How the cloud helps insurance agencies cross-sell
A lack of continued sales training, education and repeatable processes have cost agents and carriers billions in lost revenue over the years.
If you’re an independent agent or captured agency owner who sells personal lines of insurance, you know cross-sell opportunities — for commercial, secondary properties, additional vehicles, toys, businesses, life insurance, retirement assets and personal umbrella policies — are routinely missed during new business and policy reviews.
While cross-selling has been a part of the insurance industry since its inception, the lack of continued sales training, education and repeatable processes have cost agents and carriers billions in lost revenue over the years.
Technology has brought a transformation to the industry, causing insurance carriers (big and small) to fight for survival with the arrival of autonomous vehicles, rising operational expenses, legacy software systems, and an exhausted agency distribution channel with increasing staff turnover.
Identifying cross-sales opportunities has never been more critical.
The need for additional revenue, as well as additional coverage for customers, is well known. But studies show only 46% of insurance agents consider themselves successful at cross-selling.
So, what can be done? Agents need tools to help them easily collect data, identify opportunities and clearly communicate with customers.
Seeing an opportunity to assist both agents and customers, PersistEplan Software partnered with the legendary Harry Hoopis and Joey Davenport at Hoopis Performance Network to create Hoopinsure, a cloud-based process SaaS system that guides new business and renewal conversations through a scripted liability limits assessment conversation unlike any other product on the market.
Most customers purchasing personal lines of coverages don’t know how liability limits protect household assets against judgments caused by an accident or fatal catastrophe. When agents educate customers on liability limits using the Hoopinsure Risk Assessment Calculator (RAC), an automated digital fact finder, or B-File™, is created. Every commercial, benefits, life insurance, retirement, and P&C cross-sell opportunity is identified by using the digital script within the calculator.
The software takes all the data points collected within the RAC and catalogues customers by household opportunities. The system then filters and generates reports by the customer’s life insurance stage, employment status, retirement assets, and other variables and then identifies P&C cross-sell items in real time. Due to its success, over 50,000 B-Files™ (profiles) were created last year via new business and policy reviews.
Data shows customers will voluntarily divulge assets and values when having a detailed conversation around their policy liability limits. For example, over 2,000 agents using the Hoopinsure software have identified over $10 billion in total household assets, 1,800 business owners, 10,000 households with immediate life insurance needs and over 11,000 P&C cross-sell opportunities that would have been lost without this repeatable digital process.
The success of getting customers to commit during a policy review, for example, is all about a routine contact process and the digital profile created by having a liability conversation, and the most effective way to make this process work seamlessly for agents around the country is through custom software that allows agents and virtual staffing to connect.
Cloud-based solutions are key to uncovering billions in household assets along the way.
Blake George (blake@bmgmediaco.com) is co-founder and CTO of B-File™. These opinions are his own.
See also: