners know this well. Quality customer support is one of the major reasons why clients work with our Partner agencies. Below are some of the ways to improve your service, answering questions on how to get insurance clients and how to keep them.
Reach out to clients on your own, fostering a relationship. You want the client to think of you as more than just their insurance provider, but as a friend and trusted advisor. And, you want them to think of you whenever they hear about or think of insurance. With that positive correlation in mind, they’re more likely to refer you to a friend or family member regardless of their insurance needs.
Listen
It sounds simple, but asking questions and genuinely listening to answers on how you can improve is powerful. Your clients are smart and will tell you what you need to know to improve. From what services they like and which they wish you provided, to preferred communication methods, your customers are the best source of advice on how to better your service.
When your client has a problem or a suggestion, take responsibility to help find a solution. If the issue will take some time to remedy, continually update them on its status. Your customers will take note and spread the word about the effort you put forth, regardless of how and when their problem is solved.
Leverage technology
Customers expect tech to be a part of your service offerings. Leverage available technology to allow your clients to self-solve their issues and quickly connect with you when needed. Client portals, integrated texting, and mobile website access are a few of the essential tech pieces to provide superior service to your customers.
Are you leveraging all the latest in industry technology? Find out here
Make Your Service Superior with Partner Platform
At SIS, we take our customer service seriously and that means providing our Partner agencies with the tools they need to keep their service top-notch. Our latest customer-focused addition to the Partner Platform agency management system suite is Partner Connect. With Partner Connect, our agencies can choose from multiple offerings, including a custom agency-branded mobile app, client portal, and updated agency website design.
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