The results of a survey conducted by Simon-Kucher & Partners tell us that 94% of respondents would like to purchase multiple insurance policies from one insurance agency, but just 17% of them had most of their policies with one agency/insurer.
It’s no secret that the more policies an insurance customer has with their agent, the “stickier” they are in regards to retention.
For every 2 additional policies written for a customer, their probability of cancelling drops by 50%!
Cross-sell leads also have an 85% close rate while internet leads have a 5% close rate.
During the pandemic, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many of our customers about why they hold regular customer review meetings.
I asked them specifically about cross-selling/multi-lining their customers and how customer insurance reviews help them to do that.
In this post, I’ve compiled some excerpts from our conversations that illustrate just how profitable cross-selling is: enjoy!
“You want to let your customers know that you care and you want to see if anything has changed since you last talked to them - Have they done any upgrades to their home? Had any kids? Most times I find gaps somewhere - maybe in an endorsement on the home that I would suggest, or an umbrella policy, maybe something that needs to be tweaked with their auto insurance. I just think it's vital to have a regular, at least annual, check-in with your customers to help with retention, find any gaps, and just to keep in contact with your customers.”
-Brian Stephens
“[Customer insurance reviews] strengthen the relationship, their loyalty; we explain what they're paying for and why they're paying for it, what they have and tell them where the gaps are. We don't hard sell anything, and mostly when people understand how things piece together, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. You want to give them the most bang for their buck and when they understand that, they think it might be something they need and it just kind of goes from there.”
-Debbie Beach
“If I look back at my production, my bigger cases - this is actually one I’m working on now: It was an Engagex appointment from earlier this week, we literally only had a vehicle loan with him, and because of the Engagex appointment, I was able to do the review. It’s an insurance review, but he doesn’t even have insurance with us - he has a car loan with us. It opened the door for him to bring on his insurance with [us], and lo and behold, he has 5 cars, a home, and he’s interested in life insurance! So I sent him a full proposal this week and that came from this appointment, so from that standpoint, as I look back, the bigger cases that I’ve had have been a result of these, what we call IFRs or Simple Conversations.”
-Fabio Soto
“When I have consistent reviews, I notice that my lapse/cancel ratio goes down and the cross-selling, at least in my office, goes up. I don't personally sell any policies during those meetings, I tell the people when we're in the meetings that this is not an opportunity for me to try to sell you anything, I'm simply taking the time to review this, and I want you to take this as me providing some sort of risk management for you. I'm going to give you suggestions, and then at the end of this if you decide you want to make changes, we can make changes.”
-Mark Handley
“The [customer insurance review meeting] is a time to visit. We're going to do a policy review, we're going to look at ways they maybe can save some money but we also look at things that they might be missing.
We're a real soft-sell agency. I like to have the customers feel like they're driving it and that I'm not pushing it. One of the easiest cross-sells is the umbrella policy, because you can definitely take a look at what their assets are and whether or not they've got the right coverage. That's a real easy "let me send you some figures, if you decide to go with this policy, what it would cost" and we also get into the discussion of life-insurance and health benefits. What do you have through work? What else do you have? Is that an area of concern? And so you can pick up things that way, you'll get into how much they have in their bank so you can talk about CD alternatives through [our company]. There are some opportunities there for sure if you do a good overall review.
I think if you can come across more as a consultant, and less as a sales person, you're going to have a lot better higher success with bonding with the customer so that in 2 or 3 years, they come back, you want to make it a positive experience for them, like "that was really beneficial, that was a good use of time” at the end, because it will reinforce it for them.”
-Mark Peter
“You never know what you're going to find when you do the review. There can be existing business there that we're not aware of. It's very very important.” -Theresa Delcenio
“A benefit of holding customer insurance reviews is naturally writing other lines of business, or adding coverages, if they don't have towing or rental car coverage, if they're just a renter and we don't have a renters policy for them, also naturally pulling up life leads, and writing the life insurance for them. Writing what we call personal article policies on things like jewelry and those types of things. I gather out of each and every phone call there's normally something that needs to be done.”
-Diane Neely
“Something that’s important is making sure there are no gaps in their protection. That could be gaps in car insurance or the home insurance side with retirement planning, could be gaps in life insurance, could be gaps in disability insurance.
We stopped [engagex appointment setting] service probably 3 years ago for 6 or 7 months and I definitely saw a difference in the business. I saw our lapse/can rate go up, I also saw our frontline production go down, because we didn't have a system to be in front of clients having these conversations which was once again, a confirmation to me that we need to keep doing these”
-Wayne Wallace
How have you found success in cross-selling your customers? Let us know in the comments below!