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Originally Posted On: https://www.trkingim.com/how-to-manage-your-sales-process/

 

Whether you’re in your first year as an insurance agent or your tenth, sometimes, you may feel like you just aren’t bringing in the money you could.

There are plenty of leads out there, so why isn’t your business growing? How can you make your clients happier and bring in more word-of-mouth leads? 

Perfecting your sales process is an ongoing endeavor and can be important for keeping your business in the black.

Read on to discover some techniques that can improve your sales process the smart way.

Stay Connected

One of the first keys to success when it comes to improving your sales pipeline is to stay connected with your leads.

In sales, out of sight is truly out of mind, and while you don’t want to annoy your leads, you do want to stay present in their minds. You need to make sure you’re capitalizing on any initial interest and helping to nurture it to fruition.

 

Pro Tip: Set reminders to check in on leads if you haven’t heard back from them in a few days. Offer to answer any questions they may have, and provide several ways they can contact you, including, if possible, through text.

When leads do reply to you, make it a policy to respond within one business day or have a vacation response in place.

Build Client Relationships

Once you do land a client, the communication work is far from over. You need to work to build trusting relationships with all your clients, making sure each of them feels personally cared for.

As an insurance agent, you are an integral part of protecting the things your clients care the most about, and they need to be able to trust you with that duty.

When you begin to work with a new client, ask them what they worry about most with the assets they’re protecting, whether that be their home, their health, or their family.

Find out what would give them the most peace of mind, and recommend products and solutions based on what will best address those needs.

 

Pro Tip: Send cards during the holidays and emails on their birthdays, and make notes about their family’s names so you can check on them later.

Ask Questions

You may have noticed in that last section that building trust with clients seemed to involve asking a lot of questions. That’s no accident; making clients feel heard is one of the best ways to grow a solid relationship with them.

Asking questions is also critical to ensuring your clients have a stellar experience with you.

In addition to asking clients about their worries and fears, ask them what they value in an insurance service.

And don’t be afraid to ask them what products or services they need; today’s clients are more informed than ever before.

Ask if they feel there are any gaps in their coverage that need to be addressed or if there’s any way you can give them more peace of mind.

Understand Your Target Customer

While asking questions allows you to gain specific knowledge about your individual clients, you have to start from a base level of understanding.

After all, part of an effective sales process is strong marketing, and how can you build a good marketing campaign if you don’t know who you’re talking to?

Having a strong target customer profile can give you a deeper understanding of your clients and help you to communicate more effectively with them.

Start your target customer profile with the basics: age, gender, income, education level, location, and so on.

But then, you need to dig in deeper – ask yourself where this person spends their free time, what publications they read, and who they trust.

Figure out what drives them, which messages impact them most, and what platforms they’re likely to see those messages on.

Qualify Your Leads

One of the biggest strengths of the insurance industry is also one of its biggest challenges: nearly unlimited potential clients.

The truth is that almost everybody needs insurance in some form or fashion.

Car insurance, home insurance, renter’s insurance, health insurance, life insurance, final expense insurance – the list goes on, and you have almost 300 million potential clients.

With a lead pool that big, you have to narrow down your focus so you spend your time on converting leads that are most likely to give you a return on your investment.

 

Pro Tip: It’s a good idea to set up a system for qualifying leads so you can weed out the ones that aren’t likely to make a purchase.

If you’re working with a lead generation service, you may be able to pay a little more to have only qualified leads passed on to you.

Ask for Referrals

When you’re perfecting your sales process, you want to make sure you’re taking every opportunity to bring in strong new leads.

One of your best potential avenues is through word-of-mouth marketing.

When your clients recommend you to your friends, those new leads come in with an inherent level of trust that comes from their trust in their friends.

Ask your current clients if they can refer you to other friends, family members, and colleagues who could benefit from your services.

You may even consider offering some sort of referral reward program to incentivize clients to send these referrals.

Perfect Your Sales Process

As an insurance agent, having a strong sales process can help you to improve your ROI, keep your clients happy, and bring in strong new leads.

Work to foster strong relationships with your current clients so you can better address the needs and concerns of future leads.

It’s also a good idea to qualify your leads before you pursue them and to ask current clients for referrals.

If you’d like to learn how to perfect your sales process, check out the rest of our site at TR King Insurance Marketing. We can help you get the support and tools you need to be a successful independent agent.

Apply online today and launch your insurance sales career today.