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Agency Marketing Technology Campaign management Keeping in touch with long-term prospects By Steve Anderson In our October 2005 column, we introduced this series of articles about what it takes for an agency to create a successful marketing system. We believe there are five components that make up a successful marketing system: prospect management, opportunity management, campaign management, submission management, and results management. In the December 2005 and February 2006 columns we examined prospect management and opportunity management respectively. In this fourth column in the series we will describe what we mean by campaign management. Campaign management is the natural next step after you have identified those prospects that you have a high likelihood of closing right now. The question is what do you do with the prospects that you’re not working on today but want to work on next year or the year after that? A properly constructed campaign management system will allow you to build a relationship with long-term prospects over a period of time. Many agencies manage their prospects by putting a reminder in some type of contact management system so that they can call the prospect three to four months prior to their next expiration date. The problem with this process is that your prospect may forget everything about you unless you stay in contact with them between now and the time you need to call again. Being able to maintain contact with the prospect without requiring the producer to carry out every individual step is the heart of a good campaign management system. Following up While there are many reasons why producers do not follow up with their prospects in a consistent manner, some of the most common ones are: They don’t like to. Many producers are great at prospecting, presenting, and closing, but they don’t like to carry out the necessary activities (like writing letters, or making phone calls) to cultivate a continuous stream of prospects to work with. People buy when they are ready to buy. Therefore, it is necessary to be keep in contact with your prospects so that they will think of you when they are ready to buy. They are too busy. Many producers are focused on short-term opportunities and believe that they can’t spend the time to cultivate long-term relationships with prospects. They are not well organized. Some producers allow things to “pile up.” They have no systematic approach to remind them when it is time to get back in touch with someone. They simply lose track of when to follow up and with whom. They leave the agency. When a producer leaves an agency, no one continues to contact his or her prospects. A new producer then deals with the “good” customers. Any prospects whom the prior producer was cultivating are frequently lost. In addition, that prior producer may continue to cultivate these prospects—for your competitor, not for you. Taking advantage of automation Automation can be the foundation of your marketing system. After all, a computer is very good at completing simple tasks over and over again—as long as you tell it what you want done. The first step is to review in detail the marketing capabilities of your current agency management system, or a stand-alone system, to find out if it will do what you want done. Many systems simply are not sophisticated enough to properly manage an automated campaign. However, a number of stand-alone PC-based software programs do provide the sophistication to fully support an automated system. These programs are specifically designed to support an automated marketing process. Here is an example of how to create a consistent, ongoing contact process with a prospect: 1. First, send the prospect (as identified in the prospect management part) an introduction letter talking about the special program you have available. 2. Three days later, send a second letter telling the prospect that you are going to call for an appointment. 3. Finally, three days later, someone in your office or from an outside firm will make a telemarketing call asking for an appointment and/or their expiration date. But—that is only the beginning. Any expiration dates you receive are added to the database, and each prospect becomes part of a relationship-building program to keep the producer in touch with the account until it is time to work on it. Here are some additional steps you can take: First, the producer sends each prospect a letter thanking that person for talking with a representative from the office. Tell them someone from your office will call for an appointment in whatever month is 120 days prior to their renewal. The software is able to calculate the correct month from the expiration date information in the database and automatically inserts the month into the letter. Then, every month—until it is time to call for an appointment—the producer sends the prospect a different personalized letter that highlights what makes your agency unique. The last letter says, “As agreed, I will give you a call in a few days to set up an appointment to talk about your insurance program.” Through the use of a “call report,” the software reminds the producer to call for an appointment after the last letter is mailed. (And if the producer doesn’t make the call in five days, the software will print a “Reminder Report,” and five days after that a “Management Report” will go to the sales manager who can then investigate why the producer has not made the call.) The key point to remember is that each contact is made without the producer having to do anything except sign the letters. Producers don’t have to remember, so they can’t forget. You can and should develop a number of different marketing scenarios for other activities such as: • Standard introductions to help you make the first contact. • Qualifying and appointment getting to make sure you are in front of decision makers who are ready to buy. • After appointment closing actions to prove to your customers and prospects that you will do what you say you will do. • Sales and management reports to help you monitor what producers are doing right and who needs additional help. Cross marketing sequences to increase your sales from your best prospects—your current clients. Client maintenance so you will have positive contact with your customers throughout the year, not just at renewal. It is important to remember that once a prospect is placed on a plan, the system should automatically manage the marketing and sales process and prevent the prospect from “falling through the cracks.” The system can automatically process thousands of contacts, all at different points in any one of many different marketing scenarios, with all receiving different letters from different producers. If you properly implement a campaign management system, and you use it consistently to improve your prospect follow-up, your business will grow. * The author |
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