Becoming a high-producing business insurance agent takes a lot of hard work. Selling business insurance requires many skills, and each can take years of experimentation to master.
As a result, insurance agents should study best sales practices if they want to streamline their professional development.
Let’s explore the primary challenges of selling business insurance and five best practices to help boost your overall sales performance.
Challenges of Selling Business Insurance
The business insurance industry is highly competitive, making it difficult to differentiate yourself. Also, clients often buy business insurance out of obligation. For example, many businesses need policies to satisfy legal or client requirements. So, business owners usually prefer the cheapest option to complete the transaction.
Not only can that make the initial sale more challenging, but it also makes clients harder to retain. If they ever find a cheaper provider, they’re likely to switch. That’s why high-producing agents must learn to sell value rather than price.
5 Best Practices for Selling Business Insurance
Studying the best practices for selling business insurance gives agents a framework and helps them develop their sales skills more quickly. Here are five of the most important ones to follow for insurance companies.
1. Implement One-to-Many Marketing
Lead acquisition is a critical step in the sales process that can make or break your ability to close deals. As the first link in the chain, it affects everything that comes afterward.
If you try to sell to low-quality leads, then you’ll need to clear additional hurdles. For example, you may have to convince them to choose your policy over existing coverage or even that they need commercial insurance in the first place.
However, if you can connect with individuals already actively looking for business insurance, you’ll be selling to a much more receptive audience.
One effective way to generate these leads is to use one-to-many marketing channels. These channels let you market to a broad audience and connect with people interested in your offering. Some options include:
These tactics work best in combination, so try to develop a comprehensive one-to-many marketing system rather than using a single strategy in isolation.
2. Speed Up Client Service
Clients value quick and convenient service now more than ever. They want answers to questions immediately, and every minute you make them wait increases the chance that they’ll choose a competitor over you.
As a result, insurance agents must learn to speed up their service as much as possible. Start with your communication response times, especially for inquiries from potential leads. The faster you are, the more likely you'll secure their business.
For example, you might commit to returning calls from potential prospects within two hours and responding to their emails within 24 hours.
Similarly, insurance agents should focus on providing faster quotes. The longer you make prospective clients wait for one, the more likely they'll accept a competitor’s quote. Quick quotes keep the sales process moving.
Pathpoint providesinstant E&S quotesfrom multiple A-rated carriers. Get policy prices for your clients in minutes, rather than days, after filling out a simple application.
3. Educate the Client
One of the challenges every insurance agent has to overcome is that people generally dislike it when you sell to them. The cliché of the untrustworthy used car salesman exists for a reason.
To sidestep these mental roadblocks, focus on educating your clients, not pitching to them. They’ll come to think of you as a trusted advisor rather than a sales representative.
Given that framework, it’s much easier to close deals. Instead of seeing your pitches as attempts to make a sales commission, your clients will come to see them as recommendations made in their best interests.
However, to properly educate your clients on the best insurance products, you must take the time to learn the nuances of their industries. So, it’s beneficial to narrow down your target customers and specialize your insurance expertise.
4. Offer Multiple Product Solutions
Offering multiple product solutions is another way to position yourself as a trusted advisor. You can suggest several policy options and explain why they might choose each depending on their circ*mstances.
For example, an insurance agent is on a call with a contractor looking for general liability coverage. The agent gives the client quotes for two insurance policies, one slightly more expensive than the other.
Next, the agent explains that the first option is the most affordable available but doesn’t cover pollution they may encounter in their line of work, while the more expensive one does.
5. Differentiate From Your Competitors
Differentiating from competitors is one of the most significant challenges agents face when selling business insurance. Since competing on price isn’t an option, you must demonstrate your value as an insurance agency.
Here are some additional tactics you can use to make yourself stand out as an agent:
Once you have a few years of experience as an insurance agent, standing out from the crowd becomes a little easier since you can lean on your previous clients. For example, you can use referrals or testimonials to gain your prospective clients’ trust.
Study Best Practices for Selling Business Insurance
Becoming a top-producing agent means consistently refining your craft. Study the best practices for selling business insurance to quickly improve your sales performance.
