The Agency's Guide to Growth: How to Identify Cross-Sell Opportunities, Gain Referrals, and Keep Your Clients Happy

Insurance agencies typically gain clients through two main methods: prospecting and utilizing their current client base. Prospecting is the process of actively seeking new clients. Agencies typically use various marketing tactics such as email campaigns, website maintenance, social media marketing, and direct mail to do so. 

While prospecting can be a worthwhile investment, capitalizing on your current client base is a smart, strategic way to grow your business. 

In this guide, we discuss ways to streamline your agency’s growth by utilizing your existing client base and the technology that can make this process seamless.

The Importance of Leveraging Your Current Client Base

Utilizing your current client base is a cost-effective way to build your business. In fact, the probability of selling to an existing client is at least 40% higher than closing a deal with a new lead. What’s more, it’s five times more expensive to acquire new clients than it is to retain your current ones. In addition to boosting ROI, client retention displays a company’s ability to serve its clients well, making it a key way to bring in new business through referrals. 

Not only will you save time, money, and resources utilizing your current client base, but you’ll also grow your business more efficiently and effectively.

Ways to Grow Your Agency Through Existing Clients

There are different tactics agents may use to leverage their relationships with current clients such as asking for referrals, cross-selling, and using profitable lead sources to shape future strategy. 

Utilize Client Referrals and Testimonials

Don’t underestimate the power of client referrals and testimonials — both are invaluable ways to drive conversions. 

Rocket Referrals said it best:

“A referral is the bridge that connects a company to a new client by means of an existing customer. Because of this direct link between the company, customer, and prospect, trust transfers. Therefore the barriers that exist with a typical prospect and the company are broken down by way of the active promoter. As the trust transfers, the resistance is diminished, and sales are much easier to obtain.”

Testimonials are also a powerful way to drive conversions. In fact, about 87% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. In addition, testimonials build trust in your customer base — a factor that influences 53% of consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Before you ask for referrals, you need to identify potential referring clients. You can find which of your clients are likely to refer your agency by using a tool called the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which categorizes a company’s client base according to their score. Clients can be grouped into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.

Image Source: What Is Net Promoter?

Using a scale of zero to ten, ask clients to rate how likely they are to recommend your agency to a colleague or friend. Once you’ve gathered their feedback, your next step is to communicate with each client accordingly. 

Tailor Your Communication Strategy According to Each Client’s Net Promoter Score 

The image below can help you visualize the three categories on the NPS. As you can see, each group feels differently about your business.

Image Source: AgencyBloc

You want to create each follow-up email separately for each group to ensure you’re tailoring your communication according to their response. While your messages will vary between each group, the end goal remains the same: boosting client acquisition and retention.

Promoters 

Your Promoter (score 9 - 10) is elated and readily shows it. Promoters are loyal clients who will continue to buy from you while also referring your company to others. Promoters are highly unlikely to consider other options because they are extremely happy with your product or service.

These are the clients you want to ask for referrals — this is best done through an automated email or phone call. The email can come from your agency as a whole or from the client’s agent of record. You may find that you get a higher response rate if the email comes directly from their agent.

Here’s an example of what to say in your email: 

Even if you don’t get a response, you still want to save this list of Promoters. That way, you can easily send a mass email to them at a later date asking for a testimonial. Provide a link within this email that leads them directly to a testimonial submission page or ask them to reply to the email with their testimonial. Wait at least six months before you request a testimonial — you don’t want your clients to feel that you’re nagging them.

When asking for a testimonial, your email could say:

While Promoters are clients who are satisfied with your service and would likely say good things about your agency, it’s critical to keep them happy — which we’ll discuss later on in this guide.

Passives 

Your Passive (score 7 - 8) is neutral; they’re not overtly happy or upset. Passives may be satisfied clients, but since they’re unenthusiastic and don’t feel loyal to your brand, they can be easily swayed by competitive offers. 

Passives are trickier than Promoters or Detractors. Follow up with these people in an email or on the phone to find out how you can improve your service.

Your email could say:

Depending on their feedback you may want to meet with these clients to discuss their comments or concerns — this interaction could prevent them from turning into a Detractor. 

Detractors 

Detractors (score 0-6) need immediate attention. They are dissatisfied, unhappy customers that aren’t afraid to show it. The most important thing to know about Detractors is that they're still doing business with you. You need to make it a priority to find out why they are unhappy and take steps to solve it before they start to spread the word about their dissatisfaction, and in turn, tarnish your agency’s reputation and slow its growth.

