Dump Your Client Portal

Buy this portal and you'll win new business!

By offering more "value" than the incumbent broker you can increase your closing ratio. The problem is your producers don't know how to sell, they know how to talk about insurance. So they go into meetings saying, "If you work with us we'll give you a portal." The prospect doesn't care because they don't see what problem it solves. Start by uncovering their business challenges first. TAKE A PORTAL SURVEY.

Buy this portal and you'll increase your retention!

Your larger clients are getting calls from your competition and they know how to position value. So your clients want you to buy the "thing" the competition has or else they're leaving. How do you get the other clients to use it? Sending an email alone to announce the new service will not cut it. You need a complete engagement strategy:

1. Email
2. Mail
3. Webinar
4. Onsite coaching
5. Repeat

Buy this portal and we'll put your name on it!

First time buyers are more interested in this aspect of the sale than the post-sale service. You need to ask questions to understand how to successfully deploy this strategy:

1. How do I get my clients to use this?
2. Is there training for my staff?
3. Is there training for my clients?
4. Who is responsible for training my clients?
5. What materials will we have to market this to our clients?
6. Who is responsible for distributing these?
7. Can I speak to one of your clients who has executed this strategy successfully?

Buy this portal because your competition has it!

Your competition has it. Ok, go talk to them, or at least another broker similar to them that uses the system. Here are some questions you should ask the reference:

1. Is there an engagement strategy?
2. Was it difficult?
3. What was difficult about it?
4. What worked well?
5. What advice would you give me?

Buy this portal because your customers will love looking up answers to their complicated questions on their own!

No they won't. At least not at the rate you would consider remotely worth the investment. At best one or two of your employees will use it to answer questions a couple of times a year. At worst they will give the wrong answer and it will hit your E&O. 

I will not buy a portal.

You need a portal. Here are a couple of reasons why:

1. You DO have self-service centric clients.
2. Today's insurance buyers research your website first. The portal is a minimum expectation, like online banking.
3. They're worth the investment of time and money if you get clients to use it because they can create exit barriers.

You also need to make sure you have a complete client engagement strategy in case you're partnering with one of the many vendors that puts the work on your shoulders. Monthly utilization reports should be run to make sure your efforts are paying off. After all, these things don't sell themselves. That's why guys like me have jobs.

-R

Sales Meetings Suck

Who thinks their sales meeting is a colossal waste of time? Most people across all industries, not just insurance, feel the same way as you. Why is that?

The Problem

1. They're too long
2. You're the best salesperson so you don't learn anything
3. You're the worst salesperson so you don't learn anything
4. They get derailed by someone's personal questions that should go offline
5. The updates have already been communicated
6. Your manager didn't adequately prepare
7. 3 people on your team aren't on the call
8. You never get to share your opinion and you're frustrated
9. Larry has a bad attitude and brings us down
10. I could be pretending to make cold calls right now

The sales team is responsible for bringing in all of a company's revenues. Just like Customer Service is in place to help retain the revenue. I know a salesman that once said, "I'm the reason you people have jobs." 

There is a lot of pressure on the sales team to constantly, not once in a while, hit "Their Number". It is a sales manager's job to help the sales people in any way they can to hit "Their Number." So why in the world would a sales manager waste his team's time & frustrate them further by holding a useless weekly sales meeting.

Why is this?

The answer is simple: That's what they were taught. Most sales managers were really good sales people. Really good sales people are normally only concerned about themselves. It's one of the perks of the job.

So when these sales people, who were indisputably the best at selling, are put in to leadership roles, they predictably fail. Being a top seller doesn't mean you're going to be a top teacher. All too often the lesson of the day is "I did it, why can't you?" 

When it's time for the sales manager to move on they recommend their top sales person as the next manager. And the cycle continues. 

Break the Cycle.

If you want to see revenues increase in your company, you need a weekly sales meeting and you need follow a new format. In the beginning it may require the insurance agency partners, the sales managers, and marketing. Over time you will understand who plays a valuable role in your sales strategy and whether or not you need to include them. 

If you're looking for a good book, go to Amazon and buy The Sales Leaders Playbook, by Nathan Jamail. There's tons of great tips in this book. Chapter 10 is "Effective Sales Meetings".

The meeting agenda that I will share with you below is what I did when I managed 15 retail locations. Our Region was number 4 of 4 when I moved in. When I left we were #1 for 16 of 17 months in a row. Ask me how to make your sales team #1 sometime. 

