Selling insurance is different from selling everything else.

Insurance is one of the most expensive things people buy and they can’t see it, touch it, or hold it.

You’re selling ideas. You’re selling trust. You’re selling promises.

You’re selling yourself.

This is such a huge challenge that most insurance salespeople quit in the first 2 years and many agents are afraid to hire inexperienced salespeople.

I hate to see young producers fail and even more, I hate seeing agents miss out on the largest pool of cheap, passionate, and open-minded talent.

I know a few agents who hate asking for referrals because they’re afraid of bothering clients or asking for “too much”.

I understand the mentality, but it’s wrong.

When you make it easy and risk-free for clients to refer your agency, you are doing them a favor!

Why is that?

Because referrals are social currency. We all like to recommend quality companies and products to each other because it’s a way of helping one another.

Unfortunately, many insurance agents are never properly taught how to ask for referrals in an effective and comfortable way. This results in conversations like this:

Agent: “If you value the service I’ve provided you, please tell me 3 people that could also benefit from my excellent service…”

Client: [awkward pause] “Oh… Um… Well…  I guess you could call my… I don’t really have any phone numbers with me right now…”

Agent: “Sorry… can’t let you go until I get my names…”

What do computers, monkeys, and my 3 year old daughter all have in common?

They can all sell insurance on price alone.

A professional insurance salesperson (like you) must be able to connect with prospects and help them understand and internalize the value of the insurance you’re selling.

If you only sell insurance on price, you will eventually be replaced because:

1. There will always be another company with lower rates.
2. When people buy from you just to save money, they’ll leave just as fast.
3. A call center employee can quote more people faster and cheaper than you.
4. A website can give millions of quotes per second even faster and cheaper.

Sometimes cross-sales fall in your lap.

“Do you guys also do life insurance?”

Beautiful thing, huh?

Most of the time though, you have to work hard to make it happen.

I’ll assume you’re already good with the ones that fall in your lap, today I want to give you a bunch of ideas for making cross-sales happen.

So I did a little “brain-dump” and came up with 29 different ways you can cross-sell more in your insurance agency.

If you get an idea or two please share this resource with a colleague and if you have ideas to add let me know in the comments below.

You’re either born to sell or not.

That’s B.S. (pardon my French acronym).

It’s like saying you’re born to be a world-class athlete and hard work has nothing to do with it.

Try telling that to Ray Lewis.

Sure, we’re all born with different abilities but:

1. No one ever achieves greatness without practice.
2. Practice makes everyone better regardless of ability.

But you don’t need practice, right? You’re a natural. You’re a born salesman. You can sell ice to eskimos and plastic surgery to Joan Rivers.

I don’t like networking events.

I don’t like the fake smiles, cheesy jokes, overbearing personalities, awkward conversations, and unsolicited advice.

And of course I can’t stand the sales pitches for crap I will never ever buy.

On the bright side… sometimes there’s alcohol.

Although I’m a die-hard internet marketing guy I know these two things as fact:

1. The more people you know the more insurance you sell.
2. Networking events are one of the best ways to meet people.

I’m no relationship expert.

Just ask my wife.

But I know you need to go out of your way to show appreciation for the other person in any relationship, otherwise it will deteriorate and eventually die.

But you don’t want relationship advice from me. (trust me)

Let’s talk about your agency instead.

• How healthy are your customer relationships?
• Do they know how much you appreciate them?
• Do you go out of your way to make sure they know how you really feel?
• What are you doing to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Client relationships are just like personal ones – they require work.

And if your business strategy doesn’t include processes to go out of your way to say “thank you” to your customers, they will eventually leave you.

With Thanksgiving coming up later this week, I thought it’d be a good time to explore ways to say “Thanks!” to your insurance customers. I already started by giving travel tips to those planning vacation. As for the rest – here they are:

Retention is necessary to build and maintain a successful insurance agency.

Every agent knows that.

You know small boosts in retention will grow long term profit immensely.

You know it costs more to get new customers than to keep current ones.

And you probably know the pain of losing more policies than you wrote in a week.

You don’t hear as much about these two things:

1. Retention is a sales strategy – Every single thing you do to improve retention makes customers more likely to refer you.
2. Retention requires established processes –  Unless you decide exactly which methods in this article are going to work for you and establish formal procedures in your office to follow through, you will not see results.

I wrote this article so you couldn’t say, “I don’t know how to effect our retention.”

Here’s 34 ways to improve your insurance agency’s customer retention. No excuses, decide which retention strategies you like and take action!

Selling insurance is hard.

Really hard!

In fact, making a sale is so hard that agents often forget the most important part of building a successful insurance agency:

Developing a ROCK-SOLID relationship with every client.

There’s no better time forge that relationship and boost the lifespan of your clients than immediately after the intital sale, but it’s easy to miss because it’s so exciting just to close the deal.

That’s why I recommend creating a formal Welcome Kit for new clients.

According to a recent survey by J.D. Power & Associates over 92% of internet users have used reviews to make a purchase sometime in the last 12 month. That’s pretty much everyone.

Reviews matter.

People don’t have time to waste shopping around or money to lose on a bad service or product. Using the collective experience of a group of people is a great way to speed up your shopping process and avoid getting burned. Why get a referral from one friend with one situation when you can compare the average reviews of 100 people who had 100 different experiences?