The goal of your conversation with them is to find out what the problem is and what has kept them at your agency. They may like something about your service, or maybe they simply don't have a choice — either way, this conversation is an opportunity to make things right before you lose them completely.

Reaching out with an initial phone call is best practice, however, emails are an alternative.

Your email could say:

Do not ask Detractors for a referral or testimonial. Ensure your email lists are segmented properly as this can be an easy mistake to make when setting up automated emails. 

Leverage Cross-Selling Opportunities

Consistently identifying cross-selling opportunities and acting upon them will keep your agency growing. What’s more, you’ll keep your clients happy by continually providing value and showing them that they’re a priority.

How can insurance and benefits agencies effectively cross-sell? Agents should regularly look at their client’s policies to identify cross-selling opportunities such as gaps in their coverage or approaching policy expirations dates. 

For example, a client may have life insurance but not health insurance. Or, they have health insurance with you and dental insurance with another agency. They might want to move everything over to you once their policy is up for renewal.

Streamline the cross-selling process and save yourself the trouble of dealing with spreadsheets and stacks of papers by using an Agency Management System (AMS). An industry-specific management platform like AgencyBloc organizes your client’s information by linking each individual or group to their policies, making it easy to find cross-selling opportunities at the click of a button.

Identify Successful Lead Sources

Discovering your most profitable lead sources will help you know where you should focus your efforts and where you can improve. For instance, if the majority of your leads are finding your agency through your website, you may want to add a lead form to funnel leads into your AMS and ensure they’re being followed up with quickly. 

AgencyBloc makes it easy to identify successful lead sources so that you can put this information to use. After you’ve been tracking your lead sources within an AMS for several months, you’ll start to see what’s working and what isn’t. For example, in the table below you can see that client referrals are this agency’s best lead source, so it makes sense for them to focus on optimizing their referral process.

Image source: AgencyBloc

Tracking this data enables you to hone your efforts accordingly and save valuable time, money, and resources — all of which you can allocate back to managing the many other needs of your agency.

Keep Your Clients Happy 

Poor communication is the main reason clients leave insurance agencies. You want to keep consistent, timely communication from onboarding and beyond to provide great service, and in turn, boost client retention. 

Today’s modern insurance consumer likes to be updated regularly with important information such as policy application status or policy changes. If you don’t have a way to track this information, you won’t be able to provide these updates or answer their questions in a timely manner. Stay organized and find information quickly by keeping it organized in an AMS. 

In addition to staying organized and providing regular updates, you want to consistently provide value. Automated email campaigns are a strategic way to keep your agency top of mind and serve your clients. Regularly send them helpful information such as: 

• Additional information about other products your agency sells that they may find valuable
• Client surveys 
• Coverage updates, for example, if a carrier makes changes that may affect them 
• Reminders about open enrollment 
• Key policy information and updates 
• Happy birthday emails 

Consistent, timely communication year-round will help you build strong, lasting relationships with your clients. 

How AgencyBloc Can Help You Optimize Your Efforts

From identifying referral and cross-selling opportunities to onboarding and fostering strong relationships with your clients, an industry-specific AMS like AgencyBloc can help you do it all. 

Identify Cross-Selling Opportunities Easily

With AgencyBloc’s Policy Cross Sell Report, you can use filters to search through every coverage type in your database and find cross-selling opportunities instantly.

Image source: AgencyBloc 

Stay Top of Mind With Automated Email Campaigns 

AgencyBloc makes building automated email campaigns simple — all you need to do is create the email content, set up and select the criteria for your recipients, and hit send. 

Image source: AgencyBloc

You can use automated email campaigns to automatically send referral and testimonial asks. We also make it easy to support your cross-selling efforts — you can automatically apply a cross-sell filter before sending to make sure you’re reaching the right people at the right time.

Provide Excellent Service With Automated Workflow 

Our workflow automation feature guarantees you’ll never miss a new lead or a follow-up with a current client.

Image source: AgencyBloc 

When an event is completed, predetermined settings are triggered. For example, in AgencyBloc, when a lead submits a lead form on your website it will automatically assign an agent to the lead, create a task for a follow-up, and set a reminder. Automated Workflow will also save you the valuable time you’d spend on manual, time-consuming tasks so that you can focus more on your clients and prospects.

Posted by Allison Babberl on Tuesday, August 3, 2021 in Automated Lead Routing & Assignment

1. client retention
2. lead nurturing