Photo from unsplash

Originally Posted On: 10 Key Strategies for Selling Insurance Online, Especially Medicare | TRKingIM

 

Have you ever stopped to think about just how much of our lives happens online these days?

We interact with friends online, check our bank balances online, communicate with our doctors online, and even work online. With everything going digital, why should internet sales still be stuck in the dark ages?

Selling insurance online can be a great way to grow your business, especially if you sell Medicare. Read on to discover some top tips and tricks for online insurance sales success.

Why Sell Insurance Online?

Before we dive into the strategies you can use to improve your online insurance sales, let’s talk some about why you should sell insurance online in the first place.

When many of us think of insurance, we picture a person sitting behind a desk or even a door-to-door salesperson. But the truth is today’s market has changed, and your best sales prospects are now online.

The rise of the information age and the internet of things has given us access to more customer data than ever before.

This means that we can custom-tailor our marketing to various demographic groups, and customers have come to expect this sort of bespoke care.

Online, you can provide the experience your customers need, improving both your reputation and your sales.

Why Sell Medicare?

So of all the different types of insurance, you can sell online, why should you opt to sell Medicare?

The shortest answer is that Medicare offers one of the largest client bases of any insurance type.

In fact, when you sell Medicare, your client pool is effectively infinite, and it’s only growing.

• As of 2021, there are more than 49 million adults over 65 in the United States.
• By 2030, all the Baby Boomers will be 65 or older.
• By 2035, it’s estimated that there will be more than 78 million people in the United States over 65.

This gives you an enormous client pool to mine, so your only limit is time and ingenuity.

Selling in a Medigap Market

When you go into the Medicare sales industry, you need to be aware of the Medigap market.

Many people who are eligible for Medicare wind up purchasing Medigap insurance, which helps cover expenses that Medicare won’t. This can reduce their out-of-pocket expenses, especially as they get older and start contending with more health issues.

 

Pro Tip: Your clients will want to get these Medigap policies as soon as they become eligible for Medicare. But they also want to work with an agent who they trust to take care of them at their most vulnerable hour.

This means you need to work fast and smart to meet each of your clients’ individual needs.

Prepare for an Informed Customer

One of the biggest changes agents need to be prepared for in today’s market is the level of expertise customers bring to the table. Customers would show up knowing next to nothing about the insurance industry or their needs in the past. The agent would tell them what they needed to buy, and they would docilely agree, asking few questions.

These days, however, customers have access to the entire world of the internet to do their homework before they ever talk to you. They know what they want, what the options are, and what they want to avoid.

You need to be prepared to work with your clients in more of an advisory capacity, guiding them to the best solutions rather than dictating what they should buy.

Establish Expertise

One great way to earn your clients’ trust from the start is to establish your expertise early in the interaction. Because clients are so much more informed these days, they want to work with someone who really knows their stuff.

If they leave your meeting with the impression that they know as much about the insurance industry as you do, they won’t be motivated to work with you.

• Make sure you do your homework before all your client meetings
• Don’t be afraid to show just how much you know
• Don’t confuse clients with industry jargon
• Avoid coming off as braggadocious or condescending
• Make sure you’re able to answer any questions they have in detail and with strong reasoning

Optimize Your Site

Once you’ve started building a rapport with your clients, you need to turn your attention to your online presence. A good website is one of the most important tools you’ll have in growing your practice and interacting with your clients. Not only will it give leads a place to learn more about you, but a properly optimized website can actually bring new leads in the door.

Ensure your website is beautiful and easy to use; it’s well worth the money to hire a good site designer to make sure everything runs smoothly.

 

Pro Tip: You also want to make sure your website loads quickly, or you could lose up to 40 percent of your potential visitors.

And finally, make sure your site is search engine optimized to keep your name turning up first in search results.

Use Social Media

Other than your website, social media is the single most powerful marketing tool you have available. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults have a Facebook page, and another 37 percent use Instagram. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another single platform that contains such a large portion of your customer base.

• Set up pages on all the major social media platforms:
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Make sure you post regularly, aiming to post at least once a day on each platform and more often on platforms like Twitter.
• Respond to any customer interactions you get through these platforms.
• Aim for a good blend of informational and sales posts.

