Like most industries, the insurance industry is not exempt from challenges. One of the core challenges is finding and retaining clients. Providing a world-class customer experience helps with retention, but what about new clients?
Appointment setting services for insurance agents are a vital component of the customer acquisition strategy to keep agencies healthy and thriving.
Appointment Setting Services for Insurance Agents Keep Business Flowing
Let’s use a fictitious independent commercial insurance agency as an example. The agency has a few satellite offices or now, post-COVID, 50 insurance producers working to keep that pipeline full of new business.
- What are the best ways to keep the flow of prospects strong?
- How do you not only maintain the present level of business but increase your sales?
Indeed, no one can argue that referrals are essential, and most agents do an outstanding job of nurturing those referrals and working them into quotes and eventually new clients. But, in the vast majority of cases, referrals are not enough.
Why Insurance Agents Need Appointment Setting Companies
Our agency and its producers need to aggressively pursue new business that very well may not be aware they exist in the crowded insurance field.
Whether their emphasis is P&C, group health, workers comp, or even supplemental insurance, uncovering new prospects has to be a top priority.
So, the question becomes, what is the best way to accomplish that?
Let’s say our agency decides to put that responsibility on the producers themselves. I’m sure your experience has been that there is a flurry of activity for a couple of weeks, then it will slowly die out until nothing is happening.
In most industries, producers in the insurance world are like salespeople; their strengths lie just about anywhere else than cold calling. They want to get on a call, discuss possible coverages, maybe even pricing, because they have that knowledge, are comfortable with those discussions, and can. The problem is they don’t set appointments.
How Appointment Setting Companies Benefit Insurance Agents
Now our fictitious insurance agency can decide to set up their internal call center to prospect for new business, and they can certainly do that. Still, we have already discussed the benefits of outsourcing this type of work in previous articles.
Quality Contact Solutions provides appointment setters for insurance agents. It could be for group plans, supplemental insurance plans, P&C coverage, workers comp, you name it.
Their job is to call a list of prospects, get the decision-maker, determine if the prospect meets our insurance agency’s minimum qualifications for the type of coverage we are working on, and schedule an appointment. Nothing more.
The team does not talk about coverages; they do not discuss costs and are not licensed, insurance agents. Instead, their focus is on setting appointments with qualified prospects and moving on to the next call.
How to Use Appointment Setting Companies with Your Insurance Agency
It doesn’t matter if you’re a larger agency with dozens or hundreds of producers working either from a centralized office or a smaller size. We design a program that works for you to help meet your goals. For example, one of the goals will be to determine what constitutes a qualified lead for an appointment.
Consider using an appointment setting company for:
- Calling a group of clients set to renew within a 90-day timeframe that someone inside the agency may not have the capacity to contact to arrange an appointment to review coverages.
- Targeting an industry-specific list of businesses where you may have a competitive advantage or more expertise.
- Connecting with clients who may not have renewed their policy within a specific timeframe.
- Reaching out to current clients about add-on or supplemental products.
The possibilities are endless. Of course, any outbound program can be supported by inbound services as well.
Appointment setting companies for insurance agents can have a quick conversation with a client or prospect to help keep the pipeline for the agency full.
