Seven strategies to reclaim your clients
By Scott M. Primiano
The main objective is to keep yourself current, keep your clients current, and to consistently define and provide "peace-of-mind."
"What's happened to the kitchen table?" I wondered as I reviewed the renewals of my homeowners and auto policies. Accompanying the policies was, of course, a cover page containing the name of my assigned agent whose job it is to ensure that my personal assets are properly protected and that I have adequate coverage to provide the "peace of mind" that I'm looking for.
I don't know this agent and this agent doesn't know me. I remember that when I first purchased these policies, my wife and I sat down with an agent (not this one) to review our current needs and craft an insurance plan to meet those needs. I remember that he referred to it as our "insurance program" and, after attaining the peace of mind that I was looking for, I remember feeling safe and protected.
Since that day, much has changed in our life and to our lifestyle. Unfortunately, after signing the premium check, we never saw that agent or any other agent again; and we have only a vague understanding of the effect that these changes may have on our "program." Additionally, over the years we've been notified of revisions to our policies and I'm unsure of the impact that these changes may have. Sure--I can read through the pages of the policies and try to figure it out. And I do. Read that is, never feeling confident that I figured anything out. Gone, long ago, is the "peace of mind" that I once had bought.
Regretfully, I'll end up doing what I do every year. I'll renew the existing policy with the invisible agent, cross my fingers, say a prayer, and hope for the best. Never quite sure of what I bought, who I bought it from or if it's right.
Am I your client?
If I am your client, and if there are others like me in your book of business, then I urge you to get busy. Somebody, someday, is going to come along and pluck my homeowners, auto, life, and disability programs out of thin air and make me their client. They'll do so not because they're better than you are, not because they're smarter than you are, not because they have access to cheaper products and better markets. They'll do so simply because they showed up. They are where you should be.
But let's suppose that retention of your existing book is a priority, and you'd like to be back in the business of creating new business. Conditions have never been better for you to get up, step out, and do what we in the industry are truly here to do--proactively provide our clients with enough information to make educated decisions about the design and cost of their insurance programs.
Here are seven strategies for putting the "personal" back into personal lines.
The needs assessment
A needs assessment should be conducted with each existing client and for each new prospect. It's presented to the potential client as the first and most important step in your insurance program development process. Your potential client learns that you're interested in custom-developing an insurance program and that you don't intend to simply shop and swap an existing policy for a better price.
For existing clients, a needs assessment is much more than a file update or courtesy call. The assessment is a complete audit of their program that will ensure that you, their agent, and they, your client, have all of the information that you both need to revise and enhance the program to exactly match their current requirements.
In addition to a policy review, the needs assessment defines and analyzes the individual clients' comprehension of their coverage and exposures, reveals their insurance buying preferences, and outlines their expectations regarding future contact and service. The results of the assessment allow you to gain a true understanding of each client's risk tolerance, expectations, and specific needs. This insight enables you to tailor programs and strategies to protect the client's assets while managing insurance costs. That satisfies the primary interests of the client--value and budget. Furthermore, the assessment provides you with all of the information that you'll need to proactively create and manage a customized "relationship management" plan that will all but guarantee that you never fall from grace.
In its simplest form, a needs assessment is little more than a list of questions or a checklist of topics to review. The types of questions and the number that you ask depend entirely on you and the nature of the client that you're interviewing.
Draw from your own expertise to formulate your questions and use them as a springboard to educate your prospect, define your involvement, and build the insurance program.
Pre-renewal meetings
Every appointment that I have with my physician begins with a review of my previous assessment and a recap of the wellness plan that we agreed to. Then she updates my file with any new developments, re-assesses, and creates a new plan for the coming year. When I had a freak stroke at age 40, my physician's disciplined approach enabled her to quickly rule out a long list of potential causes, identify the likely cause, and begin effective treatment immediately.
Once you've created and conducted a few assessments, you'll discover that they're as valuable to you and to your client as my health assessment is to my physician and me. Like my health assessment, insurance needs assessments should be conducted annually with your key accounts and appropriately updated prior to renewing the insurance program. As policy renewal time approaches, schedule a pre-renewal meeting to identify any potential gaps in coverage, introduce new products and services, continue the client education process that began with the initial assessment, proactively address any questions, and redefine service and contact expectations.
Pre-renewal meetings should be conducted face-to-face whenever possible, especially with your key accounts. However, they can also be done over the phone, by e-mail, or a combination of both. The main objective is to keep yourself current, keep your clients current, and to consistently define and provide the "peace-of-mind."
Risk management programs
Chances are good that you've been taught that risk management initiatives are appropriate for commercial accounts only, and larger ones at that. Not so. If we expand the definition of risk management to include any proactive client education initiative that's designed to eliminate or minimize the frequency and severity of claims, we quickly see how easily and efficiently we can engage and educate our personal lines clients. Ideas for how to accomplish this are discussed in the following sections.
Client seminars and workshops
Compare the time required to meet with 40 individual clients to the time involved with organizing and facilitating a client event that allows you to meet with all 40 clients at the same time--for instance during a personal lines risk management seminar. In addition to accomplishing the primary objective of proactively informing and educating your clients, the personal lines risk management seminar is an absolute windfall for saving time and creating new opportunities.
