Columbus, OH – Strategic Insurance Software (SIS), providers of Partner XE, a leading agency management system for independent agents, today announced the upcoming release of Partner XE 2016.
This latest version reflects the ongoing collaboration between SIS and its client. The update promises to deliver improved agency workflows and efficiencies by reducing clicks and streamlining processes. Updates include multiple customer-requested features, including enhanced certificate and document management.
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When you think of branding, what comes to mind? Perhaps you feel your agency has a solid brand, or maybe branding seems like a nebulous, confusing exercise.
No matter where your agency falls, defining and maintaining your brand is an essential part of insurance customer retention and prospect outreach. You need to know who you are and what value you provide before convincing others why you’re the best choice.
Insurance customer retention is a primary goal for most agencies. Although it’s much easier to retain customers than gain new ones, you need to do both to sustain your agency.
How can you both gain and retain customers?
Quality insurance providers know what is at the heart of sales: relationships. Independent insurance sales in particular focuses on getting to know prospective customers, and connecting them with the coverage. True insurance sales is helping people get what they need.
A Powerful Sales Tool – Your Agency Management System
Successful salespeople use a variety of tools to convert opportunities and chances are, your agency has at least one of these tools: an insurance management system. The data input/output abilities of your agency management system, coupled with its ability to centralize information, makes it perfect for prospect conversion.
Harnessing the Prospecting Power
Your insurance management system allows you to capitalize on the key elements of sales: know your prospect, stay in touch, and be there when the time is right.
Other Insurance Management System Benefits
The reporting functions of your system are a huge asset to your independent insurance sales process. Read outs can show how often a prospect was contacted, by what means, and other pertinent information. And, it’s all easily exported to Excel so you can manipulate data and views as needed.
Centralized storage of prospect information is another asset. When information is recorded in your agency management system, it is tied to your agency, not the producer. This distinction is important – a producer could potentially leave your agency, taking all that hard earned data with them. In your management system, it’s accessible to your agency for years to come.
Partner Right
If your agency management system doesn’t have the above capabilities, talk with your provider. Find out what they can offer and ask about other ways to utilize your system to boost sales.
At SIS, we enjoy hearing from our clients, gaining insights into their areas of concern and adapting our Partner XE to their needs . Have an idea you’d like to share? Contact us – we’d love you from you!
This phrase has become commonplace – the answer for everything from “what are those song lyrics?” to “which car should I buy?”. The internet is now the number one source for information gathering and decision making. This means your insurance agency website design is critical: it is where most of your prospects and customers will interact with your brand. It may even be how they find you in the first place.
Your insurance agency website design plays an important role in gaining new business and retaining customers. So it needs to make an impact – and a positive one at that.
An effective insurance agency website is one that is attractive, informative, useful, and engaging.
Use pleasing elements, such as a “sticky menu” that stays glued to the top or side of the screen. A sleek design– something clean and bright – provides a positive user experience. Stick to one or two colors and minimal graphics, all of which should communicate your agency’s brand. Less is more here. Don’t overload pages with text. Get to the point using bulleted lists or other methods to break things up. Finally, stick to one or two font styles as anything more makes your site seem chaotic.
People come to your agency website to learn: about your team, your services, and what makes you stand apart. Bring the most important information to the forefront such as links to your contact, about, services, and request a quote pages. Users should be able to navigate to these pages from anywhere on your site. Include a search bar at the top of each page to allow users to easily find the relevant information they need.
Your insurance agency website design must serve users’ needs. Prospective customers need access to online quotes and your service list, but they will also look for ways your site serves your current customers. Online payments, access to policy information, printable ID cards, and online claims processing are appealing. Any way to make service faster and more convenient is a plus.
Users should be able to interact with your agency website, and access your agency through it – from anywhere, at any time, on any device. The first step is a responsive design, meaning your site will adapt depending on what is used to view it: phone, tablet, laptop, or another device. Adding social streams (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) increases users interaction. Finally, an interactive help center can help your customers troubleshoot issues faster. The ability to live chat with agents or get an immediate email response to resolve issues creates a positive user experience.
Your website is an important part of your agency’s brand and a valuable marketing tool. SIS has a multitude of resources to help you build your brand, including more tips on how to continually improve your online presence. Check out our other agency resources here, or contact us to find out how our team can help your agency grow.
There are many ways to improve your insurance agency management, but one of the most impactful is hiring the right people. When you have the right people for the right job, you start from an optimal point.
But how do you know who to hire? We’ve got your answers in our latest eGuide, Who You Hire Matters: The How and Why of Hiring Great Producers and Leaders.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
“We all need somebody to lean on,” as Bill Withers said in his famous song Lean on Me. Yet, it can be challenging to know when and how to ask for help. Working in an independent agency, you likely need more help than you know. With a small team, everyone is usually tackling more than one job at a time, making it easy for something to fall through the cracks.
Though you may intend to put effort and thought into something, invariably other time-sensative matters comes up. For many agencies, that something is insurance agency marketing. Whether it’s a customer request, an uptick in claims, or another important measure, marketing gets put on the back burner again.
So how do you know when it’s been too long since you paid attention to your insurance marketing? There are a few signs that it’s time to get help.
Part of what makes our Partner Platform agency management system and insurance CRM so robust is the partnerships we foster with insurance tech companies. Our Partner Allies specialize in their arenas, from esignatures to comparative rating and more, each Partner Ally hones their technology to serve agency needs.
Our Partnership with Exago and Exago BI
Today we highlight our longstanding partner, Exago. Exago specializes in building and delivering customized business insights with intuitive reporting and dashboards that anyone can use. After designing and implementing our own BI ad hoc reporting system, we found it too cumbersome and confusing for our Partner Platform agencies. Acting on our spirit of innovation and efficiency, the team knew it was time to look for an expert to work with and for our community.