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…”

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.

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.

According to web sites like Insurance Quotes, 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?

I think most sales goals suck.

That’s not totally true. I just wanted your attention.

(Hey, at least I’m honest.)

But I do think most sales goals are totally incomplete.

You see, most of us have a tendency to set goals based on the ultimate outcome.

It’s great when shoppers get an insurance quote from you and no one else.

Until you wake up.

This happens occasionally from a referral or networking, but it’s far more common that your quotes are competing with several others for your prospect’s attention.

So how can you make your quotes stand out?

Of course having the lowest price is very helpful – but it’s out of your control and isn’t as vital as you think.

Selling life insurance is hard.

It’s also necessary.  Because unlike other lines of insurance people are required to buy…

Life insurance must be sold.

Although people can use seniors life insurance finder to find an agent, they can’t buy it on their own because a website or an 800 number can’t replace an agent.

A lot of agents tell me prospects don’t see the value in life insurance. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to hear about it.

Of course they don’t!

Good processes are the key to success in your insurance agency.

That’s why I put together a resource with the most important processes for successful insurance agencies.

I’ve included important considerations and helpful resources for each process below.

There’s a lot of information on this page so I also made a few links to help you get around:

Insurance Agency Processes featured on this page:

I like marketing you never have to think about that happens automatically.

Don’t you?

Your email signature another great opportunity for automated marketing.

If you don’t already know, an email signature is a message that your email system automatically adds to the bottom of every email you send.

Email signatures are traditionally used to prevent you from re-typing your contact information over and over but they present an awesome opportunity for savvy agents like you to put insurance marketing on auto-pilot.