Preparing Your Clients: Laying The Groundwork for an Effective Annual Insurance Review Program
Preparing your clients for a customer insurance review can make all the difference regarding the success of your appointment-setting efforts, the quality of the meetings, and the overall effectiveness of your program.
Think about marketing, for example: it typically takes several touchpoints with a prospective customer to eventually make the sale.
Warm leads have a higher close rate than cold leads.
This isn’t groundbreaking news by any means.
Your clients are the same way when it comes to agreeing to an appointment.
Most agencies have some customers who are happy and enthusiastic about coming in for an appointment. Still, some insurance clients are hesitant to come in for the review.
This hesitancy can be attributed to many different factors:
They don’t want to be sold to.
They’ve got a busy schedule.
They don’t think they need to review their policies.
The list could go on and on.
Most of these hesitations come from a lack of (and need for) understanding of the importance, value, and benefits of reviewing their coverage with their agent.
Whether you’re...
a new agent beginning to hold reviews
a seasoned agent starting to hold reviews
or an agent who has been holding these reviews regularly for a while...
.. it’s essential that you prepare your clients for the customer insurance review.
Here are a couple of tips to help you prepare your customers for a review:
Set expectations with new clients.
When you onboard a new client, let them know you’ll reach out periodically (once a year or so) to invite them in for a review.
Let them know why you hold review appointments annually:
Checking for gaps and overlaps in coverage
Making sure coverage is up to date with any life changes
Answering any questions they have about their coverage
Checking for possible discounts and bundling options
If you set these expectations up front, when they get a phone call down the road to come in for a review, they’ll have a higher likelihood of agreeing to the appointment. It won’t be a foreign concept to them.
Educate your current clients about annual insurance review meetings.
Use a variety of channels to teach your current customers about annual review appointments.
Email newsletters
Social media posts
Direct mail
Educate them about the benefits and value they will get from the appointment, just as you do with new customers.
You can also send periodic emails to specific customers you’ll be calling in the next month or so to let them know to expect a phone call to schedule the appointment.
Let them know it will take about 30-45 minutes - If your review appointments regularly take longer than that, your clients will be less likely to agree to a review appointment in the future.
Check out these blog posts to help you with customer objections to a review appointment:
20 Common Client Objections to Annual Insurance Reviews
20 Objections to Customer Insurance Review Appointments
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Or download the FREE PDF of the 20 common objections and how we have learned to respond.
The successes of your annual insurance review appointments will multiply if you’ve done the work to prepare your clients for the meetings.
What other things do you do to help prepare your clients for the review? Let us know in the comments below!