10 Ways to Make Insurance Agencies More Successful… Now

A revolution is underway that is having dramatic effects on insurance agencies, and the entire world. In the simplest terms, no one wants to do anything they don’t want to do.

The supermarket delivers groceries, the dry cleaner picks up and drops off clothes and the milkman is back at our door. With mobile banking, why use an ATM or go into a bank? Pharmacies are open 24/7/365, and restaurants bring dinner to your door.

The iFood app not only plans customer-rated meals, but it tells us the aisle where each ingredient is located in the supermarket of our choice. There’s someone to walk the dog, and doctors are making house calls.

If we don’t want to, we won’t do it. It’s this simple. That’s the new mindset. E-mails require too many keystrokes so texting takes its place and the world is all-aTwitter with no more than 140 keystrokes to tell the story. We ignore online forms with more than three questions.

Whether it’s property, casualty, life, disability or health care, no segment of insurance can escape this revolution. It’s time to stop playing “let’s pretend,” as if nothing’s happened or that “things are just a little different.”

When will personal lines sales be mostly online? If Progressive Direct and GEICO and a few other direct writers have their way, the lion’s share will be there before we can figure out what happened. And it’s not just personal lines; term life already lives online.

The message is clear: We are totally intolerant of anything that gets between us and what we want to do. Americans have never liked intermediaries – car dealers, retailers, insurance agents and particularly salespeople. We may need an auto mechanic, but we don’t need a car dealer or salesperson. Life today is truly “plug and play.”

With the agency mergers, consolidations and compelling configurations, is there a place for the independent insurance agency?

The answer is yes, but with daunting conditions. Here are 10 thoughts on what it will take to stay in business:

1. Solve something and don’t just sell something.The biggest problem insurance agencies face is that they sell something -they don’t solve anything. That’s why people don’t want to see you unless you can deliver the lowest price.

Bob Seltzer, Steve Stramara and the staff of the Seltzer Group in Orwigsburg, Pa., figured this out. His staff helps businesses solve bothersome problems – human resource issues, workers’ compensation costs or anything else that’s people-related. They’re a resource for prospects and customers.

When the agency changed the way it thinks about customers, it changed its brand and business exploded. If all you think about is insurance, you can’t meet customer needs.

2. Ditch the Mexican jumping bean-type marketing. Jumping from one gimmick to another is a common marketing story for many insurance agencies.

An e-mail invites the recipient to a seminar on “World-Class Marketing Made Easy.” Who possibly believes that any marketing is easy? Too many insurance agencies are looking for simple, cheap answers that deliver incredible results. When they don’t get instant results, they jump from one gimmick to the next and the search never ends.

Marketing requires careful planning, solid discipline and consistent implementation. Unless an agency is willing to make the commitment, it will never become a marketing-driven organization.

3. Use donations prudently.Donating to every cause, joining every club, serving on every board and attending every meeting is yesterday’s networking in more ways than one.

Sure, a few donations are politically correct, but mostly it’s money frittered away. Why not identify a need in the community and put your money and agency’s energy into making something worthwhile that becomes your brand? Invest in making a statement that engages people.

When the calls and requests for money come in, you can candidly tell the story of where you’re putting your resources.

4. Develop niches.All marketing should be niche marketing. Unfortunately, too many insurance agents work each day as uninspired generalists who attempt to quote every type of account and miss their greatest opportunities.

Insurance agents are like department stores – bland, lacking focus and easily ignored. Today’s customers expect expertise, not just vacuous phrases like “a full-service agency,” whatever that means. If anything, both consumers and business executives want to deal with specialists.

Many agents wait for an insurance company to drop “a special program” for machine shops or the like in their laps. And for three weeks they chase that until it peters out.

Figure out several niches that interest you and have a potential for success in your market area. Then, find a carrier that likes your plan for writing the business.

An agent with a plan will impress them. Become known as the expert in these areas.

5. Stop hoping for a hard market.It’s “in” for insurance agents to talk about helping customers lower their insurance costs, while keeping their fingers crossed that a hard market will magically appear out of nowhere to beef up their revenues.

Sure, certain classes of business may “harden,” but the capacity of the global insurance market is such that there will always be carriers on the street driving prices down with their appetite for more market share.

If you’re waiting for a hard market, you’ll be out of business.

6. Help customers improve their businesses.After 25 years as a producer, Sam Martin, senior vice president of Lipscomb & Pitts Insurance in Memphis, Tenn., took a year off to figure out whether he wanted to stay in insurance or move on. “I came to the conclusion that I wanted to help businesses become more successful,” Martin said.

He figured out how he could do that by staying in insurance. He gets appointments with decision makers by saying, “I would like to review your workers’ comp account because at least 50 percent of employers are paying more than necessary.”

Who wouldn’t want to see someone who wants to help recover lost money? It goes almost without saying that a high percentage of those customers asks him to manage their insurance. Providing meaningful assistance creates what works – a performance-based relationship.

7. Make prospecting a plan.Insurance producers are incredibly optimistic, or at least that’s the way it seems. They just “keep on quotin’,” hoping that something will stick.

That’s not even looking for the low-hanging fruit. It’s just trying to get your hands on the stuff that’s dropped to the ground. Then when an agent doesn’t have the lowest quote, it’s back to the underwriter to shave it a little thinner.

That’s not prospecting, and it’s certainly not selling. It’s begging.

Serious prospecting is carefully planned and consistently executed. It’s designed to produce a steady flow of quality business over time by consistent and meaningful cultivation that sends the clear message that the agent is knowledgeable, customer-focused and helpful.

8. Tear down a useless Web site.Ninety-five percent of agency sites have zero value to a visitor. It’s all about the agency – how long they’ve been in business, a nod to the “founder,” and a photo of the “team.”

Most feature pictures of the agency office building or some skyscraper-like structure aimed at creating the illusion that this is the agency “headquarters.” And, of course, there’s the inevitable photo of the principals. Most, if not all, are men.

Take a lesson from the home pages of the Wall St. Journal, Yahoo!, USA Today and Amazon.com. See what they are doing to get their customers involved.

9. Ask yourself why you deserve new business.Too many agencies just want more business, but they have no idea why they deserve it, other than to say, “We have great people” or something equally irrelevant.

The question, “Why should someone do business with us?” demands a thoughtful answer. What makes your agency unique? If you can’t come up with a compelling answer, it’s time to do some “renovation” work.

If you fail here, you’re helping to reinforce the “all that’s important is the price” mind-set of so many customers.

10. Take back what’s yours – your customers. Insurance companies have done an effective job of stealing your customers. The bottom line (and that’s what counts) is that carriers don’t need you or want you mucking around with customers.

At one time getting pesky customers off your back may have seemed like a pleasant idea, so you ceded them to the carriers. Then call centers became the solution, and you became the dispensable middle-man, particularly at critical moments such as when there are claims.

The Seltzer Group, along with others who understand what’s happening to the insurance business, have taken back their clients so that when there’s a claim, the customer calls Seltzer’s claim managers.

Although doing as little as possible for customers may have an appeal, it also has a downside; your agency is no longer important to carriers or customers. If customers fail to perceive you bring them value, they won’t value you. And that’s the end.

There are many more than 10 ideas for meeting today’s challenges and whatever tomorrow brings. However, it’s certainly worth noting that if you think you can just wait it out, you’ll be out -of the insurance business.