Here is how WE built our weekly Sales Meeting:

PLAN > AGENDA > REPEAT

Plan

• Have a call with your sales leaders, top performers or mid-level managers
• Pick the recurring day & time based on consensus
• Identify key performers
• Identify what each sales person's weakness is statistically
• Identify company news to be shared

Agenda

• Winners (10 minutes)
  • Give out a trophy. We had a large Cup for Highest % to Goal location every month. The winning location got their names engraved on it and kept it for a month. Nathan's book describes a "King Pin" award.
  • Recognize who is doing what you ask
  • BE EXCITED
  • Examples are: Most Cold Calls, Most Revenue, anything that has a goal associated with it
• Role Play (35 minutes)
  • Announce the topic of today's role play 
  • Review the reason it is important as well as the goal for each person
  • YOU role play first with your top performer (take something scary and make it an opportunity for recognition). This also gives them an opportunity to see what you expect
  • Pair up the team, a weak person with a stronger person, and have them practice
  • Visit each pair, listen, provide feedback
• Feedback (10 minutes)
  • In front of the group, each pair will share what they learned and what they will do better that week
• News (5 minutes)
  • Review the updates
  • Questions

Repeat

• Do it all again next week

This was successful for many reasons. It motivated all of my sales people that cared. Their goals were very clear. Everyone walked away with best practices from the top sales people. They committed to doing better in front of their team. 

In addition, I got to see who was worth putting my time in to helping outside of the sales meetings. Who had natural coaching skills themselves. Where the future leaders may come from. 

You also make a lot of money when everyone is hitting "Their Number".

-R

7 Ways to Drive Utilization with Your Employees

Read this blog if you've ever bought a value added service that your employees insisted you needed to have, yet never used after you signed the contract.

If you're reading this blog, you probably already have at least 1 value added service you give your clients for free. Maybe you have two. Maybe you're a national insurance broker who has everything that's available on the market today to give your producers every competitive edge imaginable. 

It's that simple, right? All you need to do is spend revenues on this service - revenues that have gone down year-over-year-over-year-over-year. Just buy this service and you will see a huge return on your investment to the tune of  <puts pinkie finger to corner of mouth, raises eyebrow>  $1,000,000!

If you never saw the ROI, or just haven't realized the return yet, then here are a couple of tips from inside the insurance industry to help you turn your ship around. Because the reality is most of these services are good and can provide your clients with value. But it is entirely up to you & your team to execute.

1. Lead by Example

You have to use whatever it is you bought. If its in no way practical for you to use, then you need to be talking about it in every single employee interaction. If you don't value it neither will they.

2. Empower Employees to Write the Process 

How will you market your new and exciting service to your clients? Who will train them? Is there a cost to the clients, if so what should it be? Ask for volunteers, these will be your early adopters, your champions, and your allies that you will need later. Ask any InCite Performance Group (formerly Sitkins International) member how important it was to have their employees contribute to the design of their company Playbooks. 

3. Set Goals

How many clients will you introduce to this program? How often does your agency need to discuss the value with them? How many meetings did this service get you? How many BOR's from those referrals? Your objective is to be able to quantify the ROI. 

4. Identify Early Adopters

Don't just identify who is on-board with the program, embrace them! If you have ten employees, you can expect three to be super excited about the new program, three to absolutely hate it and do what ever they can to disparage it, and four that haven't made their mind up yet. Guess which seven you should focus on? These are your Allies. Ignore the Axis of Evil.

5. Inspect what You Expect

This is a staple of management. If you're not already doing this today in your business your'e probably not a good manager of people. Stop worrying about value added services and hire a good manager because you have more money tied in to payroll then you have tied to this service. 

Run a utilization report. Spot check client calls. Go on appointments. If you have managers to do these things than you need to spot check the managers. It's your house, don't leave the backdoor unlocked.

6. Reward Success

Every single opportunity you have to celebrate any type of quantifiable victory you should take it. Sally told a client about the new thing today when they called with a benefits question - cup cakes for everyone! Mike talked about the thing in the prospect meeting today - pizza party Friday! Lisa won the BOR on a 300 employee group over the national guys - LISA'S BUYING DRINKS!

7. Keep it Simple

After all it's just insurance.

- R

ADP, Paychex, and Zenefits: The smartest guys in the room

Who left the back door unlocked?

All of your revenue from your clients with less than 50 employees will be gone in the next 2-3 years. What percent of your business does that represent? How does that affect your company and your lifestyle?

Those clients will join the fastest organically growing brokers in the US who are ADP, Paychex, and Zenefits. Paychex had the 3rd largest overall growth in the Top 25 of the BI Top 100. 100% of that revenue was from new business, not acquisitions. It's not something that is going to happen in the next couple of years. It is happening right now. 

We've been tricked

Everyday the newspapers, websites, and talking heads distract us with threats to sue President (not mister) Barack Obama. We're fearing for our family's lives due to the imminent threat of Ebola or ISIS. CNN and Fox News are both guilty of running these stories repeatedly.

We're so busy memorizing our political party's sound bite that we don't see the real threat to our business. The real threat are the fastest organic growth brokers in the US.  

Is your house in order?