Seminars and workshops are ideal presentation formats to use when "hot topics" with universal interest or impact need to be addressed. For example, hosting a homeowner's workshop on "Mold--ramifications, prevention, and remediation" would certainly draw an interested crowd. Other valid topics of concern could be: "The Impact of 9/11 on Insurance Rates" or "Credit Scoring--Improve Your Credit Rating and Reduce Your Premiums."
Though interactive, the intent of the seminar or workshop is to disseminate new information, so the session must be formally facilitated. The idea is to educate participants by leading them down an information path that identifies an issue and leads to a solution. The key is to keep it useful. As simple as it may sound, the greatest danger in hosting a seminar or workshop is not having anything worthwhile to present.
Stick to new and evolving risk management/loss control issues and solutions. Your goal is to provide value for the time spent, not just to entertain or socialize. Your credibility and value to your clients will correlate with the caliber of the presentation. You may wish to invite a guest speaker or professional workshop facilitator to present the information. Loss control specialists, underwriters, claims attorneys, and other industry experts will line up to assist you, usually at little or no cost.
E-mail and e-clippings
Some of our colleagues fear that "Web-enabling" the client/producer relationship will depersonalize the sales and service environment by reducing, or even eliminating, the need for face-to-face contact. While this scenario could play out with those who are more comfortable behind a desk than they are in front of a client, smart producers and account executives will use the enhanced efficiency of technology to provide an even greater focus on personalized client relationships. By reducing the time spent on processing, administration, communication, and information gathering, these folks will have more time available to spend with their clients than ever before.
Where to begin? Establish a group e-mail for your clients. By doing so you'll be able to consistently and effortlessly disseminate interesting and important bits of information to everyone, at the same time. This is especially critical for those of you who maintain such a large client base that you couldn't possibly meet with everyone on a consistent basis.
Forwarding timely risk manage-ment advice, industry information, community news, or timely articles via the Internet tells your clients and potential clients that you're informed, observant, and responsive.
In addition to your group e-mails, personal e-mail can and should be used to reach out and connect with clients individually. A sister strategy to the check-in phone call, personal e-mails are sometimes more efficient than phone calls or face-to-face meetings with your clients. This is not to suggest that e-mail communication should be used to the exclusion of the kitchen table meeting or the proactive call. It's used for those clients who prefer a less intimate contact and to augment your other client communication initiatives.
Check-in calls
Some of your clients don't have e-mail or don't use it enough to make it an effective method of interaction. There are others who prefer phone conversation to e-mail communication and still others who enjoy both. For these folks, the old-fashioned phone call is a meaningful and effective way to maintain a consistent level of contact.
The easiest way to get these calls done, the way that I do mine, is to set a weekly objective. My objective is five outbound check-in calls per week, all made on the same day, one right after the other--and I do so without interruption. In other words, I block out the time (usually an hour), set an appointment with myself, and "do the dials." Three out of five calls end with a voice mail message, which is fine (and often desirable)--mission still accomplished.
After years of practicing this discipline, I can't begin to count the number of questions, invalid assumptions, and simmering issues that I've stumbled upon that could have been a crisis further down the road. A crisis that would require much more time and energy to resolve than it took to make one call.
Providing personal attention
Here we have a dilemma. Let's suppose for a moment that you're completely re-energized and determined to establish a personal connection with every client in your book. You've decided to schedule an appointment with each client to review that client's program, update the client's information, conduct a needs assessment, and describe your proactive service plan for the years ahead. Though you realize that it might take you a year or more to complete the circuit while you continue to juggle competing priorities and responsibilities, you plan on three of these appointments each week and you hit the phone. Bravo!
Then it happens. Client reaction to your crusade is, at best, mixed. Sure, some are welcoming and enthusiastic; but many are cool, aloof, suspicious, or downright negative. Some avoid you and your call altogether. You, my friend, are beginning to feel like a telemarketer with laryngitis. Do you abandon your strategy or do you forge ahead? The answer is ... both.
Although your initiative is well intended and designed to spice up the dormant relationships with some measurable value, the value is in the eye of the beholder. So, even though your objective is to provide added value, and that value appears to be obvious, if the benefits of meeting with you or even speaking with you are not considered valuable from your client's perspective, then you're value-less.
You'll also have clients who simply don't want a relationship with you or any other agent. These clients tend to view their insurance program as a commodity; they usually base their buy decision on price; and they'll "call you when they need you."
So be it. You owe it to yourself and to your clients to offer everyone the opportunity to redefine your relationship for the better; however, don't get caught up in trying to sell the idea.
This doesn't mean that we drop all contact with those who don't respond favorably to the initial contact. We need to move as far away as we can from the reactive "no-news-is-good-news, quiet-clients-are-happy-clients" service mentality that's become our legacy. Instead, we keep ourselves efficiently visible and available using the other strategies presented. We invite them to our seminars; we e-mail them the same information that we send to our more active clients; and every now and again we make a check-in call. In short, we do our part and we do our job.
There's an old rule of thumb in our industry that clients leave you for the same reasons that they came to you. So, if they came to you in search of cheaper price, they'll leave you for a better price and there's not much that can be done to prevent their departure. However, if they came to you for service and value and they trusted you to deliver it, now is the time for you to start providing it. *
The author
Scott M. Primiano is the president and founder of Polestar Performance Programs, Inc. (www.gopolestar.com), a premier consulting and sales management company in the insurance industry. He is the author of Hard Market Selling--Thriving in the New Insurance Era.