At its core, insurance is a customer service. And when it comes to improving customer service, building a relationship built on trust and mutual benefits is crucial. In order for clients and potential clients to feel comfortable doing business with you, they need to feel like you respect them and understand their needs. They need to trust that you are looking out for their best interests. It's all about loving and serving your clients, and ultimately building relationships with your clients.
How do you go about building relationships with clients?
The answer: by establishing a life insurance pipeline
A key component of long-term growth is building a pipeline for high-end products such as life insurance and financial services. A good agent always looks at the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) of each client in order to gain an understanding of what policies the individual needs at a particular moment in their life.
The truth is that there are certain periods of life in which someone is a better candidate for certain insurance---but that doesn’t mean that you can’t build a pipeline that will compound and give you the opportunity to do more business with these clients in the future.
Playing the long game: invest in long-term returns
Investing in customer relationships now will give you opportunities to make more money, improve your client retention, develop more multi-line customers, and gain stronger referrals over a period of many years.
How do you build this elusive life insurance pipeline?
By aiming to serve your clients in the most genuine fashion possible! You should value every meeting that you have with potential, current, and former clients. Use these as opportunities to empathize with their needs and build both rapport and trust.
Even if you don’t close a new sale, meetings are a great opportunity for you to lay the foundation for a mutually beneficial relationship between your agency and your clientele. After all, if the customer believes that you understand their problems, they are going to also believe that you have the skills and knowledge to solve them.
Sometimes, this means that you will have to have uncomfortable conversations--do it anyway. You are providing a vital service, and you never want to be put into a “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” situation in the insurance business.
Keep tabs on where your clients are in the pipeline.
After each meeting, take notes and report on where your client is in your pipeline. Have they made a purchase, or did you lay groundwork for a follow up meeting? The more that you can anticipate your clients’ needs, the more capable you appear in their eyes. This means they will be more likely to come to you to purchase big-ticket items like life insurance and financial services in the future.
Pivot Your Insurance Agency Towards Sustainable Growth Are you an insurance agent who feels that your agency is stuck? Is your team grinding new leads each month yet your agency never seems to grow? Client Focus has worked with thousands of agents over the past 15 years just like you. Our purpose is to help your insurance agency pivot onto a path to sustainable growth.
