How to Create an Effective, Repeatable Sales Process at Your Insurance Agency

What does a sales process look like for the individual health, group benefits, and senior insurance market?

Every insurance organization has a sales process. Regardless if yours is documented or clearly defined, you have some sort of map your sales teams follow to convert and renew clients.

This blog will discuss a sales process and how to set one up in your organization. We’ll discuss the sales process, sales cycle, and more to help your team best prepare to use sales management software.

First, definitions.

1. A step is a building block in the sales process. The sales process is made up of steps, and they document the entire process from start to finish.
2. A sales process is “a set of repeatable steps that a salesperson follows to take a prospective buyer from the early stage of awareness to a closed sale.”
3. A sales cycle is “the process that companies undergo when selling a product to a customer. It encompasses all activities associated with closing the sale.”

The sales process and sales cycle go hand-in-hand, but for this blog, this is how they’ll differ:

• A sales cycle is the time it takes for someone to go from a lead to a client. It can refer to the time between each step or represent the entire cycle. For example, a Medicare client may have a sales cycle of 25 days, but Qualified to Quoted is only six days.
• A sales process is the steps you take or the “map” you follow when selling a new client. It's what happens within the sales cycle that helps you stay on track to reach your overall sales cycle goal.

Crafting Your Sales Process 

"Building a sales process is absolutely necessary to your company’s success, and is perhaps the most important thing you can do as a sales manager to impact your team’s ability to sell.”
— Nutshell

When it comes to creating a successful sales process, there are three elements to consider:

• It’s all-encompassing
• It’s repeatable
• It’s sustainable

It’s All-Encompassing

A sales process includes every action that happens during the sales experience. If there are holes in your process, your sales team will be less likely to stick to it. Plus, it will make training new agents more difficult. 

Take into account the different products you sell and the different groups you sell to. Those different products and groups of people will require different processes, like:

• Individual business vs. group benefits
• ACA vs. Medicare
• Health insurance vs. life insurance

It’s Repeatable

“A sales process is a clear, repeatable process that enables your reps to understand exactly what they need to do to succeed.”
— Pipedrive

If you cannot consistently repeat your sales process or easily teach it to a new employee, your process will not yield the success you seek. 

Your sales process should run seamlessly from one step to the next. Yes, there will be outliers. However, your process should represent the vast majority of your sales; then, each agent can deal with the outliers as they come. 

The steps ensure that nothing is missed, everything is checked off your list, and your buyer is fully taken care of throughout the process. They provide expectations for your agents and producers to work from so that they can replicate success.

It’s Sustainable

Keep it simple and keep it relevant.

Your process must be something your team can maintain for the long term. If your process is too laborious, has too many steps, or requires your agents to check off too many things, they will start to gravitate away from it. 

Your process should be a living process — something you improve upon and refine as your team grows, your target audience’s needs change, and the industry changes.

How to Start Building Your Insurance Organization’s Sales Process

Typically, any sales process will have at least five steps; however, the complexity and how “into the weeds” each step gets will ultimately determine this number. 

When creating your process, start by asking yourself this question: What is the first thing that your sales reps do to connect with a potential buyer, and what is the last thing they do to finish the sale?

Answering this question will help you decide which steps your process needs and the map your agents usually follow for a sale. As Nutshell states: “align [your steps] with the key phases in your customer’s typical decision-making process.” Start with what you have, then refine it to create a process that is all-encompassing, repeatable, and sustainable.

The 5 Steps in Most Health, Group, and Senior Insurance Sales Processes

After researching and consulting many different sales processes, these are the five steps usually present.

Gather Lead/Prospect

You cannot start a sales process if you don’t have a lead or prospect to reach out to. Step one is bringing in the lead or prospect, which could come from a variety of sources:

• They fill out a lead form
• You purchase the lead from a lead vendor
• A referral
• Walk-in/call-in
• Other prospecting methods

Regardless of how you acquire the new lead or prospect, you must connect with them immediately. Why? Because:

• 50% of leads go to the first salesperson to reach out 
• Your odds of conversion fall by 400% when your response time increases from 5 minutes to 10 minutes
• 30% of leads are never contacted at all

Speed-to-contact can be your differentiator. Using an agency management system (AMS) with built-in lead and sales automation helps you be aware of leads sooner, connect with them quicker, and improve your chances of converting them.

Additionally, new leads and prospects sometimes require lots of courting (80% of leads require 5+ touchpoints). Don’t let your leads fall between the cracks, use automation to help you make immediate contact and maintain consistent communication throughout their journey!

Connect & Qualify

The term “opportunity” is pretty standard throughout the industry, but it can also be referred to as a “deal” or “sale.”

The qualification step is a crucial one. It’s when you turn a lead or prospect into an opportunity. After the initial meeting and discussion, decide if the person or group will remain a lead or if their interest should qualify them as an opportunity. This means they’re a potential sale, and it moves them along in the sales process. 

Proposal Presented 

These steps are the decision-making ones. You’ve met the buyer, learned their needs, and are now showing them how you can meet their needs. Use quoting and proposal tools to streamline this process, find the best quotes from a variety of carriers, and efficiently create professional, branded proposals. 

Paperwork Submitted

So far, you've:

• Met with and qualified the opportunity
• Learned what they need
• Presented options to them
• Received confirmation from the buyer that they want to move forward with a specific plan/product

Now it's time to submit the plan for approval. This step is sometimes called "App Submitted" or "Sold Case Paperwork Submitted."

During this time, a few things can happen:

• Underwriting may occur
• Multiple backs and forths with the carriers may happen
• A census is taken for employee benefits

You may have the application sent back requiring additional analysis or information, so make sure you put that time into your sales cycle to give yourself the space you need to move through this step in the right amount of time. 

Use health insurance-specific quoting tools to ensure this process is seamless. AgencyBloc’s Quote+ solution allows brokers to manage their entire quoting process in one place. Then, after a plan is selected, securely map the employer and employee data to carriers via our HIPAA-compliant software.

Closed

Closed is the final and most critical step. Closed is when you define who you've won, who you've lost, and the reasons behind those losses. 

Using this insight, you can better understand your entire sales process and cycle to make meaningful changes and know how to proceed in the future. 

Marking them Closed Lost with a reason gives your leadership team essential insight. Use this information to help direct conversations about potential impactful changes. Then, in the future, when you’re looking at new verticals, carriers, or locations, you can refer back to your Closed Losts and start those conversations again. 

Managing Your Sales Process in AgencyBloc’s Platform

Using an industry-specific system, like AgencyBloc’s platform, for sales management gives your team the tools they need to successfully sell. From an integrated insurance VoIP to electronic compliance management to automated lead routing and assignment to sales-specific lead nurturing automation software — AgencyBloc’s Plus Suite of industry-specific solutions can help your sales and servicing teams thrive. 

Posted by Allison Babberl on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 in Sales Enablement

1. lead nurturing
2. selling