What are you doing to keep your small business clients? I ask this question approximately 50X a week. In most cases the answer is: nothing. Sometimes there is even a desire for these clients to leave. 

In the Community Rated world of small business, especially in markets like New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut that already are seeing 1% commissions, there isn't a lot of margin for service. 

Keep your eye on the ball

Many people thought that "Obamacare" would be the demise of the independent insurance broker. As it turns out, PPACA and its logistical nightmares have not lured many business owners away from their brokers. Yes, the Employer Mandate has been delayed, but who has a success story of their experience on the exchange? Where are the testimonials?

The reality is that HIX was a massive opportunity for any one that wanted to take advantage of it. It let business owners know that their hometown broker wasn't the only place they could shop for employee benefits. 

The smartest guys in the room

ADP, Paychex and Zenefits are more than happy to work with your small clients. They're not interested in working with 500 employee organizations or companies that want to go self funded. And they're so good at what they do it makes them the fastest organic growth brokers in the country.

How do they do it? They give business services to the small clients that insurance brokers have neglected. Here are some of the things they advertise:

• Payroll
• Compliance
• Workers' Comp
• HRIS

If you look at the model Zenefits uses, they are going to automate 99% of a business's HR administrative work. They make their money through the commission from the health care provider. 

With ADP & Paychex, they already have the payroll in most cases. If you have the payroll, you have all the information you need to provide the other services. And these other services come at a cost. In some cases, ADP becomes the employer of record so that they can get lower rates on the medical. 

A new hope

There is good news for all of us: The NSA isn't concerned about a domestic attack by ISIS, we are not a 3rd world country and have quarantined the Ebola case in Dallas, and there are brokers today who are winning new business by offering payroll, HR, and compliance solutions to their clients.

Like everything else that comes at us loud and fast, we need to take a moment to look at the facts and make judgments for ourselves. As I mentioned earlier, I talk to brokers 50X a week. There's a minority who are laser focused on increasing their retention 2%-3% year over year and finding organic growth one meeting at a time. How do they do it?

• Payroll
  • They research the local guys, have a couple of conversations, and partner with the sharpest one
• Compliance
  • The self serve portals from a decade ago are sitting in the closet and lawyers are too expensive for the masses. Brokers are now offering a live, qualified person or team internally or outsourced to quickly respond. 
• Workers' Comp
  • "That's not my job" is not acceptable. Learn it and find a way to make money with it. ADP has...
• HRIS
  • Brokers have been patiently doing their research and know that it's NOT one-size-fits-all. Do some research and join a broker association that can help educate you on vendors.

It's the 4Q. Look at what you can do NOW in time for your 12/1 and 1/1 renewals. Plan what can be done for 1H15. Pay attention to what the competition is doing because it's getting late in 2014. Turn off the tv and lock your back door.

-R 

Internetville: Where Your Next Customer Can Be Found.

If you want new insurance customers, I can tell you where to find them. There is a special place where they all go to research insurance brokers. You can find them here when they're supposed to be working. They're also here when they're at home. Your next customer is on the internet.

How do people find information. They talk to their peers and they use internet search engines. The search engines display results based on algorithms. The more your insurance agency is on the internet the more likely your prospects will see you.

Today's buyers are doing research before they even pick up the phone. 

Does your company have its own website? A manta listing or Yellow Pages online doesn't count. Actually - it does count. It counts as a cheap insurance broker that doesn't have a website. This is most likely your prospect's first impression. It's like picking up your date on your bicycle versus your Mercedes AMG? 

What information are you providing? The most important thing you can do is get their attention. You can do that by highlighting their pain. Speak to the insurance buyer's needs. Do it here:

Your Blog

It talks about challenges that you solve. This is your best chance to get your voice across to your audience because it is free form. And it will continue working for you for years to come.

Your Facebook

One reason, actually 1.15 billion reasons

Your Twitter

This is a chance for you to develop your brand in a 140 characters, although 70-100 is recommended. This is one of your best opportunities to go viral, or spread quickly. 

You are on Yelp!

Did you know this? Well, you could be. I did a search yesterday in Yelp for "insurance" and the location was New York City. It returned 8,052 results.

Google Yourself

Here is something I want you to do right now: go to your favorite search engine and type in your company's name. What do you see? Now do a new search for your line of insurance and your city. It's OK for you to browse 2, 3, or even 4 pages in to these queries to learn what is out there. But you need to know your clients won't. 92% of internet views occur on Page 1. Only 5% on Page 2. 

What are people saying about you? The more places you exist on the internet, the more potential prospects you can touch. This also creates more opportunities to create fans and, just as equally, to create negative responses as well. Most times when a customer is unhappy they will just leave you for another service provider. But if they're really pissed they'll tell the world.

If you stay on top of all of your internet accounts you can quickly resolve their issue and get them singing your praises just as loud. If you don't, that negative press can sit out here forever.

- R