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Boosting Insurance Retention through Cross-Selling

Boosting Insurance Retention through Cross-Selling

Marketing, Sales

Insurance retention is a critical piece of agency success. We all know the stats: it is far easier to keep a current customer than to search for a new one. Recent studies show it costs 5x more to hook a new customer than to keep an existing one. With stats like these, it’s easy to see where you can make the biggest bang for your buck: cross-selling

Cross-selling is the practice of selling additional policies to an existing customer. These could be adding home to auto or life to medical among others. It can also be adding an extra policy for a child, spouse, or another family member. Anything that tacking on to a customer’s existing policy is a cross-sell.

So, if cross-selling is so important, how do you do it? Here are three steps to help you spot, nurture, and close a cross-selling opportunity.

Get tips on how to improve your overall insurance customer retention here

Spotting an Opportunity

To make a cross-selling sale, you need to know what to look for in your customers. Start by segmenting your customers into groups by gender, location, age, and other defining factors. You can use these segments to look for patterns. When you successfully cross-sell to a customer in a given segment, start looking for opportunities with other customers in that segment.

Life changes are major cross-selling indicators. When a customer gets a new car, has a baby, gets married, buys a new house, or retires, they will likely need to update their coverage. Take these opportunities to introduce potential coverage additions. Leverage your CSRs and agents to gain information on coming life changes as they spend the most time talking with customers. Have a centralized place (like a CRM or agency management system) to track interactions to get an idea of who may be looking for coverage updates.

Customer content engagement can also be telling. Someone who liked a tweet on choosing the right vehicle for your family and attended a webinar on “The Ins and Outs of Auto Insurance” is sending signals. With marketing automation, you can track these engagements and spot an opportunity from a mile away. And, you can nurture this lead by sending targeted content on auto policies and an opportunity to set up a consultation with an agent.

See how you can leverage your place as an independent, community-based agency

Tracking and Nurturing

As mentioned, marketing automation is excellent for nurturing cross-selling leads. Utilize it to keep customers engaged with regular newsletters and holiday and birthday greetings, and nudge them along with customized content based on their interactions. One critical piece of custom content is an automated renewal reminder 60-90 days before a policy’s end date. This email should include info on possible cross-sell items based on what you know from your marketing automation data.

The other prospect management tool you need is a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) to bring everything together. When synced with your marketing automation, your CRM can tell you precisely the right moment to make the pitch. This marketing automation data, along with info on a prospect’s interactions with agents and CSRs, tell you exactly what a prospect is looking for and when they’re primed to make a purchase.

Find out how to improve your customer relationships on the SIS blog

Making the Sale

When it comes time to make your pitch, the most important factors are to give options and make it personal. You want the prospect to recognize that you understand their unique needs, and you want them to be in control of deciding what’s best for them.

That personal connection and ability to offer choice are what drive our Partner Platform Proposal Creator. This intuitive tool allows you to make high-quality, agency-branded proposals in minutes. With its ease, quickness, and professionalism, you can give your customers multiple custom proposal options well within your sales window.

Find out more about the Partner Platform Proposal Creator, and our Marketing Automation Manager and Producer Results Manager CRM, today at https://sispartnerplatform.com/contact-us/.

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Sunning Your Summer in Security

Sunning Your Summer in Security

Agency Operations, Cyber Security, Technology Trends

Agency and insurance management system data security has always been a top priority for us at SIS. We built our Partner Platform agency management system suite with data safety and cybersecurity in mind, and it continues to be a topic we follow.

This past May, agency data security was one of our key topics at our annual Partner National User Conference, where we heard from industry expert Brad Ruben on how to prevent and prepare for security attacks.

One of the reasons we asked Brad to speak is we know security takes teamwork. Though we are confident we’re providing the most secure system to our partner agencies, they are still at risk if they’re not equipping their staff to watch for cyber-attacks.

This summer, we encourage you to take the time to look at your data security measures and re-commit as a staff to protect your customers. Here’s a little advice to get you started.

Get a full re-cap on our National User Conference from SIS President Michael Doran here

Advice from Experts: Equip and Educate

Archway Computer CEO Brad Ruben’s presentation at our National User Conference had quite an impact on attendees. Multiple agency representatives walked away with practical, actionable advice on how they could better manage and protect their data. Highlights from his presentation included:

  • There is cause for concern. Over 33,000 phishing attacks and 4,000 successful ransomware attacks occur each day.
  • Anti-virus protection is a must. Programs like Webroot and Malware Bytes are essential to keeping you safe.
  • Cloud services are the future of security. Data hosting services like Amazon Web Services have 24/7 data surveillance, redundant backups, and multi-character encryption to keep your data safer than you can on your own.

Find out why you should be moving your agency data to the cloud

The most significant takeaway was the emphasis on educating staff on data security. Some of Brad’s tips included:

  • Delete suspicious emails. Never click on links from unfamiliar senders. Delete emails from unknown sources and report them to your IT team.
  • Password protect sensitive files. When moving files to a USB, sending through email, or saving on a laptop, add password protection to keep them safe.
  • Use complex passwords. Employ number, letter, and punctuation combinations, including using different cases for letters. And be sure to use multiple passwords, so you don’t have just one tied to all accounts.
  • Don’t install programs you don’t know. Even something as harmless looking as a computer game or unknown anti-virus software can be hiding as malicious programs. Ensure staff consult with IT before installing anything.

SIS Partner Platform agencies can access the full presentation on PartnerNet

Read more ways to minimize agency data security risks

Mandates from States: Staying Up to Standards

Though you should be keeping your agency data safe no matter what, some agencies are legally obligated to do so by their state. States like New York, Ohio, and South Carolina have individual regulations agencies should know.

We keep our standards in line with the strictest state regulations, ensuring Partner Platform is up to standard throughout the U.S. Some of the measures we use include:

  • Restricted admin access limiting only a few select persons to accessing data.
  • Multi-factor authentication and complex passwords to access restricted data.
  • End-to-end data encryption to ensure information is continually protected.
  • Safe and swift disposal of nonpublic information the moment it’s no longer needed.
  • Redundant back-ups and disaster recovery plan to safeguard against power outages or security breaches.

Discover more on our commitment to data security here

Get the Right Data Security Partner in SIS

We make a commitment to our partner agencies to uphold the highest security standards, ensuring they can trust us with their data. We’re partners in security with our clients, working with and for them to create and support sustainable, secure infrastructure.

Hear what our clients have to say about their experience with Partner Platform and SIS on our Client Stories page.

Want to find out more? Get in touch at [email protected] or 800.747.7005, Option 6.

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