Leverage Content Marketing

With your social media and web pages set up, you’ll want to start diving into the world of content marketing. This effectively means you’ll be creating content, such as emails and blog posts, that your clients can peruse.

This content should be informative and is a great opportunity to establish your expertise in your industry.

Setting up a blog can also be a fantastic way to improve your website SEO and to feed your social media marketing. Make sure each of your blog posts is search engine optimized, using appropriate keywords and linking rules. Then post a link to that blog on your social media pages, driving traffic back to your site and creating interesting content for your followers.

Focus on Your Target Market

As you’re creating this whole outreach and marketing plan, it can be easy to get caught up in what you think looks or sounds good. But remember, the purpose of all these efforts is to connect with potential customers. It’s important to focus on your target market as you’re working to grow your insurance empire.

These days, there’s a ton of information about what various demographics look for in their marketing.

• Establish a target customer profile for yourself
• Do some research on what that customer looks for

Keep that at the center of your marketing efforts, and you’ll see more and more leads rolling in.

Set Up Video Calls

Once you start getting leads coming through the metaphorical door, you need to start making connections with them. Remember, your customers need to feel like they can trust you to take care of them when they’re lying in a hospital bed and staring down a $20,000 medical bill.

But these days, making those connections can be harder since face-to-face meetings aren’t always feasible.

 

Pro Tip: Setting up video calls can be a great way to build stronger connections with your customers no matter where you both are. You can have more genuine conversations that give you a better opportunity to listen to your customers’ concerns.

You can also respond to their questions in real-time without the barrier of a keyboard between you and them.

Use a Book of Business

As your business starts growing, you’ll soon find that you have more clients than you can keep up with. While this is a good problem to have, it can start to compromise some of your customer service.

You may not be able to remember the last time you spoke to a specific customer or that her husband had just been diagnosed with cancer at the time of your last meeting.

From the beginning, it’s a good idea to use a book of business tool to keep up with your clients. These tools will allow you to make notes about the best times and methods to contact a customer, as well as what plans they have.

You can even make notes about the date of your last meeting and any significant information shared during that discussion so you can go into the next discussion without missing a beat.

Offer an E-App Option

You want to make sure that you make it as easy as possible for your clients to apply for your services as possible.

The days of paper and pen applications are long gone, and no one wants to spend the time to argue with a printer these days. Offering an e-app option can be a great way to bring in clients who don’t want to deal with a lot of hassle.

 

Pro Tip: The right e-apps will allow clients to fill out their applications from anywhere, even on their phones.

They can also sign digitally and even submit their payment through the app. You can even set up a screen-sharing option that allows you to walk clients through their applications in real-time in case any questions or concerns arise.

Set Up E-Contracting Solutions

Your application shouldn’t be the only thing going digital this year, however. You should also look into an e-contracting solution to help you get new contracts entered and old contracts managed. Trying to enter each new contract manually can be time-consuming and will come with a higher margin of error.

An e-contracting solution can pull agent data directly from the producer database and input it into the contracting system. This frees up your time to pursue new leads and follow up with clients who may have questions.

You could even get new contracts entered in as little as two minutes and with far fewer errors than you would get typing it in by hand.

Use an Online Quoting Tool

Before clients ever call about your services, they’ll want to know how much their plan will cost them.

However, every client situation is different, and you can’t just put up a price scale on your website and call it a day.

Using an online quoting tool can get your leads the answers they need to take the next step in their application process.

While it may seem like using these quoting tools is losing you opportunities for client interactions, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, by giving clients the information they need upfront, you improve the chances that they’ll trust you. Once they know your services are within their budget, they’ll be more willing to talk to you about setting up a plan.

Learn More About Selling Insurance Online

Selling insurance online can be very lucrative, especially when you’re selling Medicare.

Make sure you get your online presence built up, creating a beautiful, search engine optimized website and a strong social media presence. You should also use digital tools like books of business and e-contracting solutions to stay organized and provide the best possible client experience.

If you’d like to discover more tips for insurance sales success, check out the rest of our site at TR King Insurance Marketing.

We can help you get the support, contract levels, direct payment, and more you need to succeed. Use the buttons below to get started!