P&C insurers know how important it is to have a happy customer base, but that depends on a healthy, robust sales pipeline: you need to keep making new customers. The sales process is tricky and not all prospects convert into leads. You need to strike the perfect balance in your sales approach, lead engagement, pre- and post-sales service, among many other factors. Fortunately, insurers have options to ensure that there is a steady stream of prospects waiting to convert into customers.
Turning prospects into customers is complicated
All kinds of insurance businesses, from carriers and MGAs to program administrators, need to optimize the lead-to-sales ratio. Keeping a sales pipeline robust means consistently gaining new, quality leads, following up with them, diversifying engagement channels, and equipping your sales team with effective tools to streamline communication and back-end processes.Â
That’s a lot to manage, and doing so ineffectively can make the difference between meeting your goals and falling short.
Make the process simpler with the 3Es
OwlSurance has a simple three-pronged approach to nurturing your prospects. We call it the 3Es: Engage, Educate, and Emotionally Connect with a potential client through every stage of the sales lifecycle.
- Your prospects may or may not be aware of your products and solutions. They may not even recognize their need for insurance! You cannot count on them to initiate the conversation. Therefore, you must proactively engage with them to build awareness.
- Once engaged, you can educate your prospect about personal, professional, and business risks. Insurance is a notoriously opaque industry with its own complicated vocabulary. Make sure that you are communicating in a way that your prospects will understand.Â
- This helps you build trust and credibility with your prospects and consequently forge an emotional connection. Building this rapport will ultimately lead to a more promising conversation – and, ultimately, a sale.
How to enhance your presence at the Prospect stage
The interconnected 3Es all require online presence and communication channels. Connecting with potential customers becomes much easier when they can find you online. Although presence can be a very complex topic in marketing, there are simple strategies to boost your visibility in the channels where your prospects spend their time.
Here’s a closer look at some techniques to enhance your presence:
Website Optimization
Make sure that your website content provides what prospects most want to know: a holistic overview of your organization, the products & services you offer, and your key business differentiators. Prioritize clarity and ease of use. Analyzing your website’s traffic and performance can uncover patterns in how effective your engagement and marketing campaigns are. These insights help you make informed decisions on how to better connect with your prospects.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Improving your search rankings makes it easier for you to get noticed online. SEO is an umbrella of strategies to do that, ranging from small enhancements to major overhauls and external consulting.
Fortunately, you can start small by enriching the keywords on your website as part of your website optimization projects or independently. You can make specific enhancements to your website and content’s keyword libraries to achieve better visibility. Identify and implement keywords that are:
- Informational – what does business insurance cover?
- Navigational – a specific name, brand, or location
- Commercial – discount auto insurance or auto insurance reviews
- Transactional – buy insurance online
SEO can become a very complicated technique, but even small improvements will make a difference when you consider that 70% of new customers who buy insurance online or through agents use an online search.
Content Marketing
Leverage communications related to your products and solutions to enhance your search profile. These can include blogs, case studies, success stories, press releases, or educational materials. The content that you create for your website can also be disseminated through other channels.
Make sure that you’re thinking about what content works best in which channels. You need to be present in the communication channels your customers frequent. That can vary by personal preference as well as cohort, age, and many other factors. The more ways you have to reach different groups of prospects, the more prospects you can target.
Grow Your Network
Get involved in insurance thought leadership through engagement with analysts, trade publications, and industry influencers, including on social media. Some possibilities include case studies, white papers, webinars, and participation in awards programs as well as developing content for content hubs such as Medium.
Ready to take your sales pipeline to the next level?
Your success hinges on effectively converting leads into customers. By implementing the 3Es (Engage, Educate, and Emotionally Connect) throughout the sales lifecycle and employing the strategies outlined in this blog, insurance companies can optimize their sales pipelines, cultivate meaningful customer relationships, and achieve sustainable growth.
At OwlSurance, we have developed these strategies based on our extensive experience working with insurance businesses across the P&C industry. In addition to expertise, we offer a number of technology solutions to streamline your operations and enhance innovation, including quoting, rating, business intelligence, and a modern data platform.