As a producer, you already know how profitable cross-selling to your existing customers can be. So why has it been on the periphery for so many agencies lately? Fact is, it can be tedious work. With time being a valuable commodity in every business today, is one new opportunity worth all of the hours spent tracking it down and demonstrating the need to the customer?
There are a variety of reasons your customers could have gaps in their coverage:
- They don't fully understand their existing coverage
- They think another policy provides substantial coverage
- They believe they don't have the risk
Whatever the reason, just like in most business functions, there's an easy way and a hard way to fill the whitespace.
Here, we will walk you through the top five methods producers use to cross-sell into their existing book. How many have you implemented in your agency?
- Get comfortable and sell: A tried-and-true cross-sell strategy – focusing on a single, general product that applies to most of your customers. Many successful producers find a policy that is applicable to most businesses, such as employment liability, get to know it inside and out, and make it a point at the end of every pitch. The more you know a product, the easier it becomes to cross-sell.
- Benchmark your customers: Your management system already has a great deal of valuable information. One glance at a customer’s profile and you'll find what coverages they already own, their industry, and other business-specific information. To uncover cross-sell opportunities within your existing book, you can delve into your management system to find similar customers and then cross-reference their coverages to find gaps. If they are in comparable industries, chances are they are exposed to the same risks and in need of the same policies.
- Do some online research: Thanks to the massive influx of information on the internet, there's plenty of opportunity for finding cross-sell leads through online research. There are numerous publications and reports that give insights into the insurance industry. Through a quick search, you can learn about new emerging risks, common risks by industry, and other trends to help you identify promising opportunities. All it takes is obtaining the right information and then formulating a proposal that applies to the right customers.
- Expand your knowledge: An insurance knowledge base, like online research, is an abundance of industry information. The difference, however, is that a knowledge base consolidates and organizes all the information to make it easier to find and easily digestible. Instead of broadly searching for common risks for a restaurant, for example, you can narrow your search to common risks for a barbeque restaurant that has outdoor seating and a liquor license. You can offer a personalized proposal that is tailored specifically to your customer's business with real industry information to back it up.
- Leverage the power analytics: Lastly, there is analytics. With analytics, you can gain an understanding of what others in a specific industry are buying compared to what the customer already owns. Employing actual industry data, you can benchmark your customers against existing in-force premium to identify coverage gaps on a per-customer basis. Compare your customers to the industry on a state, regional, or national level to truly understand their risks and which coverages they need. You can even check which carriers have an appetite for writing the risk and easily identify the most profitable choice for your agency - comparing A.M. Best Ratings and the average commission each carrier pays. Next, you can quickly create a data-driven proposal to make informed recommendations, build trust, and capitalize on your cross-sell opportunity.
